0xC9: Windows 3.11 on iPhone

Is that really Windows 3.11 running on my iPhone? No, not really. I'm just accessing it over VNC with my iPhone. It's actually running on my desktop in Virtual PC as a 386 DX with 64 MB RAM and 250 MB HDD.

What happened was, I decided to install DOS 6.22, then it grew from there. I found a Windows for Workgroups 3.11 ISO file, then the Y2K fix. Then the 32-bit update with Freecell, and so on.

I even found the Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 and S3 Trio64V video driver so I could have sound and use full color depth (I left it at 640x480 just for kicks). There's the network card driver and a TCP/IP stack so I can access the Internet. Not easy. Virtual PC itself was no help at all with any of this except for the ability to undo disk writes.

It's like building a ship in a bottle. Some people see that as fun. Others say, "WHY!?"

It's also great how all this stuff came back to me. Little things, like which IRQ the sound card is on or which DOS programs will run in EMS vs. XMS. Then there's remembering what to do when you install a video driver that doesn't work. Yep, run the setup from the command line because there's no "safe mode."

There were also some surprises like the fact that Creative Labs drivers can still be downloaded from their web site, even in 2009! Another surprise was that Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 was available along with a matching version of Outlook Express. IE even installed a version of Java that runs applets. Not from Microsoft's web site, mind you. No, I had to Google all this. Thanks Google!

One thing I found downright shocking was that AOL Instant Messenger works. Think about that for a second. This app is twelve years old and version 1.0 can still connect to the same servers. Well, I guess that's not too amazing considering AIM is merely a chat app.

So none of this is actually useful, but it's certainly a blast from the past. Fun stuff.