Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on M2 Mac Mini

[sracer]

The one thing that I miss when I upgraded from my 2017 iMac to a 2022 M2 Mac Mini was the loss of using virtual machines. I have VMs for OS/2, Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux Mint, and other flavors of Linux. I used DOSBox for running DOS and Windows 3.11.

Thankfully, there are versions of DOSBox that support Apple Silicon. I was able to use my previous DOSBox configuration from my Intel iMac, unmodified on my M2 Mac Mini.

Here it is running just as smooth as ever... (it runs fullscreen too for an immersive experience, but I thought it would be helpful to see it run in the context of Mac OS Ventura)

This is DOSBox running Windows for Workgroups 3.11. WfW is configured to use an S3 SVGA adapter driver and Soundblaster sound. Program Manager is a bit clunky, so I installed Calmira II that gives Win 3.x a Windows 95 look and feel. Once I'm satisfied with how this config is running, I'll install the OS/2 Warp Workplace Shell to give it an OS/2 Warp look and feel.


Here are a few of the apps that I have installed...

Under "Audio Software" is the Creative Labs sound suite of tools. They all work, which I found to be a pleasant surprise.

CompuWorks Office and Pushbutton Works are the same apps sold by different companies and with different "skins". There was a Canadian version of this called FootPrint Works, a British version called Legato, and IBM had both a Windows and OS/2 version called, "IBM Works". During the OS/2 phase of my career at IBM, I spent a lot of time working with the developers of "IBM Works for OS/2". The entire suite has all of the basic functionality and yet weighs in at only 5MB of disk space.

I was a huge fan of Microsoft Home back in the day. Their edutainment titles were quite enjoyable for the time... especially when the only access to the internet from home was via dialup. I've got a bunch of them on their original CDROM. I ripped them to .iso files and wrote a tool to attach any of those .iso files to the virtual CD drive.

Here is Dangerous Creatures....

All of the multimedia elements work and perform perfectly. This M2 Mac Mini just blasts through this emulation of an x86 system. All while I'm doing "real" work, remoting into a remote desktop, encoding a video in iMovie, having a dozen tabs open in Chrome, and other miscellaneous tasks. (all on a base M2 Mac Mini 8GB/256GB)

Running these old multimedia titles are the main reason for running Windows 3.11, but I occasionally like to dabble with the older productivity suites, so I have MS Works installed. This is the last version supported by Windows 3.11:


I also have MS Office but have it installed in a separate DOSBox instance because it installs a ton of stuff that just clutters up the system.

THE BENEFIT OF DOSBOX OVER A TRUE VIRTUAL MACHINE:

The very nice thing about using DOSBox is that the filesystem is fully accessible outside of DOSBox. That makes getting files in and out of the filesystem super easy. In contrast, trying to get files in and out of a Windows 3.x or DOS virtual machine on VirtualBox is a real headache.

The folders that contain the "C: drive" for a DOSBox image are only about 200MB in disk space. That includes: DOS tools, all of Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and all of the installed applications.

It is also very easy to copy the folder tree from one machine to another... I can run this equally well on my Mac, Linux, and Windows 10 systems. I can get it to run on my Chromebooks, but that's a bit of a hassle.

Hopefully you found this interesting and maybe gave you a bit of an encouragement to tinker with a vintage operating system.

 

[mi7chy]

Windows 3.1x and Mac OS 6 has also been done on watch.

Too bad emulating anything recent like Windows 10 or Linux x64 is too slow and unusable with UTM on M1 iPad Pro or M1 MBA.

 

[Cape Dave]

The one thing that I miss when I upgraded from my 2017 iMac to a 2022 M2 Mac Mini was the loss of using virtual machines. I have VMs for OS/2, Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux Mint, and other flavors of Linux. I used DOSBox for running DOS and Windows 3.11.

Thankfully, there are versions of DOSBox that support Apple Silicon. I was able to use my previous DOSBox configuration from my Intel iMac, unmodified on my M2 Mac Mini.

Here it is running just as smooth as ever... (it runs fullscreen too for an immersive experience, but I thought it would be helpful to see it run in the context of Mac OS Ventura)
View attachment 2207520
This is DOSBox running Windows for Workgroups 3.11. WfW is configured to use an S3 SVGA adapter driver and Soundblaster sound. Program Manager is a bit clunky, so I installed Calmira II that gives Win 3.x a Windows 95 look and feel. Once I'm satisfied with how this config is running, I'll install the OS/2 Warp Workplace Shell to give it an OS/2 Warp look and feel.


Here are a few of the apps that I have installed...
View attachment 2207517
Under "Audio Software" is the Creative Labs sound suite of tools. They all work, which I found to be a pleasant surprise.

CompuWorks Office and Pushbutton Works are the same apps sold by different companies and with different "skins". There was a Canadian version of this called FootPrint Works, a British version called Legato, and IBM had both a Windows and OS/2 version called, "IBM Works". During the OS/2 phase of my career at IBM, I spent a lot of time working with the developers of "IBM Works for OS/2". The entire suite has all of the basic functionality and yet weighs in at only 5MB of disk space.

I was a huge fan of Microsoft Home back in the day. Their edutainment titles were quite enjoyable for the time... especially when the only access to the internet from home was via dialup. I've got a bunch of them on their original CDROM. I ripped them to .iso files and wrote a tool to attach any of those .iso files to the virtual CD drive.

Here is Dangerous Creatures....
View attachment 2207519
All of the multimedia elements work and perform perfectly. This M2 Mac Mini just blasts through this emulation of an x86 system. All while I'm doing "real" work, remoting into a remote desktop, encoding a video in iMovie, having a dozen tabs open in Chrome, and other miscellaneous tasks. (all on a base M2 Mac Mini 8GB/256GB)

Running these old multimedia titles are the main reason for running Windows 3.11, but I occasionally like to dabble with the older productivity suites, so I have MS Works installed. This is the last version supported by Windows 3.11:
View attachment 2207518

I also have MS Office but have it installed in a separate DOSBox instance because it installs a ton of stuff that just clutters up the system.

THE BENEFIT OF DOSBOX OVER A TRUE VIRTUAL MACHINE:

The very nice thing about using DOSBox is that the filesystem is fully accessible outside of DOSBox. That makes getting files in and out of the filesystem super easy. In contrast, trying to get files in and out of a Windows 3.x or DOS virtual machine on VirtualBox is a real headache.

The folders that contain the "C: drive" for a DOSBox image are only about 200MB in disk space. That includes: DOS tools, all of Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and all of the installed applications.

It is also very easy to copy the folder tree from one machine to another... I can run this equally well on my Mac, Linux, and Windows 10 systems. I can get it to run on my Chromebooks, but that's a bit of a hassle.

Hopefully you found this interesting and maybe gave you a bit of an encouragement to tinker with a vintage operating system.

OS/2! OMG! OLD! Now all you need is... Geoworks!

 

[retta283]

Windows 3 was the first GUI OS I used with any seriousness, crazy how ancient it looks now. Obviously your screenshots are showing a very modified UI. Recently I have been using Windows NT 3.51 on an old 1GB hard drive I found from around 1997. Same UI, but very modern underpinnings thanks to the NT. I was lucky to have access to the early NT systems and gladly switched to them over the unstable 95/98. Apparently you can run DOSBox on Windows NT 3, so you can emulate Windows 3.1 inside its younger brother. There are people running these OSes natively on modern machines with surprising levels of success.

One thing I'll say, while Progman is definitely outdated, the File Manager included in the 3 series is still very good. I recall using it with NT 4 where it was still included, and I ported it into Windows 2000. It had (and maybe still has) advantages over Windows Explorer, such as telling you who has files open. Very robust for remote folders. I miss that about older operating systems, you could patch things together with ease from different OSes if you didn't like changes or something was missing. Windows 2000 for whatever reason didn't include msconfig, but it was a drag-and-drop from 98 or later XP to get it to work. Simple.

 

[sracer]

OS/2! OMG! OLD! Now all you need is... Geoworks!

Actually...

😁
It works perfectly. Performance is very snappy. I've kept my copies of Geoworks Ensemble (and the follow-up, NewDeal Office). Geoworks was the main operating environment that I used for our home back in the day. It ran better than Windows on the same hardware and the software was feature-rich.

One of the stand-out features of Geoworks Ensemble was printing. Personal laser printers didn't exist. But print drivers provided laser-like quality out of 8 pin and 24 pin dot-matrix printers.

It was quite the stroll down memory lane to fire it up and browse through all of the files that I still have. Kids' school projects... handouts and rosters for their sports teams (coached them in baseball and soccer), and all of the finance and household maintenance stuff that I'd track.

One of my favorite handhelds of all time is the Hewlett Packard OmniGo 100 (I still own it). It ran GEOS, and was one of the first 2-in-1 devices that went from a clamshell with QWERTY keyboard that could fold back on itself into a stylus-driven micro tablet. It used a unique handwriting recognition system called Grafitti which was very effective.

 

[Cape Dave]

Actually...
View attachment 2209507
😁
It works perfectly. Performance is very snappy. I've kept my copies of Geoworks Ensemble (and the follow-up, NewDeal Office). Geoworks was the main operating environment that I used for our home back in the day. It ran better than Windows on the same hardware and the software was feature-rich.

One of the stand-out features of Geoworks Ensemble was printing. Personal laser printers didn't exist. But print drivers provided laser-like quality out of 8 pin and 24 pin dot-matrix printers.

It was quite the stroll down memory lane to fire it up and browse through all of the files that I still have. Kids' school projects... handouts and rosters for their sports teams (coached them in baseball and soccer), and all of the finance and household maintenance stuff that I'd track.

One of my favorite handhelds of all time is the Hewlett Packard OmniGo 100 (I still own it). It ran GEOS, and was one of the first 2-in-1 devices that went from a clamshell with QWERTY keyboard that could fold back on itself into a stylus-driven micro tablet. It used a unique handwriting recognition system called Grafitti which was very effective.

Wowsa, I did not expect this Fantastic! Yes, a better OS than Windows at the time, great printing!

 

[sracer]

Wowsa, I did not expect this Fantastic! Yes, a better OS than Windows at the time, great printing!

😂

I've owned personal computers for over 45 years (and into software development longer than that). The first commercially available one for me was the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I that I bought back in 1977.

Here's DOSBox running WfW3.11 and the Workplace Shell for Windows giving it a very OS/2 vibe. It even includes templates and notebook dialog for settings and configuration. Workplace Shell for Windows was originally "for internal use only" tool at IBM, and those of us who had to develop for both OS/2 and Windows really appreciated having a consistent feel when bouncing between the two.

WPS for Win has long since been given the green light to be publicly released.



I have a few more user environments to test... HP NewWave is on my list, but yardwork is calling. 😁

 

[Cape Dave]

😂

I've owned personal computers for over 45 years (and into software development longer than that). The first commercially available one for me was the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I that I bought back in 1977.

Here's DOSBox running WfW3.11 and the Workplace Shell for Windows giving it a very OS/2 vibe. It even includes templates and notebook dialog for settings and configuration. Workplace Shell for Windows was originally "for internal use only" tool at IBM, and those of us who had to develop for both OS/2 and Windows really appreciated having a consistent feel when bouncing between the two.

WPS for Win has long since been given the green light to be publicly released.

View attachment 2209600

I have a few more user environments to test... HP NewWave is on my list, but yardwork is calling. 😁

😁

 

[sracer]

Doing a bit more experimenting with the type of virtual machines that can be run on this M2 Mac Mini...

DOSBox is great for running DOS apps and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, but for any later version of Windows, it isn't too convenient. I've installed 86Box and managed to get Windows 98 and Windows ME installed an running.

Here are both instances running simultaneously... both at 100% performance. Earlier in the week, I had these two running while remotely connecting to my work virtual machine and having Youtube videos playing without any signs of slowing down...

...all this on a base 8GB RAM/256GB Storage M2 Mac Mini. The more I push the M2 Mini, the more impressed I am with it (I've been doing some media creation recently... iMovie video rendering, HandBrake DVD ripping, and audio post-processing at the same time)

Sure, these are both lightweight OSes but 86Box emulates bare-metal hardware which requires more resources than something like WINE for running Windows apps.

Next I'll see if I can get Windows XP running. My original reason for this experimentation was to find a way to run ancient Windows software on Apple Silicon. Running WfW 3.11 in DOSBox runs about 95% of the titles, but Win98 in 86Box runs it all... so "mission accomplished". 😁 If I can get XP running then that opens up some more possibilities.

 

[sracer]

Fired up another instance of 86Box, this time running Windows XP:



I had to bump up the motherboard, CPU, and RAM of this virtual machine to accommodate the resource need for XP. Installation went smoothly but slowly (as 86Box attempts to emulate vintage physical hardware).
This is the first VM that I've tested on this M2 Mac Mini that didn't completely and fully run at 100%. During boot up, the performance would drop as low as 45%.

The startup sound played, but stuttered. Running apps would cause the VM to drop momentarily to 70% but rebounded back up to 100%.

This is the difference between emulating hardware (like PCem/86Box) and hypervisors (like VirtualBox, KVM, VMWare). Even on my old Intel 2017 iMac using VirtualBox, it could run WinXP like a hot knife through butter.

I wouldn't use 86Box with WinXP for my vintage computing needs. Performance just isn't there. When I need XP, I'll use VirtualBox on one of my Windows notebooks.

But 86Box w/Windows 98 runs perfectly and accurately. Using it in fullscreen is fully immersive and enjoyable. It is actually a BETTER experience than running Windows 98 on the vintage hardware that 86Box emulates. In the past, I spent more time keeping vintage hardware operational than using it. But with this level of emulation, it is the best of both worlds.

It's been a fun experiment. The result is a Windows 98 emulated environment that runs great and supports all of the vintage software that I've thrown at it. I thought that with an Apple Silicon Mac Mini I would have to give up running vintage software, but I'm pleasantly surprised by its performance and additional confirmation that the base M2 Mac Mini is more than capable for tasks beyond simple productivity and web surfing.

If you've followed along this long... I hope that this experiment stirred up some interest to "Think Different".

 

[bobcomer]

Fired up another instance of 86Box, this time running Windows XP:

View attachment 2217331

I had to bump up the motherboard, CPU, and RAM of this virtual machine to accommodate the resource need for XP. Installation went smoothly but slowly (as 86Box attempts to emulate vintage physical hardware).
This is the first VM that I've tested on this M2 Mac Mini that didn't completely and fully run at 100%. During boot up, the performance would drop as low as 45%.

The startup sound played, but stuttered. Running apps would cause the VM to drop momentarily to 70% but rebounded back up to 100%.

This is the difference between emulating hardware (like PCem/86Box) and hypervisors (like VirtualBox, KVM, VMWare). Even on my old Intel 2017 iMac using VirtualBox, it could run WinXP like a hot knife through butter.

I wouldn't use 86Box with WinXP for my vintage computing needs. Performance just isn't there. When I need XP, I'll use VirtualBox on one of my Windows notebooks.

But 86Box w/Windows 98 runs perfectly and accurately. Using it in fullscreen is fully immersive and enjoyable. It is actually a BETTER experience than running Windows 98 on the vintage hardware that 86Box emulates. In the past, I spent more time keeping vintage hardware operational than using it. But with this level of emulation, it is the best of both worlds.

It's been a fun experiment. The result is a Windows 98 emulated environment that runs great and supports all of the vintage software that I've thrown at it. I thought that with an Apple Silicon Mac Mini I would have to give up running vintage software, but I'm pleasantly surprised by its performance and additional confirmation that the base M2 Mac Mini is more than capable for tasks beyond simple productivity and web surfing.

If you've followed along this long... I hope that this experiment stirred up some interest to "Think Different".

Extremely cool!!! Have you tried Windows 2000? What kind of hardware does it emulate? Network adapter, I hope, is one of them. I may have to start playing with it myself. I actually tried XP and Windows 2000 via UTM, but never really got it running well.

 

[sracer]

Extremely cool!!! Have you tried Windows 2000? What kind of hardware does it emulate? Network adapter, I hope, is one of them. I may have to start playing with it myself. I actually tried XP and Windows 2000 via UTM, but never really got it running well.

😂
I'm going to give it a try.

Regarding hardware emulation, 86Box has a wide range of devices it emulates... from motherboards, CPU, soundcards, video cards, mice, harddrives, game controllers etc. For XP, I used what they recommended. I guess I could tweak it downward to see if I could get the emulation always running at 100%.

 

[dmr727]

I've been a big DOSBox fan for a long time - it's saved me a lot of money by scratching the nostalgia itch enough where I don't go out and purchase a bunch of vintage hardware. I've never played around with vintage Windows though - it's cool to see how well it works!

 

[sracer]

I've been a big DOSBox fan for a long time - it's saved me a lot of money by scratching the nostalgia itch enough where I don't go out and purchase a bunch of vintage hardware. I've never played around with vintage Windows though - it's cool to see how well it works!

Even though I've been tinkering with 86Box more recently, DOSBox is still my go-to for DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 tinkering. It just runs flawlessly on everything I throw it on. And although it is easy to get files INTO DOSBox and 86Box, only DOSBox allows for easily getting files OUT OF those environments.

Typically, I use those environments for running edutainment titles, but if I have to actually work on some old documents, I'll do that in my DOSBox environments because it is dead-easy to get the files out into the modern world. 😁

Here's 86Box running Windows 2000 Professional. I simply cloned the Win XP instance of 86Box and did a fresh install. It performed much better than XP on the same emulated hardware. Nearly full 100%. I may do some tweaking to the hardware profiles to see if I can get a rock-steady 100%.

 

[Algus]

I wasn't aware that Windows 3.11 had a start menu interface

I'd only ever seen that old file manager interface where you got the rows of folders

 

[sracer]

I wasn't aware that Windows 3.11 had a start menu interface

I'd only ever seen that old file manager interface where you got the rows of folders

It doesn't. That start menu UI is courtesy of Calmira II... a free 3rd party tool that provides that capability and makes 3.11 more usable.

 

[retta283]

Here's 86Box running Windows 2000 Professional. I simply cloned the Win XP instance of 86Box and did a fresh install. It performed much better than XP on the same emulated hardware. Nearly full 100%. I may do some tweaking to the hardware profiles to see if I can get a rock-steady 100%.

Not surprised to see this, Windows 2000 was way more hardware efficient than XP. On mid-late 2000s hardware and running as a VM on modern x86 hardware this is not so appreciable, but it really does make a huge difference on slower hardware. A lot of it comes down to RAM, XP really needs 512MB or 1GB due to overhead, as ridiculous as it sounds for a 2001 OS.

Windows 2000 can be patched to run 95% of the applications that XP does anyway, so other than theme engine and some certain programs there is little need for XP if you can't get it working well. I have always preferred to use 2000 in my VMs that run Office 2003 (back when the Mac version of Excel was a joke for large files) for this reason. Even today I still use it for Mach2, a program that requires as little overhead as possible so 2000 is an obvious choice. With 2000 I can get away with a 500MHz processor without issue, XP needs closer to 1GHz or more to run this program smoothly.