Windows 3.1 on CD-ROM?

[Catweazle]

I seem to remember seeing this on ebay a few years ago. It was Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 together on CD-ROM. I have not seen it since though so I'm not sure if this was an actual Microsoft release or just something someone made. Anyone have any information about it?

[SaT]

well the 3.11 at msdn is 5 mb

File
EN_WIN311.exe Self-Extracting Executable
File Size
5 MB

and DOS

File
EN_MSDOS622.exe Self-Extracting Executable
File Size
11 MB

so i guess some1 made it

The 3.1 is gone @ msdn but we have 3.2

[empireum]

I know of some OEM releases that had MS-DOS 6.22 and a version of Windows 3.1x on a bootable CD.

[Catweazle]

Thanks, I found a picture of a Gateway version. I was sure I had seen one on eBay that looked like a retail CD but maybe I was mistaken.

http://www.oldsoftware.com/dos%206.html

[Vista Ultimate R2]

The MSDN versions of Windows 3.1 were on CD - I have some CDs that have many different language versions of Windows and Windows for Workgroups on them - I've never seen a retail CD version though

[empireum]

I have seen an OEM version of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 which came on a CD, sadly I don't have the CD anymore...

[KenOath]

The early MSDN sets supplied all Win3x versions & Dos versions on CD.
One here I have has a CD with all language versions on it for both Dos &
Win3x..

[___]

seems kind of a waste to have about 5mb on a 700mb cd

[empireum]

seems kind of a waste to have about 5mb on a 700mb cd

There's more than one Windows 3.1 version on these MSDN CDs. There are multiple versions of it and these are in multiple languages each. This can fill the CD quickly.

[Catweazle]

Also standard CDs are only 650MB.

Thanks for the info, I'll have to watch for those.

[XDude]

seems kind of a waste to have about 5mb on a 700mb cd

Microsoft put tons of extras in their cds. Go check a windiows 95 cd, you'll be suprised that it has 600MB of stuff.

[___]

i know that with the 95 cd, hover ruled

[pr0gram the pr0grammer]

i know that with the 95 cd, hover ruled

Hover for the win! The videos of Goodtimes and Buddy Holly by Weezer weren't too bad either... they need to bring back the random CD extras that seem to have slowly disappeared over the years.

[XDude]

i know that with the 95 cd, hover ruled

ahh, I love that game.the good old days
I wish microsoft include that many extras in vista.
I guess there is ultimate extras.

[___]

i know that with the 95 cd, hover ruled

Hover for the win! The videos of Goodtimes and Buddy Holly by Weezer weren't too bad either... they need to bring back the random CD extras that seem to have slowly disappeared over the years.

i wish they printed manuals these days, not just slap a pdf onto a cd (in black and white)

[AnDrEwP182]

I liked CD Sampler until they abolished it in...
98 am I right?

[os2fan2]

If you bought a computer that came with a cdrom as a standard feature, then it was pretty usual for the OEM to replace a great pile of diskettes with a cdrom. This disk normally did not just have dos and windows, but the drivers for the supplied hardware, and various other proggies that the OEM might ship with the box.

Sometimes it might be pre-installed setups (ie a set of superimplsed archives), while other times, you might be able to set the stuff up yourself.

It's not unusual to 'waste' diskettes on very little data. An average diskette might rate in 199x prices, say at 50c or so a disk, usually more. A pressed cd-rom is well under $4, so if you are putting together a proggie that uses 8 or more diskettes, then a cdrom is cheaper than the diskettes.

You should recall that in the time of Windows 3.1, a 500 MB hard drive was pretty much a very large thing. When i did my first cd-burn (an outsource job in 1995), i did a lot of calculations on the cost of these things, how much it would cost to master a disk etc. The limitations of the hard disks was 250 MB, the resulting disk cost 100$ or something.

When i got my burner in 1997, it cost 600$, and ran mainly under OS/2. Dos could not access enough of the hard disk to make burning profitable, and the disks cost 20$ ea. But you could do a custom reinstall of nearly everything in a few hours before tea, rather than a whole weekend.

[MSHOME]

I seem to remember seeing this on ebay a few years ago. It was Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 together on CD-ROM. I have not seen it since though so I'm not sure if this was an actual Microsoft release or just something someone made. Anyone have any information about it?

You can somehow set bootable CD with Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.22 with some programs.

[cantasan99]

Windows 3.0 with Multimedia (MWINDOWS) is in CD-ROM. But I don't know other releases.

[Beta2.1Collector]

The MSDN Releases were on cds. With MSDOS 6.22 on.
There was no Retail CD's there were MSDN CD realeases.

[ExplicitNuM5]

It isn't unreasonable to put Windows 3.x on CDs. As these days, we don't use flops anymore, right?
But it would seem a waste to put ~20 Mbs. of tiny fluff on a 700 Mb CD...

[os2fan2]

However, you are not just restricted to putting Windows on the disk. You can put DOS and drivers and applications on there as well. But as i mentioned earlier, eight disks is the cutover point where it's cheaper to press a cdrom than to make floppies. It's much less now: something like 2 disks.

cdroms are more robust than floppy disks, especially since they can't be written over.

[FronzelNeekburm]

I remember that a friend of mine had a legit German Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on CD-Rom. Back in the days that was pretty nifty to have it on CD, but yeah, the CD most probably wasn't "full" (as in "having no or nearly no space left"). But still better than a pack of floppies if you had a CD-Drive. I don't think the disc was bootable though.


Edit: Image stolen from ended ebay auction, but it looked kinda like that:

[Win95Fan]

Unfortunately, Windows 3.1 was a floppy-only product.

[WinPC]

Unfortunately, Windows 3.1 was a floppy-only product.

As far as I know, the actual official Microsoft media was only available in a floppy disk version, while system manufacturers provided their own CD-ROMs of it, as stated above.