A while back I purchased a zenith 486 system on ebay like this one:

http://mastodonpc.tripod.com/personal/6937.html

I installed windows 3.1 (and a cdrom drive) and like it a lot.
I say, if you can find a copy for a good price, go for it!

My upcoming Pentium build will run Windows 3.1. I already have Win98 covered on a PIII build. I should use a 486, but maybe next time. Any DOS retro machine you build should handle Win31.

You can also run Windows 3.1 nicely under DOSBox and Microsoft VirtualPC if its just a matter of a couple Windows 3.1 games.

Virtual PC and VMware Workstation DOS memory management

Ah! Windows 3.x!!

I always make sure I have a copy of Windows 3.1 or 3.11 installed in any of my DOS machines. It still has the classic "feel" to it.
I still play Sierra's Adventure games with the Windows executables. Like KQ5, KQ6, Gabriel Knight 1, QFG4, etc.

The classic control panel, midi mapper, etc., and not to mention the colour schemes...with classic win3.x drivers!! Sure brings and maintains good nostalgic memories. Though it was bugged with many bugs, BSOD, Kernel Errors, etc., it's still a piece of retro, vintage classic sit-on-top-of DOS-OS along with your DOS 5,6.2,6.22.

OK, I'm convinced!! 😁
I gotta get myself a win 3.x box!! 🤣

I cut my computing teeth on a mouseless IBM PS/2 running 3.x.

my 386sx-20 laptop had win 3.1 on it but the hdd died not goung to be easy to find a 62mb 2.5 hdd

hey why not run win 3.1 from a ram drive - imagine the speed

ps: some games need winG (sort of precursor to directx) dont know how easy it is to find

I put WFW 3.11 on a P3-1000 once. If only modern OSs booted like that. 😀

That OS really is a wreck though. It can be brought down in about a bazillion ways and has awful performance for apps that do fancy gfx. Well, unless you run it on some crazy hardware, which isn't all that hard to do these days!

WfW 3.11 is running on my 486 - mostly used for quick access to my fileserver. It would also be possible to set up the network connections under plain DOS, but Win 3.11 is also nice to have for some games and apps which would be a pain to use under a more modern OS.

On most 486 machines Windows 9x is rather slow and often causes trouble because of crappy drivers for old hardware (not to mention the problems you can run into with early PnP hardware).

Davros wrote:

hey why not run win 3.1 from a ram drive - imagine the speed

Hehe, I had something like that a long time ago when my fastest computer was a 386sx/25 with 10 MB RAM 😉
All you need to do is move some temporary directories to a RAM drive and a few adjustments to the pagefile settings.

Awesome info from everyone, as usual on Vogons! 😀

Please may I ask an additional question: I'm thinking of running WFW 3.11 on a "pentium 2 celeron" based machine. That's a slot 1 CPU, but not a PII CPU as such, but instead a celeron @ 266mhz. (The slowest CPU I can possibly find for my slot 1 mobo in fact!)

I am guessing this would run WFW 3.11 very fast indeed...but would it be too fast?

Vielen Dank meine retro Freunde! 😀

Running wfw 3.11 on my EISA 486 system.
Using cuteftp to transfer stuff from my Mac, tried to do some webrowsing with IE 5.01 but it was too slow to be usable 😜

retro games 100 wrote:

I am guessing this would run WFW 3.11 very fast indeed...but would it be too fast?

I've used WFW and W3.1 in my Pentium III 450MHz Slot 1-based system. Works like charm. I was using DFI P2XBL motherboard. ( I still have the system, but using my P1 system currently.)

You won't feel it's too fast. Instead, it'll be fast and snappy to work with. Just make sure you're using a PCI based (or other) Win3.1x supported video card with the respective drivers for optimum performance.

FYI, there exist a "patched" generic SVGA driver for Win3.1x, whereby, you can use ANY video card to access the 640x480x256-colour mode. It still exist and I have a copy of it too. I will post it in Milliways if time permits today.

😎 😀

No question if you want to run Windows 3.1 that you should run a video card with specific Win3.1 drivers. For PCI, I recommend the Matrox G400, S3 Trio64+ or S3 Virge. The Matrox 2D quality is the best.

Matrox cards are very nice! 😁 I really like my g2+, and also my g450 (with dvi), although for some strange reason I have to use a dvi to vga adapter and therefore use a vga cable, otherwise the image is "letterbox squashed" on the screen. Most odd. Otherwise, great cards, really like 'em. 😀

Riva128 also has Win3.x drivers. Heck so does NV1 if u wanna see the one very real NVIDIA disaster.