Kawl bananas.

I know that it is a proof of concept, but one thing that I didn't see anywhere in those links is whether permanent swap file and/or 32-bit file access works when using Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS. IIRC, the I/O performance will be slower if either of them are not supported when running Windows 3.x, especially on period-correct systems. Perhaps a CF card there could help there a bit, though.

In addition to Jeremy's patches, for Windows 3.x to work in 386 Enhanced mode under FreeDOS, you'll have to use Microsoft's EMM386 with FreeDOS, since JEMM doesn't currently support GEMMIS.

Unfortunately, the JEMM maintainer isn't keen on implementing this any time soon. It would be nice if somebody with the necessary skills would be willing to step up to the plate for this.

But really it is only the effort and fun of it. Because Windows 3.1 goes with MS-DOS 6.22 like a horse and carriage. And if you really need FAT32 then use that patched MS-DOS 7.1. But nice to see, people are trying and succeeding something in the DOS world.

So, after 20+ years of development, FreeDOS was still unable to run one of the most common DOS programs... and actually, it still can't run it.
Considering how long it's taking to clone such a simple OS as DOS... there's no hope for ReactOS, ever.
Sad, but true.

Windows isn't needed to enjoy FreeDOS and its high compatibility with DOS programs...

This looks very promising. But it seems the video was taken using a relatively period-correct VM configuration for disks, RAM size and such, and is a FAT16/186 kernel.

... so I can't tell if this will work on a relatively modern system with FAT32/386 kernel and/or with more RAM than Win3.x allows (the RAM can be worked around by masking excessive RAM with tools like HIMEMX or XMSDSK, though).

But still, this answered why all my previous attempts to get Win3.x working with FreeDOS 1.2/1.3rc ended in failure. It was never supported to begin with, until now.

BTW:
What other software was affected by the lack of those INT 2F calls?
What other software is affected by the lack of GEMMIS support?

Yep, these are nice pet projects, that really never go past alpha/beta stage. Mainstream computer operating systems moves on Windows 11, 12 ,13..., MacOS "Wolverine" "Tasmanian Devil" (oh.... ok just googled, they now use mountains, really do not care for that TOY) or something like that, and millions of millions Linux/FreeBSD distributions.(That's why I still have never moved to Linux, because there is not a definitive best distribution for average Joe, well maybe Ubuntu, because it is the only one that works with our countrys ID card system) And retro enthusiasts all have their copies of DOS, Widows, OS/2 and what not..... Well it is nice to see, that programmers are busy doing something in the retro realm, but that's it 😀

Grzyb wrote on 2021-08-06, 05:57:

So, after 20+ years of development, FreeDOS was still unable to run one of the most common DOS programs... and actually, it still can't run it.
Considering how long it's taking to clone such a simple OS as DOS... there's no hope for ReactOS, ever.
Sad, but true.

I found most problems with FreeDOS could be solved by replacing common DOS drivers, like memory managers, CD drivers, etc....

However there are some games that fail completely, due to (my suspicion, not confirmed) kernel incompatibility. I suspect some INT functions might not be implemented properly. Some DSI games, Grand Prix Circuit, The Cycles or even Test Drive 2 fail to run.

There's a version of Alone in Dark 2, not sure if Floppy or CD that fails too. And this is an old issue. I found that someone reported Alone in the Dark back in 2006 or so, and its still the same.

As much as i would love to switch to FreeDOS, i just can't.

A bump on this. Guess the latest kernel CI build doesn't really have Win3X stuffs built-in (WIN31SUPPORT not defined by default).

No wonder I kept failing to get Windows running with the CI builds (aside from finding ways to limit available memory).

Guess I'll have to figure out how to build a kernel myself with WIN31SUPPORT defined...

Sad to hear. :( It makes me feel the FreeDOS dude has an antipathy against Windows of some sort.

Edit: Or that JEMM dude, not sure.

Unfortunately something's still missing... with -DWIN31SUPPORT I could not compile even though with a correct build environment.

The build process simply complains about those newly added stuffs being "undefined references". 🙁

I've filed an issue regarding the question. Don't know if this requires a Windows machine, as this flag is mentioned only in build.bat but not in makefiles for other platforms...

By the way, there are two FreeDOS mailing lists, one for users and one for developers. I've found the community in both to be quite approachable and helpful.

I believe there was recently a discussion on one of them about Windows 3.x support, including said patches.

I think the best chance at getting Windows 3.x support mainlined in FreeDOS would be to engage with the community and the maintainers there.

See https://www.freedos.org/lists/

Never mind. I managed to get the OpenWatcom variant to build. GCC variant currently doesn't compile.

Need to set -DWIN31SUPPORT for both ALLCFLAGS and NASMFLAGS. For some reasons the latter is not documented in config.mak but in somewhere else.