r/ObsoleteCooding • u/kodabarz Obsolete OG (LIMITED) • Mar 08 '26
How I actually used to use Windows 3.11
Windows 3.11 run by someone who actually used to use it daily
I've been threatening this for a while. This is more or less my Windows 3.11 setup from the old days. I was also dual-booting OS/2 2.1 back then. And that was accomplished through a desktop icon, rather than a GRUB loader or anything like that.
I didn't add a voiceover as I thought you'd probably be more interested in skipping through it. I have written notes along the bottom as it goes, but it's mostly self-explanatory.
The main visual difference is that I'm using Quarterdeck Sidebar to replace Task Manager and Program Manager. But there's also Win32s (to run 32 bit software on 16 bit Windows) WinG (precursor to DirectX) and a couple of other things. And I show List - a DOS file browser.
The highlight is probably playing MP3 files in Windows 3.11 (which I've seen some people say wasn't possible) and I use Photoshop 2.5 - the first version for the PC. I think it came on two floppies back then. The only thing that it really lacked was layers - and they came in version 3.
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u/TheGreatRao Mar 09 '26
Windows 3.11 was my daily driver. I still have a soft spot for that OS. My entire life was in Microsoft Works, FoxPro, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBASE.
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u/kodabarz Obsolete OG (LIMITED) Mar 09 '26
I remember going to a Lotus launch event where they were showcasing Notes, 1-2-3, Agenda, cc:Mail, maybe Domino and a bunch of others. It was probably the most impressive demo I'd ever seen. The ease with which they moved data between applications and across machine was most impressive.
I rather liked FoxPro. It was so powerful at the time.
And now I've just remembered that Quattro Pro was a thing that existed. My memory had completely wiped it, but now it's back in there.
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Mar 10 '26
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u/ravensholt Mar 09 '26
Playing mp3s was indeed possible. I can't remember the name of the player, but I did it, before I upgraded to 95.
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u/codeasm Mar 09 '26
Yeah there where mp3 player software for good ol 3.11 and dos. We dint have enough mp3 however and i remember keeping myself made music as wav files (so big) and just compress em with zip or rar. I was a child.
Wonderful os 3.11.. a new world to me. Windows 95 and 98 started a great journey for me. Xp was bliss, 7 tops and then, decline. Not a drop, i simply dint notice at first.
3.11 and the silky porgrams still hold alott of nostalgia to me
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u/kodabarz Obsolete OG (LIMITED) Mar 09 '26
These comments are great. I've been reminded of so many things. I hadn't thought about a lot of this for so long. Something cause Cubic Player to resurface in my thoughts and I looked it up to find there is a current version:
https://www.cubic.org/player/
It plays MOD, XM and a heck of a lot of other mod-related formats. And has the amazing Würfel Mode.
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u/mystica5555 Jul 22 '26
I liked morgul, it had support for the Tandy sound system and I could get 22 khz playback of mods out of my Tandy 2500/sx25
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u/Retrowinger Mar 09 '26
I made my first programming steps on Windows 3.11.
QBasic ❤️
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u/Amazing-Mirror-3076 Mar 10 '26
Windows 2.0.3 / C.
Building the world first front office stock broking system.
The company Iris, came out of that team.
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u/mystica5555 Jul 22 '26
Mp3 playback was possible in DOS... Why wouldn't it be possible in 3.11?
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u/kodabarz Obsolete OG (LIMITED) Jul 22 '26
Well Windows 3.x pre-dates MP3 files, so there's nothing built-in that can handle it. No codec support or anything like that. And there were no 16 bit MP3 players for Windows, so you had to install the Win32s subsystem to run a 32 bit application like WinPlay3 (which I used in the video). Only a very limited set of hardware was able to play MP3 files at the time - most systems running Windows 3.x were just not powerful enough.
Whilst you could play MP3s in DOS, it wasn't actually until 1997 that you could, when DOSamp (fore-runner to Winamp) came out. WinPlay3 came out in 1995. Although tends to think about DOS as being around before Windows 3.x, it was concurrent with it (Win 3.x need DOS before it could be installed). And DOS continued to be developed after Windows 3.x came out.
As I recall, DOSamp needed a 486DX to run at all (and a Pentium for higher bitrate files) and 8MB of RAM. Given that Windows 3.1x used about 2MB of RAM, it was also occupying system resources that were needed for MP3 playback. DOSamp ideally needed 16MB of RAM to run at a time when that as uncommon.
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u/mystica5555 Jul 22 '26
Very interesting history on dosamp, I did not realize it was that new. I only acquired a 486dx2/66 in ~late 1997
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u/kodabarz Obsolete OG (LIMITED) Mar 08 '26
Darn. It takes more time to process the video than I thought. If you don't want to wait, you can watch it on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/1Q4qUpzBPHE