3 ms·

From Wikipedia: FreeDOS is able to run Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 releases. Windows 3.x releases, which had support for i386 processors, cannot fully be run

From Wikipedia: FreeDOS is able to run Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 releases. Windows 3.x releases, which had support for i386 processors, cannot fully be run in 386 Enhanced Mode I wonder why that is. Well, too bad! Windows 3.11 was a fine, usable OS.

retrac 5y ago
It's the virtual 8086 mode that virtualizes multiple DOS instances. Windows 3.x gets very intimate with DOS to implement this feature (maintaining multiple parallel DOS states) and FreeDOS doesn't mirror DOS precisely enough for this to work. But a clever hacker just just patched it a few months ago. So now it works, kinda: https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/37326256/ https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/37326256/
- jaclaz 5y ago
  Thanks these are good news.
jaclaz 5y ago
>I wonder why that is. There are I believe issues with the memory manager and there is a sort of protection mechanism that actually prevents running Windows 3.1/3.11 also on newer MS DOS (aka the DOS 7.1/8.0 of Windows 98/Me, whilst the 7.0 from Windows95 should be able to run without patches), there are dedicated patches/programs for some of these (original MS) DOS versions, probably something similar is needed for freedos. EDIT: for some reasons this post ended up after retrac's one that actually provides a solution
rnd0 5y ago
It's because of the undocumented and weird calls MS put into windows in part to thwart DR-DOS back in the day. (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code ) That said, work's happened to make FreeDOS boot windows 3 at least under special circumstances (I'm not sure if this kernel made it into the current FreeDOS or not): https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/freedos-running-windows-3-1/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/freedos-runnin...

3 ms·

From Wikipedia: FreeDOS is able to run Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 releases. Windows 3.x releases, which had support for i386 processors, cannot fully be run

by Koshkin 5y ago

retrac 5y ago
It's the virtual 8086 mode that virtualizes multiple DOS instances. Windows 3.x gets very intimate with DOS to implement this feature (maintaining multiple parallel DOS states) and FreeDOS doesn't mirror DOS precisely enough for this to work. But a clever hacker just just patched it a few months ago. So now it works, kinda: https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/37326256/ https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/37326256/
- jaclaz 5y ago
  Thanks these are good news.
jaclaz 5y ago
>I wonder why that is. There are I believe issues with the memory manager and there is a sort of protection mechanism that actually prevents running Windows 3.1/3.11 also on newer MS DOS (aka the DOS 7.1/8.0 of Windows 98/Me, whilst the 7.0 from Windows95 should be able to run without patches), there are dedicated patches/programs for some of these (original MS) DOS versions, probably something similar is needed for freedos. EDIT: for some reasons this post ended up after retrac's one that actually provides a solution
rnd0 5y ago
It's because of the undocumented and weird calls MS put into windows in part to thwart DR-DOS back in the day. (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code ) That said, work's happened to make FreeDOS boot windows 3 at least under special circumstances (I'm not sure if this kernel made it into the current FreeDOS or not): https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/freedos-running-windows-3-1/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/07/27/freedos-runnin...