[vcf-midatlantic] Project of the day - Windows 3.11 386Enh on a floppy

Richard Cini rich.cini at gmail.com
Sun Sep 6 13:42:04 EDT 2020


I forgot to answer your original question about systems. I built the disk using DOS 6.22 and Windows XP, both running on Parallels (on a Mac). Parallels emulates a standard PC but uses virtualization to work.

 

Anyway, I would expect that if runs on that, it will run on any PC after 1992.

 

Here’s the file list:

 

 Volume in drive Z is MS-RAMDRIVE

 

Directory of Z:\WINDOWS

 

.            <DIR>         09-06-20   5:38p

..           <DIR>         09-06-20   5:38p

ACCESSOR GRP         2,206 09-05-20   7:52p

CONTROL  EXE        15,872 12-31-93   6:11a

CONTROL  INI         3,824 09-05-20   6:38p

DOSPRMPT PIF           545 09-05-20   2:14p

DRWATSON EXE        26,864 09-06-20  12:14p

MAIN     GRP         5,115 09-05-20   7:52p

MOUSE    INI            24 09-05-20   2:12p

NOTEPAD  EXE        32,736 09-06-20  12:14p

PRINTMAN EXE        43,248 09-06-20  12:14p

PROGMAN  EXE       115,312 12-31-93   6:11a

PROGMAN  INI           168 09-06-20  12:37p

REG      DAT         2,556 09-05-20   2:14p

STARTUP  GRP            44 09-05-20   7:52p

SYSEDIT  EXE        19,472 05-26-95   6:57a

SYSTEM   INI         1,501 09-05-20   7:52p

SYSTEM       <DIR>         09-06-20   5:38p

TASKMAN  EXE         3,744 09-06-20  12:14p

WIN      COM        44,170 09-05-20   2:12p

WIN      INI         3,424 09-05-20   2:14p

WINFILE  EXE       146,864 12-31-93   6:11a

WINFILE  INI            96 09-05-20   7:02p

_DEFAULT PIF           545 09-05-20   2:14p

       24 file(s)        468,330 bytes

 

Directory of Z:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

 

.            <DIR>         09-06-20   5:38p

..           <DIR>         09-06-20   5:38p

COMM     DRV         9,280 12-31-93   6:11a

COMMCTRL DLL        48,112 05-26-95   6:57a

COMMDLG  DLL        97,936 12-31-93   6:11a

CPWIN386 CPL       104,816 12-31-93   6:11a

DOSX     EXE        32,682 12-31-93   6:11a

DRIVERS  CPL        41,440 12-31-93   6:11a

GDI      EXE       220,800 12-31-93   6:11a

KEYBOARD DRV         7,568 12-31-93   6:11a

KRNL386  EXE        76,400 12-31-93   6:11a

LANMAN10 386         8,786 12-31-93   5:11a

LZEXPAND DLL        23,712 12-31-93   6:11a

MAIN     CPL       148,560 12-31-93   6:11a

MMSOUND  DRV         3,440 12-31-93   6:11a

MMSYSTEM DLL        61,648 12-31-93   6:11a

MOUSE    DRV        10,672 12-31-93   6:11a

SETUP    INF        60,594 12-31-93   6:11a

SHELL    DLL        41,600 12-31-93   6:11a

SND      CPL         8,192 12-31-93   6:11a

SYSTEM   DRV         2,304 12-31-93   6:11a

TTY      DRV        30,496 12-31-93   6:11a

USER     EXE       264,016 09-05-20   2:14p

VER      DLL         9,008 12-31-93   6:11a

VGA      3GR        16,384 12-31-93   6:11a

VGA      DRV        73,200 12-31-93   6:11a

VGAFIX   FON         5,360 12-31-93   6:11a

VGAOEM   FON         5,168 12-31-93   6:11a

VGASYS   FON         7,280 12-31-93   6:11a

VTDA     386         6,816 12-31-93   5:11a

VTDAPI   386         5,245 12-31-93   6:11a

WIN386   EXE       544,789 12-31-93   6:11a

WINOA386 MOD        49,248 12-31-93   6:11a

WSWAP    EXE        16,302 12-31-93   6:11a

       34 file(s)      2,041,854 bytes

 

Total files listed:

       58 file(s)      2,510,184 bytes

                       5,738,496 bytes free

 

 

Rich

 

--

Rich Cini

http://www.classiccmp.org/cini

http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

 

 

On 9/6/20, 11:47 AM, "John Heritage" <john.heritage at gmail.com> wrote:

 

Very nice!  That's stackering the Win 3.11 boot disk itself?  I am curious how much that compresses..  

 

Also, would that work on a 'modern' PC - such as a Socket 7 system? (of ~ Pentium MMX era/vintage)?   I have a K6-3+ BIOS modded Socket 7 system I use for fun.  (OC'd to 75 MHz bus = 450 MHz).  

 

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 8:33 PM Richard Cini <rich.cini at gmail.com> wrote:

Ha, just pulled out a copy of Stacker 4.0 and compressed a floppy disk. 2.8MB free. That's a lot of room :-)

Rich

--
Rich Cini
http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32


On 9/5/20, 7:28 PM, "Richard Cini" <rich.cini at gmail.com> wrote:

    Yeah, I thought of that too. I did this within Parallels on my Mac (so, going back and forth between Windows XP and MS-DOS 6.22 running as virtual machines) and Parallels doesn't support DMF (or anything other than 1.44MB). Neither does VirtualBox interestingly. It might be possible to do it on a real PC, but not sure.

    Yes, that extra 200k would make a huge difference in what could be included. Another way, that I haven't dried, is using Doublespace to create a virtual drive on the floppy.

    Rich

    --
    Rich Cini
    http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
    http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32


    On 9/5/20, 7:23 PM, "vcf-midatlantic on behalf of John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic" <vcf-midatlantic-bounces at lists.vcfed.org on behalf of vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

        How about using one of the extended disk formats - 1.68MB or whatever
        format IBM Used for their OS/2 floppies?   or is that not bootable?   (This
        format was at least readable by standard 1.44 MB drives using standard
        1.44MB disks.. )

        Interesting challenge !

        On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 7:20 PM Richard Cini via vcf-midatlantic <
        vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

        > Not really sure what applicability this really has, but today’s challenge
        > was to get Windows 3.11 Enhanced Mode running from a single 1.44MB floppy
        > disk. There are easy ways to get Standard mode running, including using
        > files from “precopy.cab” on Windows 95 or 98, but this was way more
        > challenging. I started from a full install and pared it down using a guide
        > I found (which was a two-disk solution).
        >
        >
        >
        > The boot files and required extras (HIMEM, PKUNZIP and a very small
        > ramdrive driver) took about 300K, leaving only about 1.2MB (1.156MB to be
        > exact) for a complete install. A normal no-frills install is about 3-ish
        > megabytes.
        >
        >
        >
        > There are significant compromises – no virtual memory, no networking, no
        > multimedia, only system fonts, and only a few apps, but once running you
        > could run them from another floppy. I discovered that 386Enh won’t put a
        > temporary swapfile on a RAM drive, so it runs without it.
        >
        >
        >
        > I guess you could call this the 1992 version of PortableApps :-)
        >
        >
        >
        > Rich
        >
        >
        >
        > --
        >
        > Rich Cini
        >
        > http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
        >
        > http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32
        >
        >
        >
        >
        >
        >








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