So yeah its a new binary release version 0.8.1. Download the zip here: otvdm-v0.8.1.zip
So far things seem good, the torture test is usually compiling with QuickC for Windows, and SimCity for Windows 1.0. Excel & Word are as always bonus material.
Follow the project over on github here: winevdm
This version has MANY issues fixed, and is capable of running more and more Win16 software on Win64 based OS’s.
One of the more exciting things is that as long as I do a print setup first, I can actually print on a new printer from MS Word 2.0c!
You can download it from the releases page here:
https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/releases/tag/v0.5.0
It’s incredible how much it’s improved since I last touched on WineVDM, the port of Wine to run on Windows using the MS-DOS Player (and Mame 80386 emulation) at it’s heart.
The latest source build WineVDM_2018_07_30b.7z is now capable of loading and running Sim City for Windows 1.0.
I found it best to install Windows 3.0 into DOSBox, and then your application. After the install I copy the application so the physical drive of the hosts matches where it was installed, and then unpack the 7z build archive into that directory. There is a ‘WINDOWS’ directory and I xcopy the installed Windows directory into there so it has all the INI files, fonts and all that jazz. To make sure it doesn’t conflict I delete the following from Windows 3.0:
del windows\system\*.drv
del windows\system\*.exe
del windows\system\*.mod
del windows\system\WIN87EM.DLL
Since these files are most certainly going to be emulated by WineVDM. After that it’s time to run stuff!
130 KLOC!
I should also add that I’ve been able to use QuickC for Windows, and build a ‘non trivial’ program, the Fortran f2c compiler weighing in at 104,245 lines , and use that to compile 16,182 lines of Fortran 77 into C, and then compile the resulting C + the Fortran runtime library a staggering 130,405 lines of code, and the resulting binary works, just like it did on Windows 3.0!
I’ve also been able to print a text file using Microsoft Word 2.0 much to my amazement, although anything involving fonts just locks or crashes. I can’t say I’m all that surprised.
And yes, it does in fact run SkiFree 1.0
SkiFree on WineVDM
So no need to wait for Win3mu, there is WineVDM which is being developed RIGHT NOW, and the source is already available. You can see my notes on building it here.
This is super cool, building on Takeda Toshiya’s excellent MS-DOS Player, is a fusion of the MS-DOS emulation with portions of Wine to run Win16 applications on Win32 capable OS’s.
Excel 3.0a
Yes, it really can run Excel 3.0a. I don’t know how much people will want a 27 year old spreadsheet, but here we go! It’s incredibly buggy, and many Microsoft programs don’t like their accelerators, or menus, more things don’t run than do, but when they do it’s great.
The releases on the github page are quite old, and you’ll really want to bulid this from source. You will need Visual Studio 2017 to build this, and I used the Community Edition. While trying to compiling I got this error:
Really it’s no help at all
Performing Custom Build Tools
The system cannot find the path specified.
Well that doesn’t help us at all!
Setting the Tools -> Options -> Build and Run, MSBuild sections to both detailed verbosity revealed:
“C:\Users\neozeed\source\repos\winevdm-master\Release\convspec” “krnl386.exe16.spec” KERNEL > “krnl386.exe16.asm” && “C:\msys32\mingw64\bin\as” –32 -o “krnl386.exe16.obj” “krnl386.exe16.asm”
Performing Custom Build Tools
The system cannot find the path specified.
So it turns out it is using GNU GAS to assemble itself. So I just copied in an ‘as.exe’ from another MinGW install I have lying around.
c:\msys32\mingw64\bin\as.exe –version
GNU assembler 2.17.50 20060824
So it doesn’t even have to be a hyper modern version, as you can see with the –32 we are building 32bit based stuff anyways.
And with that all done we have a release build.
F2c Dungeon
I had no luck with Sim City, but Sim Life & Sim Earth load at least, but not being able to use the menus means you can’t really use them. Microsoft Word 1.1 won’t load at all, while Word 2.0 will load but again no menus, and it’s unable to register enough OLE to open documents so it’s not very useful again. Although my ancient QuickC for Windows F2c port of Dungeon, works okay, although QuickC for Windows itself does not currently run.
WinHelp 3.00
Another great thing is that you can run WinHelp for all your ancient documenation fixes! Also MS Write from the ancient days of Windows 3.0/3.1 works as well
Write
You can download my binary build here: WineVDM_2018_07_30.7z. It’s almost a given that you will need the Visual C++ 2017 runtime.
The latest version allows the menus to work properly so you can actually use Word for Windows 2.0 and SimEarth & SimLife now! Further updates let you actually select and open files in Word for Windows 2.0!