Is there a Windows 3.1 emulator??

S

Stonejaw

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 15, 2003
Messages
95
I was wondering if there are any old windows 3.1 emulators out there? Becuase I am running Windows XP Pro and I am trying to install games that about 7-10 years old, ie Commander Keen lol and they wont run, every time is says video device failed to intiallize for full screen because they are dos based games. And I tryed using the compadability tab under properties for the program but I could only set to Windows 95 and that did not work. Anyone out there know a solution?

Thanks
 
Those games didn't run under Windows, they ran under DOS. They didn't employ drivers that abstracted the hardware in any way, they simply talked directly to the video card & assumed it was a VGA card. Running them under 3.1 was probably more of a hassle than running them under XP ever could be.
 
Windows 3.x isn't even an OS, it's just a desktop environment built atop DOS, akin to KDE or Gnome above some form of UNIX. Most programs talked to the hardware directly, as had been said. VESA and its standardization of the interface was considered almost a revolution back then. If you still want to dick around with these games, try DOSbox.
 
I've had good luck running my dos games under Connectix now Microsoft Virtual PC, and some luck running under Vmware as well. Vmware I have a lot harder time getting sound support to work with dos.
 
Originally posted by Ranma_Sao
I've had good luck running my dos games under Connectix now Microsoft Virtual PC, and some luck running under Vmware as well. Vmware I have a lot harder time getting sound support to work with dos.
Click to expand...

You guys are missing the easy answer:

DOS boot disk :D

(assuming you have a FAT partition and not NTFS)

I have a custom W98SE boot disk with a few alternate configs for various games.

I should warn you, a lot of old games (older than 94 or so) play too fast on new hardware. Wolfenstein 3D and X-COM, for example...I got X-COM running on my 2.4 Ghz system, only to find out I couldn't even rotate the globe...it spun so fast it was impossible to do anything. Wolf3D was worse...the entire game moved so quickly that I died before I could even see something happen.
 
Shit, you could even make a dos boot disk with the game on it. Or go dig an old packard bell out of the trash(I've found many more PBs than anything else). I've got one set up with a menu in the autoexec so i can select commander keen or dave or whatever. Crappy thing about that is you have switch cables.
 
There are still a lot of games on CD or multiple floppies that make a boot floppy inadequate. Still more want access to commands that aren't on a boot floppy or expect older versions of DOS. An emulator makes it much easier, especially when running it in conjunction with a CPU-killer to eat cycles so it won't run in fast forward.
 
Unfortunatly, it is a pain to get sound working in dos with modern sound cards... :( That was why I tried vmware, which almost never worked, and then bought a PoS machine from PC Recycle, with a SB16 to play games on, but then tried Virtual PC, and it worked great for Dos Sound, on windows boxes.
 
Originally posted by Snugglebear
There are still a lot of games on CD or multiple floppies that make a boot floppy inadequate. Still more want access to commands that aren't on a boot floppy or expect older versions of DOS. An emulator makes it much easier, especially when running it in conjunction with a CPU-killer to eat cycles so it won't run in fast forward.
Click to expand...
heh, I guess I never got into those high-end games. :D
 
You should look into DosBox http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

Its a DOS emulator that emulates much of the low level stuff old DOS apps look for. It works MUCH better for running games and advanced DOS programs than XP's built in DOS emulator does.

It supports CGA/EGA video modes and emulates SB/SBPro/SB16 sound so most games work with it.
 
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