Trip down memory lane - emulator of DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 will run in your browser with no setup required

Archive.org ^ | April 6, 1992 | Microsoft

[fireman15]

This is a link to an archive.org page with a working emulator based on DosBox that will run in your browser just by clicking on the "Emulate it!" picture at the top of the page. It takes a minute or two to load everything up and then the screen goes blank for a little bit when you make your selection. Hit the speaker icon and then the full screen button and you will be transported back to computing in 1992. This has worked in every browser that I have tried it in including Brave, Chrome, and Edge, but your mileage may vary.Hit the escape key to get out of full screen mode.

https://archive.org/details/windows-3.11-sgvm

[Red Badger]

Not really. I had no sound card......................

[Rural_Michigan]

I’ve missed windows 3.1 since 1996

[T.B. Yoits]

We still have two 3.1 computers at work.

They must be off network. As you know, but others may not, anything on the network older than Windows 10 (except Merrill Lynch's Windows XP contract) won't get the latest malware and antivirus updates. The networking team can't centrally manage them well at all.

With an emulator, users can have 64 bit operating systems but still run the older 8 and 16 bit applications.

[TomGuy]

I am not sure about a Windows 98 emulator, but when I got this Win10 desktop a few weeks ago, I installed Virtual Box specifically to run Windows 7 for printing and scanning. I also installed an XP virtual machine to run an old DOS-based Chinese Checkers program.

[Magnum44]

LOL

[Red Badger]

They are not on a network, they run specific, old, software for testing production items.................

[Red Badger]

I wish I could.....................

[T.B. Yoits]

They are not on a network, they run specific, old, software for testing production items.

Certainly. If and when the machines fail, the IT folks will find it much easier to install a Windows 11 machine with an emulator instead of sourcing an old Windows 3.1 machine.

[Red Badger]

the IT folks..................... IOW, ME......................

[Tell It Right]

True that. And at the time I was ahead of the game writing code in C+ (pre C++, showing my age here), dBase, Pascal, and some hobby programming in QBasic. I’m spoiled today with modern IDE’s doing color syntaxing, code filling, and dragging DB objects onto a form to connect to a database. That’s not even getting into DOS not letting you do multi-threading like I do with my C# app today in Windows to download market data with one thread while it calculates SMA’s and EMA’s in another thread and generate a report with another thread, all maintained in a SQL Server database running on the same laptop. If we were still in the DOS days I’d have to buy market data from Bloomberg (how he made his billions) instead of doing it all on my own on one laptop.

[Boogieman]

Have you tried Compatibility Mode in Win 7/8/10? Usually works for most Win 98 and Win XP programs.

[Boogieman]

“The networking team can’t centrally manage them well at all.”

Some of us consider that a feature, not a bug :P

[fireman15]

Any recommendations ?

You can use pre-configured Win98 VMWare images for VirtualBox available at WinWorld. Or you can setup DOSBox with Windows 98. Or you can use PCem which is now discontinued but still available... They all work. There are others available as well. I am not really an emulator connoisseur, I like VirtualBox but it doesn't play nice with Hyper-v which I am currently using to play with Windows 11.

[DarthFuzball]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those old I focom text adventure games.

We should revive the game style with thongs like Bolshevik Berny in the Land of the Limousine Liberals.

[DarthFuzball]

Things... Not thongs.

[OneVike]

I remember my boss giving me a computer to learn how to use so I could put his inventory on it.

I was using one of the first versions of Windows Excell for the program.

I remember him telling me, “This computer has 900 mb’s of hard drive space, and that I should never need more than that.”

Now you can’t run anything of you don’t have more than 100 gygabytes on your pc

[TangoLimaSierra]

edlin

[Revel]

I tried to use dosbox to run old pc games that used to run of multiple CD’s. The directions were too complicated to figure out. For instance Gabriel knight the beast within. I wish you could just tell dosbox you drive letters and it would automatically set everything up for you. But dosbox is very manual- requiring multiple complex steps and learning the dosbox programing methods.

[fireman15]

You would be better off using VirtualBox for that type of challenge. The only problem that I currently have with it is sort of a non issue... you have to disable Hyper-v to use VirtualBox which I am currently using to test Windows 11. I put a shortcut on my desktop to do this easily but it is still a bit of a clunky solution. Here is the link to the VirtualBox downloads page.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

[fireman15]

Here is a link with step by step instructions to get a Windows 98 2nd edition image running in VMWare Player, which may be your best option.

https://dans-things.com/index.php/2019/08/22/how-to-install-windows-98-second-edition-using-vmware-player/