Virtual machine for Windows 3.xx

[serezhaonly]

Hi!
Advise the virtual machine which is as well suited for Windows 3.xx. Share your experience of installation and operation. Thank you.

[TheCollector1988]

Though not literally speaking a vm, but PCem-X (fork of PCem) offers great compatibility regarding Windows 3.x and even networking (NE2000).

[serezhaonly]

TheCollector1988 thanks, interesting. http://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ is it? And need any driver to use?

[TheCollector1988]

TheCollector1988 thanks, interesting. http://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ is it? And need any driver to use?

that and this too: http://forum.softhistory.org/showthread.php?tid=29

[Archenemy]

Also use stuff like MESS, QEMU, Bochs, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007/2004, DOSBox, etc.

Offtopic Comment

500 posts!

[serezhaonly]

TheCollector1988 thank you.
Archenemy Hello. Interesting practical use. For Example Debugging. Advantages, disadvantages. Asked by lack of experience. Thank you)

[pittical]

I would use dosbox or qemu, but mainly because I know those best. Both work well, but there might be better ones out there. And for dosbox, you need a special build if you want to do any debugging. No idea if that might be a problem on your OS of choice.

Re: experiences, I installed win3.1 (not wfw3.11) in dosbox just a few weeks ago. No issues whatsoever. Didn't try anything in the networking department though.

[RentedMule]

VMWare works fine for me

[Schezo]

I typically use Virtual PC 2007 SP1 to run for Windows (for Workgroups) 3.x, or any other Windows version from the DOS line. While you could also try VMWare, there is, among others, the problem of display hi-color driver compatibility (while there exists a fix for it, some stuff gets broken along the way).

I use only those two because I don't really need anything more than that (except for running Windows 1.0 prereleases, in which case I use the old PCem 0.3 from moons ago)

[User5274]

I used Bochs and used Windows 3.x without any problems.

[MSUser2013]

I use VirtualPC, It can virtualize Windows 3.1 just fine, You can even find video and sound drivers that are compatible with it (S3 Trio 64 and Sound Blaster 16, These are what VPC emulates, Windows 3.1x drivers are available for them), But it works best if you have a Pre-2009 PC, If you have issues with running Windows 3.1 on VirtualPC then you can use PCem, It also has Windows 3.1 drivers.

[xflies]

I use Virtual PC 2007 too. It supports not only video and sound cards, but also the network adapter. My Windows 3.1 (not Windows for Workgroup) on VPC 2007 has the ability to access Internet.

[ovctvct]

I use VirtualPC, It can virtualize Windows 3.1 just fine, You can even find video and sound drivers that are compatible with it (S3 Trio 64 and Sound Blaster 16, These are what VPC emulates, Windows 3.1x drivers are available for them).

No offence, but VPC gives crap stability in windows 3.x. When in 386 enh. mode, I always get general protection faults and whatnot. I use Pcem-x as its a lot better with stability and I even managed to get online with it.

[baaj7749]

if you play games on Windows 3.xx, DosBox is the best.

[Overdoze]

No offence, but VPC gives crap stability in windows 3.x. When in 386 enh. mode, I always get general protection faults and whatnot. I use Pcem-x as its a lot better with stability and I even managed to get online with it.

Depends on what software and drivers you use. I've only had GPFs in 3.X running in VPC after installing certain shaddy drivers.

[Battler]

Windows 3.x is less stable in VPC. Just for comparison, with the same S3 Trio64 drivers, Windows 3.1 becomes quite unstable in VPC but remains perfectly stable in both stock PCem and PCem-X.

Plus remember, while PCem and PCem-X are pretty much guaranteed to give the same results regardless of the host machine, VPC will not because it virtualizes the host CPU rather than emulating one, so, say Windows 3.1 on VPC might be perfectly stable for someone and completely unstable for someone else.

[James]

Yes, mostly because we're talking about running Windows 3.1 on a virtualized Core ix platform; compared to pcem/pcem-X running it on an emulated 386/486/Pentium. But, in general, one must be warned that pcem(-x) does require some computing power to use; since you are basically having your native processor emulate the entire platform of another processor. Performance problems aren't noticeable on the 386/486 platforms, but certainly on the Pentium (which is really not stable enough imo)

[Okaris]

VMWare workstation if you can afford or VirtualBox for free users. The sound may take some tweaking to get it to work properly. There should be guides on how to do this online.