Printing from Windows 3.X? (Ykhwong's build) \ VOGONS

Printing from Windows 3.X? (Ykhwong's build)

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First post, by Neville

Posted on 2015-09-26, 20:23

Neville Offline

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So I have this old game manual in electronic format which I'd love to convert to PDF or Word.

Problem is, it only opens with an obsolete program, Microsoft Multimedia Viewer 2.0, which is included, and won't work on 64 bit Windows.

I'm told that Ykhwong's build of DOSBox supports printing, but I don't know if printing from Windows 3.X is supported. Ideally, I'd like to "print" the manual directly to PDF or in some image format that allows me to build a PDF with online tools afterwards.

Can anybody walk me through the process? I imagine the first thing will be to install some printer driver on Windows 3.X, but I can't think of any further steps now.

Reply 1 of 5, by collector

Posted on 2015-09-26, 21:24

collector Offline

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Why not just taking screen captures and converting them to PDF?

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Reply 2 of 5, by Zup

Posted on 2015-09-26, 21:32

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There were tools (HLP2RTF) that allowed converting that files to RTF.

Also... why don't install a PS printer connected to FILE:, print the document and then convert (or print) your PS file?

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Reply 3 of 5, by Neville

Posted on 2015-09-26, 22:41

Neville Offline

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collector wrote:
Why not just taking screen captures and converting them to PDF?

It seems very time consuming.

Zup wrote:
There were tools (HLP2RTF) that allowed converting that files to RTF.

Also... why don't install a PS printer connected to FILE:, print the document and then convert (or print) your PS file?

Never heard of that... I'm going to try it ASAP.

In case it doesn't work, I'm thinking that using DOSBox is maybe a bad choice... I have VirtualBox and a "machine" that runs XP. Maybe I should try to open the file there and using a "Print to PDF" application. Will see.

Reply 4 of 5, by collector

Posted on 2015-09-27, 00:54

collector Offline

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I just tried this on an MVB I had to convert it to RTF and it seems to work OK.

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Reply 5 of 5, by Neville

Posted on 2015-09-27, 12:32

Neville Offline

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I finally have it converted to PDF. It wasn't as dififcult as I expected, but a bit time consuming.

I first tried using hlp2rtf. It worked straight away, but it didn't export any of the pictures.

Secondly, I tried running Windows XP and a "Printer to PDF" program under VirtualBox. This proved the best option, although the installation of doPDF, the program I chose, seemed to take ages.

Once installed, the process itself was very easy. My only complain is that I had to "print" topic by topic, and that took me a while. I finally ended up with 61 (!) PDF files, which I could merge in a few seconds using a free online tool.

A big thank you goes to the phorum members who tried to help with this issue.

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