[HN Gopher] Windows 3.1 Flash Edition
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       Windows 3.1 Flash Edition
        
       Author : picture
       Score  : 86 points
       Date   : 2022-07-12 05:52 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sdomi.pl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sdomi.pl)
        
       | cable2600 wrote:
       | Too bad it does not have Sound Blaster emulation.
        
         | ranma42 wrote:
         | For coreboot there are actually some interesting low-level
         | emulation options: The PCH has "I/O Trap" settings, where you
         | can set about 4 ISA I/O ranges to be trapped (generates an SMI,
         | so the SMM code can handle it), so it should be possible to
         | emulate the Sound Blaster I/O port behavior.
         | 
         | I don't know if the trap mechanism allows you to also trap the
         | ISA DMA ports, which you'd need to do for DMA emulation.
         | 
         | Slightly higher level you could use classic VMM or more modern
         | hypervisor functionality to do the emulation.
        
       | dkonofalski wrote:
       | I'm very confused by this... It says Windows 3.1 but the Recycle
       | Bin and screenshot clearly show Windows 9x. The Minesweeper
       | screenshot is definitely from Windows 3.x, though. What sort of
       | wizardry is this?
        
         | kotaKat wrote:
         | Calmira! It's a third party shell replacement for Program
         | Manager that provides a Win9x "feel".
         | 
         | http://www.calmira.de/
        
           | ilikepi wrote:
           | Reminds me of the shell replacement Microsoft released to
           | provide a Win95-style UI in Windows NT 3.51[1]. I ran it for
           | a while in 95/96. Somewhere in my closet I still have the CD-
           | ROM pack with the OS and the addon...
           | 
           | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51#NewShell
        
           | timbit42 wrote:
           | I much prefer WPS4WIN which implements OS/2's WorkPlace Shell
           | on Windows 3.x. Here are some screenshots:
           | http://toastytech.com/guis/wps.html
           | 
           | I combine this with a Windows 3.x tool called MAKEOVER which
           | lets you edit the window buttons in your video driver. This
           | lets me make the window buttons in the Windows apps look like
           | OS/2 buttons.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Wow, I had forgotten about those weird tabbed notebooks. :)
        
       | a_t48 wrote:
       | Oh, I remember this person - they wrote the minecraft server in
       | bash.
        
       | trilinearnz wrote:
       | Fascinating. So he's loaded a full instance of Dos/Win3.1 onto
       | the chip used for the Thinkpad's BIOS itself? Very cool.
       | 
       | One thing I didn't understand was why it was necessary to
       | dismantle the laptop as shown in the first pic. Some more details
       | around that would be useful. Presumably something about getting
       | around the flashing limitations if one was to attempt it purely
       | from a software approach?
        
       | mappu wrote:
       | Haruhi is an anachronism here, that was well into the Windows XP
       | era.
        
       | corrral wrote:
       | I was worried someone had re-created Win 3.1 in Flash and was
       | like "but how will I view that?" but this is much cooler.
       | 
       | Also, props for having the best Gem in the site header.
       | 
       | [EDIT] Also, this site and all the "friends / cool people" sites
       | on main page are _outstanding_. If this is what The Youths are up
       | to, they might be alright after all.
       | 
       | [EDIT EDIT] sorry for assuming you're one of The Youths if you're
       | not, most of the photos on the other sites (jesus, that comes off
       | creepy, sorry again) looked fairly young so I made some
       | assumptions.
        
         | Dwedit wrote:
         | It would not surprise me if someone managed to build DosBox
         | running inside of Flash. Maybe a build made for ASMJS could
         | (slowly) work.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | With Cheerpx thanks WebAssembly.
         | 
         | https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | at the bottom of the page:
         | 
         | > (c) sdomi 2010-2022
         | 
         | fwiw
        
           | corrral wrote:
           | Spotted that after I posted, probably makes something around
           | 24 the lowest likely age, but I'm _just_ old enough that that
           | 's still The Youths to me :-)
           | 
           | [EDIT] Anyway I wasn't trying to be weird about this, just
           | complimenting some awesome young people (some of the others
           | definitely appear to be in the "young people" range) so I'll
           | just leave it there. I'm just going to quietly check out
           | these delightful throwback hobbyist sites and not engage
           | again so I stop being such an awkward old weirdo :-)
        
         | half-kh-hacker wrote:
         | > The Youths
         | 
         | for context: you've stumbled on the queer tech subculture of
         | the fediverse; we're mostly in our 20s or teens
         | 
         | > sites on main page are outstanding
         | 
         | maia's is my favourite
        
       | Narishma wrote:
       | (2019)
        
       | int_19h wrote:
       | How soon before we can squeeze a basic Linux distro into UEFI?
        
         | rsend1 wrote:
         | I put a nearly full TinyCore Linux distribution (incl GUI and
         | WiFi drivers) into the ROM of my Thinkpad X210 using Coreboot,
         | fun little project.
        
           | int_19h wrote:
           | I suppose a better question then is, why isn't this routinely
           | done for factory firmware? It seems that such a distro would
           | be immensely helpful for any kind of recovery. Not to mention
           | that, if it has a web browser, it could be used in a pinch to
           | get stuff done even on a machine with a failed SSD etc.
        
         | woleium wrote:
         | that's already possible
        
           | sparcpile wrote:
           | With the EFI stub in the Linux kernel and the ability to
           | embed an initrd in the kernel, you can boot a small
           | distribution with just the kernel file. The only issue is
           | that it takes a long time to load a very large kernel into
           | memory like that.
           | 
           | I tried that with a buildroot based hypervisor I created for
           | my home lab.
        
           | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-07-13 23:00 UTC)