I was impressed years ago when some bright spark got linux running in a web browser session, and I'm yet again impressed that we've progressed in technology to the point that I can watch a quicktime video in Windows 3.1 in Safari on my laptop. Not to mention a fantastically organised and easy to use collection of historically interesting software, nice!

FWIW I still use windows 3.11 on DOS-BOX to view 90s vehicle service manual software.

Amazing how many old pieces of manufacturing equipment are still driven by DOS/ Win9x machines.

My colleague recently had to troubleshoot an amiga app controlling an industrial press, running in an emulator.

I was wondering, could DosBox do networking? If so, you could get windows3 with internet installed on anything that could run Linux and DosBox.

There's a patch which adds emulation for the popular NE2000 network card: http://home.arcor.de/h-a-l-9000/ne2kstuff/db_ne2000.html

DOS itself had no networking support. I don't think Windows 3.1 had native networking either - you had to install Novell for LAN networking or Trumpet Winsock to use a modem.

You're correct that DOS itself (MS-DOS, at least) has no networking support, but you might be surprised to learn that DOSBox does natively have networking support - in more ways than one.

On the DOS side of things, you can configure DOSBox so that one instance acts as an IPX 'server' - a server that other DOSBox clients can connect to in order to form a virtual IPX network over UDP. Programs running under DOS would then be able to use the IPX network - especially useful for games, as back then IPX was typically the only kind of networking available.

DOSBox also has support for emulating modems, tunneling the communication over TCP. It does this by allowing the Hayes dial commands to accept IP address/port combinations corresponding to the DOSBox client on the other end (which would have been set up as a server), which many programs would then just accept without validating them. In the event that a program did validate them and not let you enter anything except numbers, you can still do it by padding the numbers with zeroes. For example, if you wanted to connect to 192.168.1.45:1234, you could 'dial' 1921680010451234. Many modem games can then be played this way without having to use any DOS networking support.

There was also the port tricks, connect two PCs with a COM or LPT cable and a few games could communicate over them. I recall (but could be wrong) that DOOM 3D could do this. DirectPlay (DirectX networking) also supported this in at least Windows 95. A few VIC 20 games also used this trick.

Yep! That was commonly called a "null modem" cable, and DOSBox supports that style of connection too. :)

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 had their Netbios network protocol support + drivers but you needed additional packages for TCP/IP. At that point most of the games used IPX protocol so you needed another DOS network stack like Novell's for gaming. If my memory serves my right, Duke Nukem 3D had Netbios support but all the other games (Doom, Descent, Warcraft 2 etc) used IPX.

I'm going to leave a link to Microsoft TCP/IP (Wolverine) for WfW 3.11 here for posterity: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/peropsys/windows/public/tcpip/WFWT32.EXE

We have a working networked version of Windows 3.1 that runs in this environment, but let's do one thing at a time.

Can I just say I really appreciate the archiving you're doing here? I should probably get round to giving you a contribution. Or uploading my shareware collection.

Microsoft released 16bit TCP/IP drivers for win3.11 as downloadable package, you can use that with Netscape Communicator 4.0 or several versions of IE. Unfortunately almost no web servers support clients that don't send the "Host:" header, so additional proxy servers may be necessary to get anywhere. Also, you can pretty much forget about modern TLS.

Isn't this risky with regards to copyright laws? This seems to download some of the software (including Win 3.x itslef).

I believe there are exemptions for the preservation of copyrighted works. Please don't consider this authoritative or even applicable here, but, as an example: https://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/basics/...

> To qualify for the exception, your library or archive must: [...]

> Produce no more than a single reproduction of a given work.

Copyright law would consider the Internet Archive to be reproducing the software every time someone clicks the link and their browser downloads it, so this wouldn't apply.

It also depends on the violated party still existing and caring enough to pursue a lawsuit. Many of the entities that own these copyrights don't exist anymore. And I don't think a Windows 3.1 demo on the web is potentially damaging enough to Microsoft's profits to make it worthwhile for them to sue the Internet Archive.

Wow. I can actually play a .mov video in QuickTime player, in Windows 3.11, emulated in Javascript/DOSBOX. And it actually works.

Can anyone tell me if the embedding works for them with Internet Archive stuff like this?

It loads okay at the IA site, but when I use their embed code for this, and the previous times I've tried with their DOS and Arcade games, the games/programs load, but they don't load in the right position in the embed, about 30% too far down, so are essentially unusable.

This is amazing, just played Desert Storm: The Air Campaign for a few minutes. The collection of software here is such an important reminder that even seemingly unimportant software has historical context and is worth preserving. The Internet Archive is good people.

Wow, I'm very impressed, surprised this works so well. Any chance we can get Exile 3: Ruined World added to this? Probably my favorite Windows 3.1 game and the full version is now available for free from the developer.

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/exile3/winexile3.html

Actually, if I can do it myself I'll look into it tonight, there's a few titles I could upload like this if possible...

Running in a similar manner, I was impressed when I stumbled across https://win95.ajf.me/ recently.

too good for this world, too pure

Oh yes, WinTrek, I spent many a relaxing afternoon hunting down Klingons.

Awesome, was able to play the tile game Taipei :)