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Internet Archive Brings Classic Windows 3.1 Apps To Your Browser (google.com)

The Internet Archive has made it possible for you to make a virtual visit to the wide, wide world of Windows 3.1 games (and other apps, too), via a collection of virtualized images. Jason Scott is the game collector and digital archivist behind the online museum of malware mentioned here a few days ago. "Now," Ars Technica reports, "Scott and his crew have done it again with the Windows 3.X Showcase, made up of a whopping 1,523 downloads (and counting), all running in a surprisingly robust, browser-based JavaScript emulation of Windows 3.1. You'll recognize offerings like WinRisk and SkiFree, but the vast majority of the collection sticks to a particularly wild world of Windows shareware history, one in which burgeoning developers seemed to throw everything imaginable against 3.1's GUI wall to see what stuck." Says the article: A volunteer "really did the hard work" of getting the Windows files required for each DOSBOX instance down to 1.8 MB, and in the process came up with a more centralized version of those files on his server's side, as opposed to kinds that would require optimizations for every single emulated app.

4 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Can someone explain how it does it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Javascript run version of dosbox emulating computer to run windows/apps.

  2. Link to the real thing by Ivan+Stepaniuk · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just pick your application to run here:

    https://archive.org/details/so...

    --
    My other signature is a car
  3. Re:Apps by nine-times · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe you have a bad memory...?

    I've been working in the IT industry since the early 90s, and the term "app" has been used as a shorthand for "application" since then at least. It has fairly recently taken the connotation of a mobile app, or some other kind of mini-application (web apps?), but that's actually something from the last 10 years. I forget exactly when that started because I have a bad memory too.

  4. Actual Link by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The actual link to the archive is: https://archive.org/details/so...