Nostalgic Sunday - Installing Windows 3.1 in Boxer

Every Sunday i will show you how to emulate classic operating systems from the 90's on Mac OS X.

Today we start with Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 was first released during March 1992.
The year of Windows 3.1's release was successful for Microsoft, who were named the "Most Innovative Company Operating in the U.S." by Forbes Magazine, while Windows became the most widely-used GUI-based operating environment.

Warning this post contains a lot! of images, loading could take a while.

What you need:
Windows 3.1x (get it on technet, buy it, or ask google)
My Driver/Add-on Pack
Boxer (most of this tutorial will work in vanilla DosBox as well)

Installation:
The installation is pretty easy. Start Boxer, choose "Import a new game" and drop a DiscImage or folder with the Windows installation files on the import window.

Installation will begin right away, just do an "Express Setup" (hit enter on every question) and around 2 minutes later you're done.

 Choose "Return to MS-DOS" and click the "Finish Importing" button.

Prepare Drivers and Add-ons:

For the full experience we need to install Graphic,Sound and Joypad drivers now.

Go to you're DOS Games folder, right click the Windows 3.1 Disk and choose "Show Package Contents"

Download my driver and add-on pack, extract it and copy the ADDON folder to the c.harddisk folder you see in the package contents of the Windows Disk.

Driver installation:
Now start the Windows 3.1 Disk.
Boxer will open a command prompt and ask if the "autoexec.bat" should be launched, ignore this for now. Instead enter those commands
cd addon
cd sb16
install

 Choose to do a "Custom Installation" press Y on the question if the driver should be included in "config.sys". And make sure to set the Windows 3.1 path to C:\Windows.

In the next screen make sure to change the Interrupt setting to 7.

The installation took severall minutes (a lot longer then then Windows installation). And after a while it asks if it should replace some files inside the Windows directory.

Choose "Backup" and you will be fine.

After all is done, press Enter to go back to the command prompt and enter those commands:

cd /

cd Windows

setup

Select display, scroll down to "Other. As path to the display driver disk enter "c:/addon/s3" and choose 800x600 16.7m colors (my recommendation you can choose any other resolution as well). 

 Select "Complete Changes" to finish the installation. Setup will now copy some files and ask once again for the path to the driver disk which is still "c:/addon/s3".

You will drop back to the command line, now enter 

win

to start Windows. Make sure to press "Lauch every time" now so a click on your Windows 3.1 Disk brings you right to the Windows desktop. 

Windows 3.1 in all its glory!

Well we have still the Joystick driver so you can do some gaming (where there any good games for windows back then?) and the optional Calmira shell which provides a more modern Windows feeling.

Start the "Control Panel", first we star the Mouse panel and set the tracking speed to the lowest available option to provide a smooth mouse movement. (or you will go mad, i warned you!)

Next head to the, oh you wonder how to close a window? press the [-] icon in the upper left window corner twice. Head over to the Drivers panel press "Add", select "Unlisted or Updated Driver". In the new window press "Browse", navigate to "c:/addon/ibmjoy" and click "OK", "OK", "OK", (lot of clicking back in the days) and finally "One or two 2-Dimensional joysticks".

That's it now you have nearly full functioning Windows 3.1 Installation ready. Nice to play around if you feel nostalgic or even run some software that is not available for modern operating system.

Windows 3.1:

Known Bugs:

Background patterns are not working, sometimes black icons.

Opening the MS-DOS Command Prompt will make problems with Boxer.

Install additional software:Just copy the installation files to a folder inside the c.harddisk of the Windows disk, see "Prepare Drivers and add-ons" above.

Bonus Round: bring a modern feeling to Windows 3.1

Calmira:

Calmira is a free 16-bit shell that lets you manage files, launch applications and control tasks. Free means that everyone can compile his or her own version of Calmira, this is possible because the source code is available for everyone.

It brings Windows 3.1 up to date with some of the advanced user interface enhancements from the Windows world, and for most people, provides welcome relief from the awkwardness of Program Manager.

Open the "File Manager" and navigate to "c:/addon/" and start the "c33setup.exe".

Install the application, navigate to c:/windows and open the "system.ini", replace the line

shell=progman.exe

with

shell=c:/calmira/calmira.exe

Restart Windows and you get a very Windows 9x like desktop, complete with an explorer. 

All3D:

With All3D you can add the 3D look of Windows 9x to the dialogs of Windows 3.1 applications.

To install just copy the files "cl3d.dll ctl3dv2.dll All3d.cpl" to the "c:/windows/system" directory.

Restart Windows, and you find a new control panel item named All3D and all the dialogs windows have a windows 9x styled look.

PatchDrv:

A "quick and dirty" tool to patch the Windows display driver with new standard buttons.

Navigate to "c:/addon/patch" and run the "Patchdrv.exe" a window with a command prompt will apear. Enter 95bmp and press enter, confirm the question with "y" and you are done.

Windows will now almost look and feel like Windows 9x.

only one step is left.

CalPaint:
Navigate to "c:/addon" and run the "cptninst.exe", ignore the error before the installation finishes and restart Windows. Go to "c:/programm/calpaint" and run "Calpaint.exe". Select the "Themes" tab and select the "Windows 95 standard" theme and press "Apply theme".

If you followed me till here, you now have not only a true classic operating system you have also the max pimped out version of it as well :)

Hope you enjoyed this, next weeks nostalgic sunday: AmigaOS.