May the ending of your year be as fancy as the ending of this synthesized rendition. 🎄
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Category: Retro Computing
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Windows 3.11 in QEMU
Thanks to this repo you can fire up Windows 3.11 painlessly and even connect to the Internet! Lots of goodies are already installed so it’s a fun virtual trip.
To get it going on my Mac all I had to do was:
brew install qemu- Run
qemu-system-i386 -nic user,ipv6=off,model=ne2k_pci -device sb16 -vga cirrus -snapshot -no-shutdown hda.img
There were some graphical glitches (restarting or dropping down into DOS and back helps) and it crashes when running Netscape, but Microsoft Bob seemed to work fine!
After configuring the network’s gateway and DNS servers, I had to visit one of my favorite test sites for old browsers:
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iPadOS on a CRT
I have lots to post about related to my recent vintage / retro computing adventures, but in the meantime here’s iPadOS on a CRT.
It’s actually kind of nice! The biggest downside, however, is that the CRT only ran at 1280×1024@60Hz. The resolution is fine, but the refresh rate is quite low for a CRT – my eyes wouldn’t be able to handle it very long. I’ve always been sensitive to rates lower than 85Hz on CRTs.
The hardware to make it work:
- A CRT.
- An iPad.
- An Apple Digital AV adapter which has HDMI output, such as this USB-C one.
- An active HDMI -> VGA adapter such as this one (it has to have external power).
- A USB hub is nice for wired peripherals, but optional. I have a wired Microsoft Optical mouse with a Keychron C1 (reds) connected in this video.
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Voodoo Economics
I have two GPUs on my desk right now. On the left is my Voodoo3 3000 that I’ve had for ~20 years. On the right is my GTX 1060 6GB from 2017.
Due to the retro computing market, the Voodoo3 sells for more. 😳
