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The Internet Archive is taking us back to 1992 with the release of over 1,000 programs and games that run on what was arguably the first truly mass-market color graphical interface: Windows 3.1. It's hard to imagine the enormous leap that was Windows 3.1 now that even our smart phones run an operating system that is an order …

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  1. Martin Summers Silver badge

    Ah Windows 3.1 and 3.11 for workgroups. I spent a lot of time opening and closing windows, poking round the file system, breaking it, doing generally not a lot with it other than learning how to fix it, oh and not to mention playing with command.com and config.ini getting access to the higher memory area to run those DOS games that needed that little bit more RAM than I had. Finding more disk space to fit the games in the first place. Those really were the days. I was adamant I wasn't going to upgrade to Windows 95 because it looked rubbish and could never be as good. Then again I said that about Star Trek the Next Generation. Thanks for listening, I'm 34 but feel now as if I should be getting my slippers and having my tablets.

    19 2 Reply
    1. chivo243 Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      getting older?

      Ha! I was 34 when I committed my life to IT... last century. I''m having my raisins and fruit before bed... or am I?

      5 0 Reply
      1. Martin Summers Silver badge
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        Re: getting older?

        I would have both, got to keep regular and all that.

        4 0 Reply
    2. Steven Raith
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      Martin, if you used doublespace to compress your HDD, then forgot to decompress it before attempting to install OS/2 then you are officially a clone of me.

      I had an Autoexec that threw up a menu asking me if I wanted to play Doom, Doom 2, Heretic or launch Windows, I was so keen to make things easier for me and save all that lovely 4MB of RAM for gaming on my 486 SX 25mhz....

      Steven "don't install OS/2 on a compressed HDD" R

      (because I did something badly wrong and it humped the drive, and at 12 years old and being the only 'computer guy' in the villiage, it killed the computer, and my use of them personally, for about a decade)

      14 0 Reply
      1. Martin Summers Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Ah yes doublespace, that was a must. And autoexec.bat I had 2mb of RAM (I think) and a 386SX with 20MB HDD.

        I feel now like how a car mechanic must feel these days.

        8 0 Reply
        1. Kumar2012
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          Ha 386DX33 with 52MB HDD, take that! you peasant with your SX :P

          0 0 Reply
          1. Delbert
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            Happy

            I see your DX and raise you .....

            Ah those were heady days my first homebrew was a 386SX33 perfect until a romance with fractals incited me into a threesome with coprocessor. My perversions knew no bounds and a soon I replaced the board and partnership with a 486 DX2 80 from that house of ill repute AMD whip me baby! :-p

            0 0 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        @Steven Raith

        Did you push the turbo button?

        I remember that, jeez, setting the computer to boot into a game rather than load windows, that's back to the just after the dos days if I remember. I'm only 40 ffs... though to be fair I did have lots of fun with dos and win 3.11 in college.

        At school however things were interesting.

        It was a computer lesson and we all had BBC model B (inner city ghetto school of all places), the teacher tasked us with completing "Granny's Garden" before the lesson finished and we would win a mars bar (shocking, I know), if I remember right and this may not be correct but I dropped into basic and opened the loader file from the disk and jumped right to the end (can't remember if I did a peek or a poke, it's that long ago) but needless to say everyone completed the game and the teacher said words that these day should never be uttered to schoolchildren...

        8 0 Reply
        1. el_oscuro
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          Re: @Steven Raith

          Definitely poke. Peek reads memory while poke writes it. No need to muck around with NOP slides or malformed packets headers or shit like that. Just inject your code wherever you want. Sweet!

          3 1 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @Steven Raith

            Nah, nah, nah. BBC Basic didn't have either peek or poke. You used the ? indirection operator for byte-sized direct memory access. As it says here in the BBC Micro User Guide I'm reading from (it was on the bookshelf nearby; sad, I know. Ye gods! The dust!) in chapter 39 "Indirection Operators":

            Those familiar with other dialects of BASIC will realise that

            Y=PEEK(X) becomes Y=?X and

            POKE X,Y becomes ?X=Y

            As for injecting code wherever you liked: well, yeah. 6502 CPUs didn't have memory protection, and BBC Basic came with a built-in assembler, and...

            6 0 Reply
            1. Andrew Richards
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              Re: @Steven Raith

              ... and don't forget ! to poke a 32 bit word.

              There was some basic protection on tape games. It was possible to set a byte so code could only be executed and not just loaded.

              However, it was also fairly simple to hook a few bytes of code into the screen refresh event to reset the byte in question 25(?) times a second to circumvent this. All to allow tape games to be moved to disks, which often involved another step to work-around the loss of a couple of k to the disc driver code. Load at &1900 (or &1100), copy down to &E00 and then run. Those were the days. Will stop now as I've an onion to tie to my belt.

              0 0 Reply
      3. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        I had a 486 SX as well. No Math Co-processor. I think mine ran at 33 MHz, but I bought with only 2 Meg of RAM just to keep the cost down. Sometime later I upgraded to 4 Meg of RAM. Oh, the luxury :)

        1 0 Reply
        1. b3stbuddy
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          I think DX2 was with the coprocessor

          I had the same I think with 2MB ram. I had wanted to run Doom but it did not run well. I was frustrated because a friend a few years back had his running on a 386 just fine but mine lagged to the point of being unplayable.

          1 0 Reply
          1. Steven Raith
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            Re: I think DX2 was with the coprocessor

            It was indeed the DX that had the coprocessor, I think DX2 had some extras, and DX4 had a specific maths/3D coprocessor that allowed Quake to run!

            As for the Turbot button, no, I had no such button for adding extra fish, but I did have an option to run the bus speed at 25 rather than 20mhz or similar; honestly, my memory fails me.

            A mate had a 486 DX2 66mhz with a turbot button, but the extra fish didn't make any real difference. That computer was where I learned how IRQs worked;

            We wanted to play Duke Nukem 3D (he had 8mb of RAM so launching it from Windows was feasible). We kept getting dodgy staccato sound. His dad was going to call the local computer engineer, back when that was a job worth having. I pulled the side off, and after some noodling, discovered that the parallel port and printer were using IRQ 7, as was the sound card. Changed a clearly marked jumped on the (genuine!) Sound Blaster sound card to make it run on IRQ5, and bosh, Duke was telling us he'd rip our heads off and shit down our neck without any odd static crackles.

            It was at that point that I realised that (to my mind at least) computers weren't that bloody difficult, which accidentally became a career choice seven years later...

            Basically, I blame Apogee for getting me into Linux. <3

            Steven "Blow it our your ass" R

            edit: how did my tale of autoexec.bats etc get that many upvotes? You all need help, you lovely loons, you.

            3 0 Reply
            1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
              Reply Icon

              Re: I think DX2 was with the coprocessor

              "It was indeed the DX that had the coprocessor"

              Yes, it had 80387-derivated floating point in it. SX didn't. SX was supposedly upgradeable, but Overdrive co-processors sold for that were essentially full DX processors. With even higher pricetag than DX.

              "I think DX2 had some extras, and DX4 had a specific maths/3D coprocessor that allowed Quake to run!"

              No. DX2 had its internal clock doubled, DX4 tripled. DX2/66 meant front side bus at 33 MHz and internal clock at 66.

              For DX4, voltage had to be reduced to 3.3 volts in order to reach 99/100 MHz. Haven't heard of any further bits in DX4. Quake could launch on a normal 486DX. But minimum requirements demanded a Pentium. So it was down to horsepower, or lack of it.

              1 0 Reply
              1. Steven Raith
                Reply Icon

                Re: I think DX2 was with the coprocessor

                Ah yes, that all makes more sense - I've not thought about 486 tech classes for over fifteen years, so excuse my brainfarts.

                Steven R

                1 0 Reply
    3. BillG
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Fiddling around with my Windows 3.11 desktop was like training wheels for my career with computers.

      But before Windows - before the Mac - there was: The Amiga! It just worked and had amazing graphics for the time. It failed because of poor marketing.

      25 0 Reply
      1. Martin Summers Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        An Amiga, I wish. I had a second hand Amstrad CPC 464 but it did have a colour screen don't you know. I blame that for putting me off programming, sodding syntax errors.

        2 0 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        @BillG: 'before Windows - before the Mac - there was: The Amiga! It just worked and had amazing graphics for the time. It failed because of poor marketing.'

        NO, NO, NO - there was no graphical computing before Microsoft appeared on the land: The Amiga 500 promo video (1987)

        6 0 Reply
        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          "NO, NO, NO - there was no graphical computing before Microsoft appeared on the land: The Amiga 500 promo video (1987)"

          Yeah, I was thinking similarly. No offence to the author but that story came across with all the fanboisism and "we invented first revisionist history" that I thought only an Apple marketieer could come up with.

          Windows 3.0/3.1 wasn't really first at anything. It was just well marketed and...well...Microsoft.

          13 1 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            3.11

            Well, it wasn't first in any time sense, but for microsoft, it was the first version that sort of worked enough to be useful

            4 1 Reply
            1. Danny 14
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              Re: 3.11

              TOS was streaks ahead of windows. And if you couldnt tweak conventional memory you were screwed. Finding those 1k mouse drivers and 2k network drivers to save just that bit more ( i remember having an app that needed 635k an almost impossible task if you wanted your ipx network and a mouse)

              7 0 Reply
        2. druck Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          There was also RISC OS 2.0 in 1989 which never mind Win3.11, it beat Windows 95 in to a cocked hat.

          4 0 Reply
      3. RyokuMas
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        Trollface

        And before the Amiga...

        ... was the Atari ST

        5 1 Reply
        1. only_mortal
          Reply Icon

          Re: And before the Amiga...

          ... was Geos on the C64.

          ... was MacOS.

          I did like GEM on the Atari. Way better than the DOS version. UI and APIs were easier to develop with than what came with the Amiga.

          Then again, first thing you did on the Amiga was kick Workbench out and get some copper effects going to some SoundTracker music right?

          I always thought Amiga Workbench was dreadful.

          1 0 Reply
        2. tin 2
          Reply Icon

          Re: And before the Amiga...

          Except that it wasn't because Atari tried to buy (or rather *take*) the Amiga and developed the ST in response when they failed.

          although.. OPs icon acknowledged :)

          0 0 Reply
      4. tin 2
        Reply Icon

        Too right! "It's hard to imagine the enormous leap that was Windows 3.1" yeah I do remember being quite incredulous at how much of a step BACKWARDS it was.

        0 0 Reply
      5. Fizzle
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        No it didn't

        The Amiga failed because in order to program it, one had to keep peeking and then poking it.

        It died full of the equivalent of air holes

        0 1 Reply
    4. Wade Burchette
      Reply Icon

      I remember those days. I worked hard to free up an IRQ for my SoundBlaster all the while wishing I had a Borland MIDI card. Then I had to remember which DMA address I used. All this just so I could play Little Big Adventure and the sequel Twinsen's Odyssey.

      6 0 Reply
    5. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

      Memories, a Digital DEC 486 sx 33mhz, 4MB RAM.

      Windows for workgroups 3.11. Ran standalone, though poking through the network apps was interesting, they looked for mailboxes that I didn't have. Schedule+ was a nice calendar app though.

      Later upgraded to 12MB RAM, sound card and CD ROM. Encarta 95 helped with homework, and gave something of a preview of the 9x Windows shell.

      Then, the 170MB HDD was Drivespaced to a massive 300MB, in order to install Windows 95. It took about 10 minutes to boot up.

      2 0 Reply
    6. Ian 55
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      The one that showed us what MS are really like

      Many programs running on Win 3.0 suffered from numerous UAEs, 'unrecoverable application errors', otherwise known as 'the buggy pile of crap has fallen over and lost all your unsaved data'.

      For the launch of Win 3.1 Microsoft swore that there would be no more UAEs.

      Indeed there weren't any - they renamed them to GPFs, 'general protection faults', otherwise known as 'the buggy pile of crap has fallen over and you have almost certainly lost all your unsaved data'.

      It was also the one that had the heavily obfuscated code to detect if you were running it on top of DR-DOS and to lie about there being potential problems if so.

      An important system at Orly airport is still running it...

      2 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder how long it will be before it starts nagging you to install windows 10?

    I remember those 6 floppies of the future, I've still got the processor from the machine in a box in my loft waiting for it to become a collector item along with a massive 40mb hard drive (double the size of a current 3.5 drive) and some memory (more than 640kb though that ought to be enough), yes, I'm old...

    Edit: Oh dear just had a look at it online and I remember most of them and the screeching of the modem connecting to BBS's (yes I did learn how to turn it off , came in useful for later late night years) to download the ones I couldn't get at "computer club" (aka "Pirate Club") Happy days.

    10 1 Reply
    1. Martin Summers Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      6 floppy disks? How about Winsock and Internet Explorer, I swear that was about 15 disks or more.

      4 0 Reply
      1. el_oscuro
        Reply Icon

        Well apparently, you can get Windows 10 on floppy. It just requires 2079 disks:

        https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/08/28/windows_10_floppy_disk.jpg?x=648&y=348&crop=1

        3 0 Reply
        1. Danny 14
          Reply Icon

          Plus you needed netware for your network logon scripts.

          0 1 Reply
    2. wolfetone Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      From memory Windows 3.1 and 3.11 don't update. So really this is the last bastion of protection from the evil claws of Windows 10.

      Although I'd plumb for Windows 3.11, it has a TCP/IP stack. 3.1 didn't.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
        Reply Icon

        TCP/IP was on a separate floppy. Add-on for Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Non-workgroup edition of Win 3.11 did exist, and I have floppies somewhere, but it was quite rare.

        3.2 was released only in China.

        3 0 Reply
        1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
          Reply Icon

          Oh, there's an article about that. Who'd have thought it.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.2

          "Windows 3.11 was released on November 8, 1993. It did not add any feature improvements over Windows 3.1; it only corrected problems."

          "Windows for Workgroups 3.1 (originally codenamed Winball and later Sparta), released in October 1992,[14] is an extended version of Windows 3.1 that features native networking support. It comes with SMB file sharing support via NetBIOS-based NBF and/or IPX network transport protocols"

          "Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (originally codenamed Snowball) was released on August 11, 1993,[15] and shipped in November 1993."

          "A Winsock package was required to support TCP/IP networking in Windows 3.x. Usually third-party packages were used, but in August 1994, Microsoft released an add-on package (codenamed Wolverine) that provided TCP/IP support in Windows for Workgroups 3.11."

          1 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What was that game called with the gorilla throwing bananas over skyscrapers? It was in written in some sort of BASIC (QBASIC?)

    8 1 Reply
    1. stucs201
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      I think it was just called 'gorilla'.

      0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)

      2 0 Reply
    3. Robin
      Reply Icon

      gorillas.bas!

      That game was great for allowing me to further develop my early programming skills that I'd learned on the BBC B.

      How does it work?

      How can I make the bananas go faster? Explode more?

      How can I change the size of the buildings?

      How does the intro music work?

      Tinkering, inevitably breaking everything, fixing my own bugs, improving the program (in my 14-year old mind). All great skills to learn. Thanks gorillas!

      3 0 Reply
  4. Klatch

    Nostalgic olde Fart

    Ah yes, the good olde days of the i486DX2 66MHz with 4mbytes of RAM, a cirrus logic 1mbyte PCI Graphics Card and Creative Labs AWE ISA soundcard...the era of indie and emergance of brit pop, great days!

    Pretty sure MEMaker was a must to run some DOS games like Prince of Persia

    6 0 Reply
    1. Adam 1
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      Re: Nostalgic olde Fart

      486 would run the original prince of Persia without blinking. I do remember having the boot disk on the 386DX to play either Doom or Simcity 2000.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Danny 14
        Reply Icon

        Re: Nostalgic olde Fart

        1Mb? Luxury! I still have a working ISA tseng labs 256k vga card in the scrap box, i use it to scare students occasionally (it runs dos 6 and can still boot lotus 123 from cold faster than W7 with an SSD opening excel). It sits alongside such beauties as a winchester drive and a os2 warp.

        4 0 Reply
        1. AceRimmer1980
          Reply Icon
          Pint

          Re: Luxury

          Ooh, we used to dream of a 256k video card. My first PC was an Atari PC3 (possibly the only XT-class machine with a 102 key layout) with CGA/EGA. Still compatible enough so I could do raster bars by sending values to port 3D8 timed with the hsync, and play samples through the motherboard speaker with timed interrupts.

          Had a C64 as well, does it show? ;-)

          0 0 Reply
  5. Mage Silver badge

    Dosbox

    Runs Win 3.1 even if there is no x86

    Loads win 3.1 in about 4s from network share.

    We had some 386 PC for it back then. later upgraded to WFWG 3.11 with Win32s, VFW, 32 bit disk driver and MS 32 bit TCP/IP. Win 95 was basically that all rolled up with a new shell, First version Win95 had no USB and didn't have TCP/IP by default. The minimum level RAM Win 3.x and Win 9x specs were not enough to run Word (Office 4.3 later Office 95) and TCP/IP and a browser.

    I copied the dying install disks of Word 2.0a to a "gold" style archive CD as i had lots of licences. I must try it on WINE.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dosbox

      Of course Dosbox runs win 3.1 .... win 3.1 is just an "operating environment" that runs on top of DOS so it wasn't anything new ... unlike that far superior and proper 32-bit operating system OS/2 2.0!

      3 0 Reply
      1. Roq D. Kasba
        Reply Icon

        Re: Dosbox

        Not of course! My 286 laptop would not run windows on its 20MB hard drive and 1MB RAM. I think I upgraded the DOS FROM V4.0 TO V6 (6.2 rings bells), but it was never going to handle even Win 3.1

        0 1 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Dosbox

          "My 286 laptop would not run windows on its 20MB hard drive and 1MB RAM."

          IIRC Windows 2 functionality was limited by the architecture of the 286 cpu. I think Intel had hit a limit on the number of gates they could put on the die.. It didn't have proper virtual addressing - so only the current window would show real-time updates.

          The 386 cpu did support proper virtual addressing - and W3.1 took advantage of that with an improved architecture.

          1 0 Reply

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