Inside Win95: The forgotten Win 3.1 „emulation“ support

Did you know that early beta versions of Windows 95 had somewhat of a Windows 3.1 "emulator" built-in? Well, not exactly an emulator, but a handful of files, that allowed Windows 3.1 to run inside a Windows 95 DOS Box. Nah, not MS-DOS mode, but side-by-side with Windows 95! Getting it to work on a beta version was easy, but doing so for the final Windows 95 release, lest to say Windows 98, needed some patching. And yet, there are questions around the whole thing: Why did Microsoft built that feature in the first place? Why was it dropped from the final release? And once more, will it run on Windows Me? 00:00 Intro 00:55 Some historical context 02:13 Test (failed) Drive on Windows "Chicago", Build 81 02:45 Test Drive on Windows "Chicago", Build 116 08:05 Windows 95 Beta, Build 328, and the need for patching 11:48 Let's have a look at the Windows 95 final release 12:04 Windows 98 goes as well 12:14 What about Windows Me? 13:31 Using Windows for Workgroups 3.11 instead 13:52 Conventient Install Package 14:20 Conclusion Links: Additional Reading about Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1 https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-95/chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95 Articles about the Windows 3.1 Compat Mode of Win95/Chicago: https://blog.krnl386.com/index.php?post/2017/11/19/Switch-to-Chicago https://blog.krnl386.com/index.php?post/2018/02/03/Switch-to-Windows-95 Assembly Code references: http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.html Software Downloads: Various "Chicago" builds: https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-95/chicago "Chicago", Build 328: https://mega.nz/f56e34a8-0f4f-445d-a553-28a5448893e8 TPC's install package: https://github.com/gpdm/TPC-Win31on9x Visit also THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR website at https://www.thephintagecollector.ch for insights into my retro computer collection. Copyright @ 2024 THE PHINTAGE COLLECTOR, Gianpaolo Del Matto. All rights reserved. Theme Music composed by Abdallah El-Ghannam. https://www.fiverr.com/abdallahghannam