Win 3.11

Sorry if this has been discussed in another thread - I searched, but did not see anything.

I have successfully set up Win 3.11 as a guest OS (or a "shell" for those of you who wish to be more precise regarding Win 3.11 as an OS versus a GUI for DOS). After making the WIN 3.11 Y2K compliant and loading the last version of Internet Explorer for Windows 3.x, I started trying to get sound working and to get the video to look a little better...

1) Does anyone know if there are any generic drivers that could be used to enable sound in WIN 3.x?

2) When I try to change the video settings, it gives me an error code "error copying file". I do not know exactly what file, and am too rusty with WIN 3.x to remember if you needed special drivers to change the settings (I am referring to desktop size here) or if WIN 3.x had a basic set of drivers for the various desktop sizes for VGA. Same question here - any generic drivers that might work?

3) Finally, WIN will not always boot up - it very often freezes during booting, and usually after three or four restarts it will boot - once it boots though - it works fine.

I know WIN 3.x may not be a priority - just thought I would throw it out there.

 

audio drivers

The only drivers you can get sound by, is to get is an Adlib audio driver or a Soundblaster driver for Windows 3.1. You can try to find an AC97 driver. I know the Adlib driver and the early Soundblaster drivers will work. You will need to find and download those and install them.

Gerald

 

Thanks! I tried several AC97 drivers that didn't work out - I will see what the adlib drivers will do...

 

where on earth did you find a working copy of windows for workgroups?

 

Actually I had it on floppy (the original floppies I purchased for one of my early PCs). They have been sitting in a shoebox in my basement for YEARS!

Never thought I would use them again - almost threw them out on more than one occasion.

Now if I could just figure out what the heck to do with Win 3.11 when it boots up...

 

Hi, thought this thread would be fitting to my question. I have installed DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 with networking support, but one more thing that I'd like to do is to have something better than the default 640x480x16 resolution and color depth. Has anyone any info if I can do this in Parallels? I tried several other options in setup, but they don't seem to work.

I guess there are no win 3.x drivers for Parallels video card emulation, but I figured I could give it a shot here.

 

No Luck...

I have had no luck with Win 3.11 in terms of the display...I will let you know if I find anything.

You don't by chance have the sound working in Win 3.x do you ?

 

Nope, I haven't tried to get the sound working yet. I'll post it here if I find anything.

 

Here is some info regarding the video driver. It didn't work for me, but maybe you'll get luckier than I did. It's a driver patch for vmware though.

 

Dos Sound - ADLIB

I have downloaded the ADLIB drivers from http://www.helpdrivers.com and have not yet been able to get sound under DOS. What are the address, port & interupt settings I should use for Parallels?

I am trying to get DOS setup so that I can play all my old DOS games like XCOM & Dune II.
Many thanks for any advice.

Edit:
I guess this may not really be needed. I just saw that DosBox does all that I require for Dos gaming on OSX.

 

Purely out of interest, why would you want to run Windows 3.11?

 

Purely as a novelty....I thought it would be cool to have each version of Windows working in Parallels...

 

Each version of Windows? Then dig up some Windows 2.x and... Windows 1.0 as well!

 

Doh - I didn't think of that. I guess I will have to wait for the parallels 5.25" floppy disk emulation support Or maybe I could copy the files if I could find a PC with a drive. No hits on eBay...

Here is a little trip down memory lane, though:

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/software/microsoft/windows10/page_01.htm

Guess I will have to live with starting at 3.1

 

I just installed 3.11 today -- Very slick! I was able to get a network driver and TCP/IP installed, IE5 makes me giggle. I'm really interested in a better graphics driver though. >_<

 

Let us know if you get the sound working...

 

Does anyone have any instructions, or can walk me thorough, on how to install windows 3.1? I know when I used to install it on my windows machines I would have to install Ms Dos 6.22 or so on the hard disk before the windows installation, which I have tried on Parallels, but no luck. I am away in college, so I had my brother copy the floppies into folders on a pc at home, and he sent me the MS Dos disc folders and the Win 3.1 folders. However, now I have no clue on to where to start this process.

Thanks in advanced!

 

You are correct...the way I built my Win 3.11 image was to:

1) Make image files from the three install floppies I have for DOS

2) Use those image files (virtual floppy in parallels) to boot from and build the DOS installation (it is a little bit of a pain since you have to "disconnect" the floppy when it asks for the next disk, point the a drive to the next image, then reconnect)...

3) Once you have DOS built, you can install Win 3.11 - the trick here is how the computer recognizes the "floppies" if you copied floppies onto a CD, or a directory, then you have to trick windows into recognizing the directory (or CD location) as having all of the necessary files or it will keep asking for a floppy. This is achieved through creating blank text files with a certain naming convention (these are the files that Windows looks for to let it know where the files it needs are). Sorry - I do not have the naming convention in front of me right now - I may be able to locate my CD later - but I figured all of this out in about 30 minutes of google searches so it is pretty easy to find on the internet.

4) After you install Windows, you need to apply the Y2K patch (remember that?) and the TCPIP protocol for Win 3.1 so you can surf the internet and network (surfing is actually pretty funny).

I know this was a very high level explanation, but I hope it gets you started - I think there are additional posts on this forum about Win 3.11...

If you get stuck, just ask.