Windows 3.1

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 12:45 pm

3.1's advantages: (compared to newer ones)

1. File Manager
2. Fast to run and quit
3. No illegal operations (I've seen it 3 times to stop a program but that's it.)
4. Crashes rarely
5. Takes only 10+ MB
6. All icons on screen

johpower · Post by **johpower** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:20 pm

Well I'd have to only semi-agree.

As far as crashes, appearantly you weren't running some of the same games we were. Old Win was downright persnickity with many DOS games at times. Plus it sucked down our scarce gaming RAM. Please recall back in the days with $40 per mb RAM, most of us had only 4-8mb and that meant Win3x was slowwwwww for DOS fans. Now, you are in luck today of course.....

All was fine with Win aps. Can't fault it there, excepting all the disk swapping.

Last, have a look for "Winfile.exe" in your Windows folder (95-98-ME). It stacks up very very nicely compared to the old file mangler and is definately worth a shortcut on the desktop.

Experiment: I haven't tried this but you might get WinFile to run in Win3x. It's a standalone ~150k program (+1k config.ini that get's made the first time you run it). Just do a copy to your Win3x Windows folder from a Win95+ Windows folder to try it. The main question would be if the Win95a (and earlier) version works better for Win3x than the Win95b and later versions. (Win3x is much more similar to Win95a. Any program date stamp before 1996 will be pre-Win95b.) Let us know how it goes if you try it out.

Unknown_K · Post by **Unknown_K** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 7:10 pm

johpower wrote:
johpower wrote:How about less than 64k. I have this BASIC game called Galaxy (1982 and therefore pre-RFTS) that's a 16k "game". And some installs are on cassette tape!!! For Apple II/Commedore/etc!!

Unknown_K wrote:I was refering to the IBM PC, where games have always been a little bloated
So am I. It's just that any machine that runs BASIC would run these games. The other brands show diversity of deployment. In all, 7 differently constructed machines running on as many OS's run the same game, so long as it's written in BASIC, which all of them could work with. I just did a search in my Win98 PC and found no BASIC/QBASIC listed. Nor is it on the CD. It is still in the old DOS (DOS 6.22) folder. Hence it was appreciated between 1994 and 1997 that programers would be adding BASIC to Win on their own time.

BASIC editors were always included to older PC's because it was expected programers be using their machines and that meant low cost app development. (Today the closest you might get to a universal BASIC might be JAVA.) What % of users today are programers? >1% or so, hence BASIC games are a lost art. How many can write even a batch file? >5% I'd bet. But multiply that by 4 at these forums.

All of which brings up an interesting point..... have personal computers become alot less alike than they were pre-1985, while the OS's have converged on the Unix paradigm?

Qbasic is still on the windows install cd up to and including Windows ME (D:\tools\oldmsdos\, not sure about winnt/xp). Its not an option in the install, but can be copied to your hd from this directory.

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Fri Oct 31, 2003 10:56 am

Those crashes are Win itself. I play DOS games in pure DOS. I've at most 3 appls. open at a time, mostly 1 or 2. When we'd 286 (3.1), I didn't seen any differences between then and now. (Smartdrive was loaded though.)

9x's Manager hasn't F7 move or F8 copy, drive icons are in same window with directory tree and it doesn't move alone *.exe files.

Why should I? After reinstallation I Y2k patch it from floppy so it shows years 2000...2099. As far as I know, it requires 95.

johpower · Post by **johpower** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 3:06 am

Pardon? No F7/8? You ain't using the same program. I said WINFILE.exe, not manager or explorer. It has everything plus ability to show multiple drives at once (cascade, splitscreens, etc). Drive icons are all shown at the top. If you splitscreen, you get an extra set of drive icons. Further it shows the true file system of your drive. C:\ is root, not Desktop, for example. In Win95/98 Go to C:\Windows and see it as the little 2-drawer cabinet icon (or just do a find for winfile). You will be surprised at the options availible and, if it runs in Win3x, you may never go back.

johpower · Post by **johpower** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 3:18 am

Unknown_K wrote: Qbasic is still on the windows install cd up to and including Windows ME (D:\tools\oldmsdos\, not sure about winnt/xp). Its not an option in the install, but can be copied to your hd from this directory.

Well, U_K, you're right!! I just checked my Win98se disk and it's hiding there too. Some days are a nice surprise after all.

Unknown_K · Post by **Unknown_K** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 9:26 am

Glad to help

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Sun Nov 09, 2003 11:33 am

I don't need to. I've 3.11 in my 4y. Besides it's 169 kB. Perhaps 'cause network code.