You’re a non-profit, this is great!'”Īs his early Windows collection grew and grew, Scott and his collaborators quickly came up with a way to run a solid instance of Windows 3.1.1 within a Web browser. “‘I can’t find a host, I can’t find a dependable URL. “I love being somebody’s missing piece,” Scott says. His efforts thus far have resulted in plenty of people sending software his way, as well, which he always gladly accepts. At one point, I had a group go through and grab stuff from every existing FTP site, for example. “Along with the emulation, where we can make something run again, I try to first make sure we have everything. For starters, the software: “As a software curator, I’ve been collecting pretty much everything, from driver CDs for old network cards all the way through to applications and grabbing collections that other people have carried,” Scott said to Ars. Scott says the pieces to this project have been in his hands for some time. 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.
Now, 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. From beloved classics like Oregon Trail to cult hits like Karateka, the collection’s thousands of titles seemed to have it all.
Thanks to that team’s efforts, thousands of seemingly lost pieces of software had found new life, all brought back to life with free downloads and a mighty fine Web browser emulation solution.
We were immediately intrigued, remembering exactly what Scott and his slew of volunteers did for MS-DOS and other computing and gaming platforms. What we did for MS-DOS, we’re doing for Windows 3.1.” “On Thursday, we’re going to put up a bunch of Windows 3.1 software. “I have one more drop for you,” Scott said. Written by Sam Machkovech / Courtesy of ArsTechnicaĮarlier this week, Internet Archive software collector and historian Jason Scott answered our phone call to talk about one of his latest efforts: the Malware Museum, which offered online passersby a glimpse at how nearly 80 classic viruses worked once they infected an MS-DOS computer. We enjoyed picking his brain about the collection and told him so, at which point he stopped us from hanging up the phone. Warp back to 1992 with Ross Perot, Saddam Hussein, hundreds of shareware nag notices. 1,500 Windows 3.1 shareware apps are now free, immortalized on your browser
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