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What an interesting question, I've done that before, mostly out of nostalgia. And, of course, frustration with the upgrade treadmill.
There's essentially nothing you can't do with a 16-bit windows, it's what people worked with and played with, so there's a bit of everything .

You should install Win32s, WinG, Video for Windows, Trumpet Winsock.

Honestly I'm surprised you found it hard to track down old software, there's a pretty huge scene around it.
You can get pretty much every OS and application here: http://winworldpc.com/library_m1.shtml
This is also a great site to get old software: http://www.oldversion.com/
Moar: http://wiki.oldos.org/Downloads/Windows3x
http://gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm

There are some surprisingly modern browsers available for 3.1, grab Opera 3.62 (also Netscape 4 and IE 5.5), and try Calmira for a Win9x type of GUI running under 3.1 - put the default XP wallpaper on that, and you will fool a lot of people :)
I once hacked XP to natively run the NT 3.51 shell on startup, instead of Windows Explorer. It wasn't hard.

DOSBox sucks for Windows, though, you should probably just run a VM, added performance. You can find some Windows games on abandonware sites, Civilization 2 was a good one :)
http://www.gameswin.biz/gameen.php?id=379

Let me know if you need anything else, would love to have a chat with a fellow enthusiast.

There's a free clone of WPS for Windows 3.1 that ran after a fashion on Windows 95. I played with it some a decade ago and I kind of liked it -- which is unusual as I don't care for Apple's offerings, think that Windows peaked back about the Win95OSR2 release, and am certain that Gnome has to be some sort of joke. (Mostly I use XFCE and the KDE applications).

Anyway, the Zip file is still downloadable -- http://ftp.gaby.de/pub/win3x/wpsfw151.zip and there are some screen shots at http://toastytech.com/guis/wps.html.

I wonder if WPS will run under wine?

I'm not really sure anything in CP/M qualifies as massively inventive.

Quote; "CP/M on the other hand is based upon the Operating System for the DEC PDP-10, "TOPS-10", at least concerning file and device naming conventions, as well as for some command designations. Other influences are less clear, but undisputable."

There was indeed quite the same "look and feel" (or odd PDP logic - illegal UUO - unimplemented user operation (error - never got (really understood) that one):)

CC.

Took me a good 15 minutes to find http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0 DE2DB143FF932A3575AC0A961948260

And some enigmatic stuff here: http://www.gaby.de/ftp/pub/win3x/archive/softlib/1 997w3x.pdf

And a cryptic reference to the Mach 10 and 20 here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeobsoleteproduc ts

Other than that, there is not much info left out there.

I think the Mach 10 was an 80186 with RAM and such on an 8-bit ISA card, probably an 8MHz or 12MHz part. The Mach 20 was a 80286, and cooler. Probably a 16MHz part. I think the Mach 10 would take 1.5MB RAM, as a heaping shovelful of 16- or 22-pin DRAM. The Mach 20 similar. Both had an InPort for Bus Mouse. I guess the Mach 20 could be had with or without the RAM expansion, and with or without an updated FDC to run 3.5" drives. I had an XT-Turbo at 8MHz that already handled 3.5" drives. Woot...

Just a quick look, but it seems about the only thing there with less info on it out there is Modern Jazz.

rick

CP/M was not free or open source.

Since the cost of version 1.3 (1.4?*) was only 70 $, this operating system soon became installed on every 8080 computer. CP/M, what's that?

I'll leave adjustment for inflation as an exercise for the reader.

William Gates was waiting in the wings, and he signed a deal to give IBM an operating system.

An engineer, Tim Paterson, at that company had stolen the ideas of CPM/86 and created a cheap clone of it. PC-DOS was that clone

Kildall got nothing and drowned in his own bitterness. In the later years of his life, he drank himself into alcoholism and eventually died in a bar.

Oh (scroll down) yeah?

I've got an old CP/M machine that I'd love to put a new monitor in and perhaps a mini motherboard in. Go for the retro feel...

The one on the right....

http://www.gaby.de/eterm.htm

This is such a lame argument. Windows swaps out inactive applications. It just does. That's the way it works. When something is not being used, it gets swapped out to the HDD and more room is made for the drive cache. If IE uses libraries which never get swapped out because MS has crafted the OS not to swap the stuff out, that's a good conspiracy theory, but it doesn't explain Windows 3.1.

Internet Explorer 5 runs on Windows 3.1 with 8 megs of RAM. Yes, Windows 3.1 with 8 megs of RAM. They recommend 16, but I've run it fine on 8. You can't practially use more than one window, but it is usable. You certainly can't load up Mozilla in that. My point is not that it is a practical configuration for modern websites, my point is that it has a FAR smaller footprint, no matter how many people claim that it's just the libraries and the quick launch tool. (It's hard to find downloads of it these days... but here's a German version just to prove it.)

When I don't use Mozilla, it gets swapped out to my HDD. It doesn't matter how much RAM I have, it just will. Unless of course, I disable swap altogether, or tweak the registry. But then I would have an app sucking back 40MB of RAM.

My machine is an 800MHz PIII with 256M of RAM. I use more than just Mozilla on the machine. I should not have to upgrade for Mozilla when the machine is overpowered for everything else.

Posted using Mozilla 1.1 on Linux. My last post was using Mozilla 1.1 on Windows 2000. I use Mozilla because IE abuses standards, and now Mozilla has some great features like ad blocking.

Admittedly this link supports your alternative expansion, but as just that. Alternative.

Altos 580

there it is in all its glory ;)