Gaming World Forums

General Category => Technology and Programming => Topic started by: Monty on March 07, 2008, 08:57:41 pm

Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: Monty on March 07, 2008, 08:57:41 pm
On the Windows 95 Installation CD, there's a cabinet file called Mini.cab in the root directory. It contains Mini-Windows, a tiny version of Windows 95.

I'm currently in the process of getting this small operating system to run off of a hard disk. It works, so far, and it will boot the OS, but it needs a shell.

I'm trying to use the Windows 3.1 PROGMAN shell (Plus shell.dll, etc.) and it might work. If not, I can use the Windows 95 shell, but it is quite a bit larger, and it would defeat the purpose of Mini-Windows.

Anyone else interested in this project?
Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: dada on March 07, 2008, 09:12:06 pm
That seems pretty cool. Keep in mind that TASKMAN is already part of Windows 95 itself. You don't need to get it from Windows 3.1, in case that's what you're trying.
Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: Frisky SKeleton on March 07, 2008, 11:10:58 pm
progman from 3.11 won't work in 95, i think it's only 16 bit.

there's a special version that comes with windows 95 and it's pretty horrible
Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: Statix on March 08, 2008, 12:19:20 am
What are the actual filesizes for this stuff?
Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: mar77a on March 08, 2008, 01:04:45 am
Hiren's boot CD comes with a mini-version of Win98, I think.
Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: Grindie on March 09, 2008, 09:15:28 pm
Euuuwww Windows 95!
Title: Mini-Windows, anyone?
Post by: Monty on March 11, 2008, 06:27:39 pm
The filesize for the entire Miniwin cabinet file, extracted, is 687kb. I'm trying to keep it small enough to keep on a floppy disk.

Anyways, I AM NOT trying to make Windows 3.1 run on a Win95 shell, I'm using the Windows 95 I/O and basic structure (which is Mini-Win) and I'm using the Windows 3.1 shell to operate it by.

I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it does. I haven't been able to work on it in a few days, but I'm going to try again tomorrow. Today I have to go to work.

The computer I'm trying to get it to work on is a Pentium MMX 200MHz, 32MB of RAM, 16-Bit Matrox GFX card, and a TRUE Sound Blaster 16 sound card. It's an old HP computer that I have turned into my test PC.