Run Windows 3.1 and 95 on your iPhone!

This is pretty cool, I have to say… useless though. There is no on-screen keyboard and no way to hook up an external keyboard via USB either, so at this point it’s nothing more than something kind of cool that you’ll use maybe once then promptly uninstall.

The app is available for jailbroken iPhones only obviously, and it’s available through Cydia. It’s called “Windoze” so search for that… It’s in the xSellize repository, or you can install the .deb package manually through the terminal if you so choose. The package (which includes both OS images) is about 35MB.

I have to give the author(s) of the original program called “Bochs” some credit though. It’s an open source IA-32 emulator that works on most operating systems… read more about it on their site. Definitely a pretty cool project, but the port to the iPhone lacks value. I can definitely see value in the app if it had proper input interfaces, but it doesn’t so all you can do currently is point and click and even that doesn’t work too well.

I thought I’d share some screenshots I took, we’ll start with Windows 3.1 then do Windows 95:

Here's the Bochs icon, right next to FB which I use rarely.

After adding the xSellize repo in Cydia and installing windoze, this is the icon you’ll see on your iPhone.

Initial Bochs/iPhone Screen

Choose your image…

Info Screen

Thanks, xSellize for giving the original author credit. There are a lot of stolen applications floating around out there, but this isn’t one of them. I have yet to try the original emu out, but I’m a fan of DOSBox for my old games like Doom2.

WINDOWS 3.1 (Even though it says 3.11, I was hoping for networking)

Bochs loading up on the iPhone

Now you tilt your screen and let Bochs load. Windows 3.1 loads pretty fast, probably even on a 3G or first gen.

Bochs continues to load the disk image...

Hey I remember SMARTDrive! No need for that anymore.

The Windows 3.1 Startup Screen

Ahhh, I remember you. The nostalgia starts kicking in right about now.

At one time, people would type “win” after DOS loaded fully (windows was installed on top of dos… a program essentially) then people just said %&*# DOS and added that win command to their autoexec.bat files.  Good thing whoever made this image did the same because you can’t type in windoze for the iPhone.

Loading... kind of like an 80386

All loaded up.

Here’s the long lost program manager shell. People used this for a long time, well into the 90’s. Ask me sometime about the FOB Chinese guy I worked with at Motorola who was given a very thick Toshiba Satellite complete with a 3.5″ FDD and windows 3.1 to do his job a couple years ago in… 2006. Yeah it was 2006, wow. I’ll never forget that.

MS-DOS Prompt

Whoops! I clicked the MS-DOS icon, now I have to exit the app and restart it because I can’t type “exit.”

File Manager

Windows 3.1 Games

Minesweeper was my favorite.

It was hard to click the square, so I gave up :'(

WINDOWS 95

It loads just like Windows 95... because it is.

Not too large of an install huh – 99MB. Gone are those days. I think my first Windows 95 machine had a 6GB drive in it and 16 or maybe 32MB RAM. It was a Pentium 133 (HP Pavilion) which ended up breaking several times before they gave us our money back. I kind of miss those days, I was in sixth grade well actually I got it during the summer after fifth grade. I was to go to a new school, which was when things took a turn for the worse for me. If only I could go back, I would change so many things. But I have no regrets – yeah right.

Windows 95 Startup Screen

Yeah, the bottom bar does it’s little animation. Very cool to see on the iPhone.

The Windows 95 Desktop, on the iPhone

The first time I started it up it started in safe mode, but after I restarted it it resumed in it’s normal mode.

Standard Start Menu stuff

Dammit, can't they make the network connection work?

It’s not so different from IE6 which way too many people still use. I wished the internet connection would’ve worked, not that the IE5 or whatever it was experience would be better than the Safari Mobile experience. The iPhone should’ve included a stripped down version of flash though and an embedded JVM – at least on the 3GS which can handle it.

Control Panel, Kind of

The Control Panel icons take about a second each to load once they get going on the 3GS. I wanted to try to increase the mouse speed, but none of the control panel applications would load! I think I would have just had to wait a long time, but I had things to do.

Windows 95 on iPhone Shutdown Screen

Always shut down your computer the way Windows tells you do or you could damage your computer.

Please wait while your computer shuts down.

THE END.