DOSEMU can run any 16bit Windows up to 3.1, and has limited support for Windows 3.11. You should be able to install and run these versions of Windows without any extra work. There are still a few caveats however, and if you have some problems, read on.
The mouse is known to have sensitivity issues when you run Windows under DOSEMU. For Windows 3.0 and earlier there is no workaround currently. That problem will be fixed in the future DOSEMU releases. For Windows 3.1 and 3.11 you can install an alternative mouse driver. Get the OS2WIN31.ZIP distribution from somehere. One place that distributes it is http://www.funet.fi/pub/os2/32bit/win_os2 This archive contains the file mouse.drv. Replace the mouse.drv of your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory with that file and do the following adjustments in your win.ini file:
[windows]
MouseThreshold1=0
MouseThreshold2=0
MouseSpeed=0 |
If you want to run Windows in SVGA mode, you can either use the Trident drivers, or the patched SVGA drivers of Windows 3.11.
The Trident drivers for Windows are in the files tvgaw31a.zip and/or tvgaw31b.zip. Search www.winsite.com to get them. Unpack the archive. In Windows setup, install the Trident "800x600 256 color for 512K boards" driver.
Windows 3.11 comes with SVGA drivers. You can also download them: search www.winsite.com for svga.exe and install the drivers. Then go to http://www.japheth.de/dwnload1.html and get the SVGAPatch tool. This tool causes the above drivers to work with most of the video cards in a real DOS environment, and makes them DOSEMU-compatible too.
By the time of writing this, DOSEMU does not have support for Windows ring-0 device drivers (.vxd, .386). Fortunately, most of Windows 3.1 drivers are ring-3 ones (.drv), so you can easily install the Sound Blaster drivers, for instance. This is not the case with Windows 3.11. Its network drivers are ring-0 ones, so the native Winsock does not work. In order to get networking operational, you need to get the Trumpet Winsock package. Refer to chapter "Using Windows and Winsock" for more info on this.
There is probably little use of a DOS shell under Windows under DOSEMU... But for those who need it, here are some basic hints. The DOS shell is supported by DOSEMU only if Windows is running in Standard mode. The Enhanced mode DOS shell is currently unsupported. Note however, that unlike in a real DOS environment, under DOSEMU the DOS shell of the Windows in Standard mode allows you to run protected mode applications (in the real DOS environment only the DOS shell of the Enhanced mode allows this).