Windows 3.11

Here's my saga: I fixed some computers at my girlfriend's church, and as a thank you recieved an Acer computer, complete with a 12 inch monitor, "Quad-speed" cd rom, 14.4 kbps fax modem, and a 200mhz Pentium. It was pretty funny to see "Intel Inside! Pentium Processor" on the thing. Some files on the hard drive were corrupt, so it wouldn't boot up right. I took the hard drive out and installed it in my other computer, and was exicted to see that Windows 3.0 had been installed on it. I love really old things, so this ruled for me. I was disappointed to see that it wouldn't work, but then I remembered that my dad had gotten into computers around the beginning of the 90's so I root around his old floppy disks. Lo and behold, I find 6 Windows 3.11 floppies, 3 MS-DOS v. 6.22 floppies, After Dark, Lord Of The Rings and Where In The U.S.A. Is Carmen Sandiego? on floppies (Compatible with Tandys, it claims). All this stuff really exictes me, so my question is how would I go about installing these things on my brand new Acer? I have no idea if anyone will know how to do this, realizing the antiquity of these programs, but if someone could help me out I'd be forever grateful. I'm itching to play some Lord Of The Rings. Hopefully my 16 mbs of RAM can handle it.

 

Those floppies are old. First thing I would do is back them up to floppy images with something like Virtual Floppy Drive or WinImage. It's very likely your floppies are bad. They're only supposed to last about 5 years under average conditions.

Next, assuming all your software is functional, you'll have to do an old school installation.

1. Use the DOS 6.22 diskettes to partition the hard drive and format it. I think you can do this by booting to Disk 1.
2. Install DOS 6.22. To do that, boot to Disk 1.
3. Install Windows 3.11. Insert Disk 1 and run a:\setup or a:\install. It usually says right on the floppy label.
4. Install remaining software.

 

If memory serves me correctly and all your disks are good, then you shouldn't have any problems. First install DOS, as Win 3.11 ran on top of DOS. It might not be a bad idea to format the hard drive, and I believe the first DOS disk gives that option. After DOS is installed, put the first Window's floppy in the drive and type setup. Ater that Windows should ask you for each disk in order! Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for the help, but I'm having trouble installing DOS. When I format the hard drive and put it in a computer as a master, it doesn't boot past the bios. How do I install DOS over it? Is there a way I can put the hard drive in another computer as a slave and copy the DOS files from the floppy to the hard drive?
Thanks for the help.

 

Nevermind, I got it. Thanks for the help.

I'm really digging the 15 year old media player.

 

da chicken, sorry I didn't see you there. Must have been reading and replying as you posted. Sorry!

 

Back again. I got windows and dos both installed and working, but now I don't know how to install the rest of the software.If I boot from the floppy, it tells me to take out the disk. If I boot to DOS and try and type something like "a:\setup" it'll say "This software needs windows to operate"
if i boot to windows, go to a DOS prompt and type a:\setup, it says the same thing. Any suggestions?

 

Have you tried goung to the File Manager (under the Main Program Group IIRC) and then selecting the A drive and double clicking the install or setup program?