while there may be some cad software compatible with windows 3.0, i think most if not all people used cad software in dos, especially on a XT class machine
you need to take in account that the software is limited to real mode and 640k of ram

Hi weldum, thank you! I fully agree, an XT is sort of a toy here.
My dad once sold hot-rod 486 PCs to architects, structural engineers etc and by comparison what I'm doing is a joke. 😅

For serious use, the PC/XT was probably just good enough in times before AutoCAD R9.
When people had AutoCAD 2.0, 2.1, 2.5 or so. The 2.x series in short.
- This was mid-80s, when PC/XTs with Hercules card or special graphics cards (say IBM PGA) were in wide use.

MS-DOS compatibles such as DEC Rainbow 100 or Victor 9000/Sirius 1 were still around by mid-80s, though.

There even were two CPU upgrades for the DEC Rainbow 100, by the way.
a) by installing a V20 and replacing firmware (V20 compatible)
b) by installing an 80286 board (now rare, had a Windows 3 port)

The funny thing is, that both machines still got a port of MS Windows 1.x in their lifetime.
So something like Drafix 1.1 might have run on these machines! 😃

Because many Windows 2.x applications were still being compiled against Windows 1 SDK, probably by accident or out of ignorance.
I wrote almost an essay about that many years ago, by the way. 😆

Long story short, Windows 1 and 2 were still both quite irrelevant when new (in relation to today) .
People interested in this new "MS Windows" thing were grateful for any info they had gotten hold of and didn't differentiate between versions.

That means that they basically ended up with Windows 1.0 header files (windows.h etc) through books and magazines with their companion disks.
And that was ok. The main difference between Windows 1 and 2 wasn't the API so much, but the improvements in UI and bigger driver support.

Windows 2 added overlapping windows and shortcuts in menu (File).
If such newer programs were run on Windows 1.x, they still ran albeit full-screen or tiled.
The (File) entry would be garbled and read (&File), but still work.
It can bee seen in some applications here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWEsBiIxMaU

The biggest addition probably was that Windows 2.x allowed applications to use EMS if they wanted to.
EMS was perhaps the first baby step leading to big, sophisticated applications.

But that being said, there also were new useful APIs under the hood.
There must be a reason, after all, why Microsoft didn't write lots of applications for Windows 1.x early on.

Windows 2 had Excel and WinWord, which apparently were more Important than Windows itself.
From what I read, Windows 2.x had been adapted to suit Excel's needs rather than other way round.
So it was an Excel runtime in first place, more or less!

Anyway, "Windows 3.0 aware" Windows 2.x applications likely nolonger ran on Windows 1.x. 🙁
The differences in NE header and the resource format perhaps were too new to Windows 1.x at this point.
Speaking under correction, though! My knowledge of Windows 1.x is quite limited, I'm afraid! 😶‍🌫️

Edit: I forgot. Sorry about the long monologue here!
I don’t mean to educate anyone, but I really enjoy discussing such things! 😃

Typos fixed.

weldum wrote on 2025-04-16, 00:05:

while there may be some cad software compatible with windows 3.0, i think most if not all people used cad software in dos, especially on a XT class machine
you need to take in account that the software is limited to real mode and 640k of ram

+1

As I wrote earlier, my grandfather was an architect and my dad was a radio amateur/tinkerer/programmer at the time.
So an invention like AutoCAD interested both of them, it caused some sort of a bond between them, in simple words.
That was good, because the relationship between those two wasn't exactly the best. My grandfather was a choleric, too.

My dad's profundness in AutoCAD in early 80s was probably one of the few occassions in which his father was proud of him (and let him know).
AutoCAD, even in early version, was a huge stress reliefer at the time when compared to making hand drawings.
That was around 1984/1985, I think, when IBM/AT at 6 MHz (first model) was still brand new.

At the time, my dad had built a few of the c't-86 computers, too.
He built them from scratch, essentially, by etching the Europa cards at home.
He then wired and soldered the boards with a Weller TCP-24.
The most problematic thing was the floppy controller, I think, which had to be adjusted by hand, while watching signals on an oscillograph.

Speaking under correction, though.
That was before my time, so I can only tell what I heard from my dad/his mom. I hope I told the story correctly.
A few photographs/slides and magazines of the c't-86 are still in the attic, I believe.

The c't-86 computer was essentially an generic, CP/M-86 compatible PC.
Not much different to the NDR Klein computer, another popular system of the time (had Z80, M68k and 8088 CPU cards IMHO).
It didn’t have a BIOS, but a Monitor Program, rather, which could be expanded into something like a BIOS.

Thanks to its modular design, it merely needed a few changes to run stock MS-DOS for IBM PC.
The people at c't magazine even offered patching CP/M-86 and MS-DOS original disks for a little fee (bootloader had to be patched).

Those who didn't want to use a serial terminal could install a graphics card, of course.
Which brings us back to CGA, of course, because it was that one graphics board that used ordinary TV timings.
So a bog standard video monitor or hacked TV set could be used (tuner-bypass-hack; also popular in USA of 70s and GDR of late 80s).

So my dad had essentially built a handful of c't-86 computers for his customers who needed to run dBase, Clipper and AutoCAD.
In mid-80s, a humble 8086 PC was still something that really mattered.
Thinking about this is quite mindblowing, considering how limited that Commodore PC10 next to me feels!

But on other hand, the PC10 is just an 8-Bit system (8088).
The c't-86 was an 16-Bit design using an 8086!
Too bad there's no c't-86 emulator, so I could compare them. 🙁

Because, it would be exciting to find out how my grandfather and his colleagues ran AutoCAD in 1984/85.
If it was very slow, medium slow etc. It would be fascinating to walk their ways, so to say.

Unfortunately, the people who built the real thing are retired for 30 years now.
I suppose, they're in their 80s/90s now.. Gratefully the c't-86 monitor ROMs and some DOS 1.25 floppies are being dumped already.
So maybe I can cobble together a custom PC emulator eventually. 😀

PS: I forgot, there also was AutoCAD 1.x!
It was being divided into AutoCAD-80 for CP/M computers with a Z80 or compatible CPU (NSC800 was great)
and AutoCAD-86 for CP/M-86 and MS-DOS computers.

But by 1985, these versions were a tad bit too old already, I believe.
I don’t think my father had ever used one of them.
It really was all about DOS at the time.

Sorry for the last, very long posting! 😅
I tried to put my excitement into words and tried to elaborate a bit why I'm interested in such things. Hope you don't mind!

The Commodore PC10 I'm working on is from 1984/1985, but loosely resembles the state of ~1990.
It has Sound Blaster 2, EMS, V20/8087, VGA, UMB card and a network card!
An NE2000 compatible with 10Base2. Yup, no twisted-pair. Just BNC! 😃

It also runs Windows 3.0 applications, such as GnuChess or WinGIF. And SkiFree - albeit slowly!

That's why I would love to try some more 8087 applications, as well.
Mandelbrot programs do work, I tried, but something workstation-like would be cool.
Like a 3D program that draws the teapod*. 😆

(*The infamous Utah teapod. 3D modelling fans probably are somewhat sick of it after all these years, but I still think its a cool demo!)

Corel Draw 2 should run - no ? Here is a webpage for some additional inspiration

http://toastytech.com/guis/win1x2x.html

Aui wrote on 2025-04-16, 02:34:

Corel Draw 2 should run - no ?

Ah, yes! I vaguely remember this one seeing before, I think. Or maybe it was In*a*Vision? 🤔
Anyway, I haven't really thought of this one. Thank you! 😃

The clip art topic reminds me of the 90s when I visited an electronic shop in my city.
It had a few books from the 80s for sale as a discount.
They were in the back of the shop, still shrink-wrapped.

One of them was about clip arts, in icon size.
They all were in black/white and had a catalogue number below the file name.

Apparently, there was a floppy disk that could be ordered via mail order once.
The files were in PIC and PCX file format, I think. The PIC format was used by Mac Paint, I believe.

Interestingly, the Windows 2.x picture viewer "Easel" can read pictures with such extension!
Must have been cool to put a 5,25" floppy in (in say 1988) and browse hundreds of tiny monochrome pictures on your PC/XT with Windows 2.x! 😃

Imagine how someone's friends with a C64 might have reacted if the friend had a library of hundreds of clip arts..
They might have been really cool in school news papers, in homeworks, as letterhead in a letter..

Also, those b/w pictures were ideal for use with needle printers, such as Epson FX-80!

Btw, speaking of printers.. My dad had an HP LaserJet Plus once, that thing with the Motorola 68000.
Too bad it broke a few years ago and we didn't realize what we had.
But so is life. Like so often, you don't realize what you have until it's gone. :(

But enough depressions for now, there's also a positive side.
The HP LaserJet 500 series is software conpatible with the early HP LaserJet.
And they still appear on eBay and other market places.
They even have new printer ink cartridges being sold, so that's great.
An HP LaserJet 5xx (PC) or DeskWriter (Mac) looks almost as retro as an original HP LaserJet. ^^

PS: Here's an picture of my dad's older PC in his little temporary office, ca. 1989.
This was a 286 PC with 4MB (!) of RAM, according to his memory.
It had a Hercules card (or clone) and an IBM MDA monitor (or a really good copy).
The keyboard was an IBM Model F. Windows 2.03 must have been on the fixed-disk.

Not sure about 80287 and EMS capabilities, it's too long ago.
Motherboard could have been a modern no-name PC/AT clone, with NEAT-like abilities.
If that's true, then he had EMS available in Windows 2.03.
If not, then he used the extra RAM for a RAM disk, likely. PC-DOS 3.x had a driver for it.

What he also ran on that thing was dBase Fast, an early database/xBase programming environment.
He remembers having used the early Windows version by Bumblebee software, before it went to Computer Associates (CA-dBFast).

He had an early copy of PC-MOS/386, and Minix and Xenix that also ran on a 286 PC, still.
Such things might have used extended memory.

PC-MOS/386 required aspecial interposer card, however, to run fully functional on a 286 system.
It served the role of an MMU (memory managment unit). Not sure if my dad had one, though. I doubt it.
Such specialized stuff was pretty much US-only and hard to get in Europe.

Edit: Oh! And the chassis was one of those flip-models, he remembers! 😃
The type were you could rise the top like a car's bonnet or trunk lid!

Edit: I *think* he had AutoCAD 2.x on that thing, then the more modern but "cheap" AutoSketch 2.
For 2D drawings, it wasn't worse, rather better, though! He could draw schematics for his electronic projects on it.
There were symbols like transistors, resistors and traces on floppy disks..
So maybe he had an 80287 installed, actually!? He didn't in the PC1512, so it was this AT?

Ah, yes! I vaguely remember this one

Ha - Im using it until today. I started around version 4 or 5. Its not what it used to be and every new version (or with every new version of windows) it fels like something else is breaking and everything is barely holding together...

Oh! And the chassis was one of those flip-models

Love these! Especially as a platform for quick testing stuff - no screwing around - It took probably until the G4 Mac before a similar elegant "door" solution arrived at apple. Well you know PC designs - always way ahead of their time....

Hi, quick update. I tried early Windows CAD on both Windows 2.03 and 3.x, on both a PC/XT and PC/AT compatible.

Interestingly, it does run but doesn't work on the PC/XT, despite V20 processor.
The main application starts, but there's no graphics output at all. No grid, no drawn lines.

I ruled out the graphics driver, it probably has something to do with the 80286's trapping capabilities (there's an VM file).

Also interesting, the application supports EMS but only in Windows 2.x.
On Windows 3.x, not even in Real-Mode, it's not available to the application. At least on the XT, my AT has no EMS.

Funnily, on Windows 3.1 in Standard-Mode,
it appears to run fine but the reported conventional memory by the application is like ca. 2800 KB.
It runs out of memory easily, nevertheless. Loading larger drawings crashs the application.

So I think that this application was probably best run on Windows/386 back in the day (on a 386 PC).
Here, it could do any hacky segment trickery and have plenty of EMS supplied by Windows/386 itself.

Second best choice would have been a hot-rod PC/AT with a real EEMS/LIM 4 memory board (AST Rampage 286) and Windows/286 2.11.

Hi. Quick update. Found a site of classic DXF drawings.
http://cd.textfiles.com/amigaenv/DXF/OBJEKTE/

Edit: There's also RenderLib, a 3D shareware library for Windows 3.0.
A copy can be found here: https://archive.org/details/msdos_shareware_fb_3DRENDER
It was being mentioned here, that's why I've found it: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~xdong/GraphicsFTP.html

Okay, got a second version of Windows CAD working properly. It requires Protected-Mode Windows, though.
That means Windows 3.x Standard-Mode/386 Enhanced-Mode.
It won't work on a XT class PC, unless I'll have something like an Inboard 386 installed (CPU accelerator card from the 80s).
On bright side, AutoSketch 3.x for DOS works just fine on my XT. Maybe the Windows version is Real-Mode friendly, too?

Edit: Screenshots added.