Win 3.1 via DOSBox at native resolution

[urjaman]

What would you want a dosbox for running W3.1 to be named?

 

[mali]

WinBox :rolleyes:

 

[SomeGuy99]

WinBox :rolleyes:

Windbox? Windpipe?

 

[urjaman]

Mali's suggestion won as a temporary name for the icon on our desktop/menu (to differentiate).
Firstly, for the S3 driver you need http://urjaman.dyndns.info/w31s3patcher.pnd
It should guide you pretty well. It'll download, unzip, modify and finally copy the driver files to a directory of your choosing. I'd select mywinboxC/s3. The driver download is 606KiB and there is no progress indicator, so it sucks a bit in that degree.
Then you'll need my modified dosbox aka winbox here http://urjaman.dyndns.info/winbox.pnd [EDIT: This link is old].
I added a bit to it's readme:

The WinBox name can/should be changed later. It's just to distinguish from
your other dosbox pnd. The pnd will ask for a default C drive directory
on first run. The query can be canceled, but then it will ask again on
next run and you'll get Z:. I've included a modified mapper config,
which allows you to type : by doing Shift-Tab (Shift-Fn-Space).
As you're propably running this just to see win3.1 in native
resolution and have already used the s3 driver patcher, let me note
that you should first install Win3.1 with the VGA driver, or it won't
install. And that the S3 driver installation will ask for a disk (again)
with win.cnf. Just point it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. For me the mouse stopped
working during/after win3.1 installation. Just close dosbox and start it
again.

Also note that the default path includes C:\WINDOWS, so after installation you can just "win"

This is all very alpha/maybe beta class, so no warranty, but do tell me how it goes. Speed-wise it's better to expect nothing than something. Also, to cover the licences thoroughly, winbox.pnd includes a source code tar.bz2.

 

[urjaman]

Does Sim City work? That would be great at full resolution.

I'd say it works. I didnt do more than start a new game and plot a bit of residential zone, but it seemed ok'ish, it will draw all the game windows for a moment, though, etc...

 

[Stocker]

Thanks for this, it's very strange and cool to be running Windows 3.1 Solitaire on my Pandora!!! Very nice work getting the native resolution.

Thanks.

 

[Eolair]

* I plan on running Stars! 1.0 sometime soon... doesnt need much, so not much of a benchmark.

Please, do that! I love playing Stars!

 

[dgame]

urjaman,

Does the touchscreen mouse work accurately for you? The touchscreen/mouse tracking is inaccurate in DOS and Windows. The nubs work fine.

Thanks

 

[urjaman]

urjaman,

Does the touchscreen mouse work accurately for you? The touchscreen/mouse tracking is inaccurate in DOS and Windows. The nubs work fine.

Thanks

That's because touch screen is an absolute positioning device vs. the nubs/a real mouse is a relative device. It's just not possible to really accurately emulate a touchscreen with a mouse (=relative) interface (PS2 mouse). If someone is up for a good idea on how to hack the W3.1 mouse driver for this, I'd be interested (i could even help a bit if something needs doing)

 

[WizardStan]

Actually, DOS games (if they're doing it the easy way) should easily support the touchscreen as mouse. That's because, while a mouse is a relative device, the DOS interrupt for the mouse returned absolute coordinates. You call the interrupt to set the absolute width and height, mouse sensitivity, and set the cursor position, and then let the system take care of the rest. If it's not doing this accurately and consistently, there may be some tweaks that need to be some tweaks in DosBox to account for the touch screen. That or the program in question doesn't use the DOS interrupt as it should.

 

[TitanUranus]

maybe someone with a pandora could run this:

http://forum.benchmarkreviews.com/showthread.php?t=12287

I'd be very interested in what the results are...

 

[urjaman]

maybe someone with a pandora could run this:

http://forum.benchmarkreviews.com/showthread.php?t=12287

I'd be very interested in what the results are...

I'm surprised on the lack of results.
NOTES:
1. I needed to run pkzipfix on their .zip to be able to unzip it.
2. "Determining system contents... CPU clock"
"ERROR: Divide overlflow."
Exactly like that , with typo's and all.

 

[badfrog]

Now what would really be a blast would be to get Trumpet Winsock running, and then Mosaic and Netscape 1.0.

Damn NIC cards were such a pain in Win 3.x. Definitely don't miss that crap.

 

[WizardStan]

Now what would really be a blast would be to get Trumpet Winsock running, and then Mosaic and Netscape 1.0.

Ah, you're a masochist then.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Now what would really be a blast would be to get Trumpet Winsock running, and then Mosaic and Netscape 1.0.

Ah, you're a masochist then.

Where would you even find a website that would be compatible?

Would you hit the WayBackMachine like it's 1994?

 

[badfrog]

Now what would really be a blast would be to get Trumpet Winsock running, and then Mosaic and Netscape 1.0.

Ah, you're a masochist then.

Where would you even find a website that would be compatible?

Would you hit the WayBackMachine like it's 1994?

Yeah, I guess it would look like total crap... But everything would load fast as hell!

ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/Windows/Archive/


I was working my on-campus job in the computer lab and 'discovered' Mosaic just messing around, and thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Showed the administration in charge and ended up distributing it on all the workstations during summer of '94.

Getting old sucks.

 

[urjaman]

Somebody should write ISA NE2000 emulation into dosbox (atleast i dont recall seeing any), then you could just use a packet driver + arachne

 

[urjaman]

Nobody is going to guess what I did (or just maybe, because I'm posting in this thread...), but anyways, now I can say this:
I've compiled a new mouse driver for Windows 3.1 on my pandora. Ugh

So, I've written an absolute positioning mouse driver that is based on Windows 3.1 DDK sample mouse driver code and made modifications to dosbox for this hack to work properly, so I wont (atleast yet) be releasing the mouse driver source, but I think i can release a binary: http://urjaman.dy.fi/MOUSE.DRV and while I'm at it, a new revision of winbox with some mouse code that might break many games (none tested), but works with my new driver: http://urjaman.dy.fi/winbox_r2.pnd (the pnd includes a .tar.bz2 of the dosbox source used so I'm complying with dosbox licenses).

Usage: Run winbox_r2.pnd, create/pick a folder for your C drive, copy your W3.1 installation files in a directory there, run windows 3.1 install (the mouse might act weird with the original mouse driver, dont worry). Install with default options. After installation use the S3 driver patcher I posted above to create an S3 driver directory (or copy an old directory), run windows and change the video driver, point to C:\S3 (or whatever you picked). I picked 800x480 256C SF. When it asks for win.cnf point it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. It asks you to restart windows, I said later and exited windows (be sure to be in windowed mode when exiting windows). Then backup your MOUSE.DRV in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM (== cd windows\system + copy mouse.drv mouse.old). Drop my new MOUSE.DRV into the system folder. Then just run "win".

For old installations it should be enough to just replace the pnd and the mouse driver.

Known bugs: It sometimes unintentionally drags items, just clicking a few times on-the-spot should clear it.

I have to note that this is a huge hack. The mouse driver uses PS2 callback for mouse button data and int 33h,3 for positioning. Windows 3.1 wants absolute positions as values with the full range of 0-65535 that it maps into whatever the display width/height is. So I modified dosbox int 33h,3 to always return an absolute value between set min and max (mapped into the display width/height in use), and set min=0,max=8191, and had the mouse driver just do shl 3 on the values before returning them to windows. It works well enough for me so I thought I'd share this with people.

 

[urjaman]

Okay, the one Opera user who just downloaded only MOUSE.DRV, why?

 

[Patrick R Ludvigsen]

Okay, the one Opera user who just downloaded only MOUSE.DRV, why?

Secret plan to take over DOSBox

Also that's awesome, I miss Windows 3.1