First post, by valnar
This question comes up from time to time (including posts from myself well over a year ago), so here it is in a nutshell after playing with all options for years.
I have DOS 6.22/Win3.1 on VirtualPC 2004, VirtualPC 2007 beta, VMWare 5.5.3, and Win3.1 on DOSBox ykhwong build 12.03.2006. All have been optimally installed per the unique VM's capabilities.
VPC and VMWare have boot menus with HIMEM.SYS/EMM386.EXE an UMBPCI.SYS as options.
Here are my impressions of DOS and Windows 3.1:
Virtual PC 2004
The best Windows 3.1 option. Works great and there are S3 and SB16 drivers available which work with it. DOS 6.22 works nice too and many games work okay, although not as many as DOSBox. Seems quite stable. Sound and MIDI work in DOS.
Virtual PC 2007b
Not as good as VPC 2004. It's buggy and I get kernel errors in Windows. I hope MS still has work to do on it. Otherwise, same capabilities as VPC 2004.
VMWare 5.5.2 or 5.5.3
Works fine, although a bit slow since you can only use the VGA driver. DOS requires the "later" Creative Labs SB16 drivers with Mixerset, Diagnose, etc in the boot files. Sound not as good as VPC. No MIDI in DOS. Some DOS extender games like Duke Nukem 3D run faster than in VPC 2004, but most others are better in VPC.
EMM386 and UMBPCI configs both work in VPC and VMWare. Some options work better than others for certain DOS games. Neither support Qualitas 386Max 7.x or Quarterdeck QEMM 8.x. VPC has more upper memory available to squeeze drivers and TSR's. I can get 625K conventional easily in VPC. Both support WFWG 3.11 with TCP/IP support too, although it's a bit buggier in VMWare. I have no problems doing Internet based applications in VPC 2004.
DOSBox 0.65 or better
Windows 3.1 works great after setup. S3 (or Tseng) and SB16 drivers available. CPU doesn't idle in Windows 3.1 but does in DOS mode. Compatibility seems great. DOS games are of course great with no need to worry about DOS config.sys & autoexec.bat files. Sound and MIDI both work great in Windows and DOS.
If I had to rank them *for Windows 3.1*, it would be:
VPC 2004
DOSBox
VMWare 5.5.x
VPC 2007 (for now)
Ranking overall, including DOS and Windows 3.1
DOSBox
VPC 200x
VMWare 5.5.x
If your idea of fun is to tweak DOS memory management (ie. you like playing with config.sys and autoexec.bat more than playing games), you want VPC 2004. I assume there are some sick people out there like myself. š¤£
-Robert
Edit: The latest release candidate of VPC 2007 works much better now with Win3.1!