Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! And this is Microsoft Windows 3.0, not 3.1
not yet anyway. I wanted to take a look at this for a couple of reasons: one, I've been
meaning to install Windows in some form on my 486 Woodgrain PC for a long time now and
while the eventual goal is to put 3.1 or maybe 3.11 on there... that's what I eventually
want to do, but it might be an interesting detour to stop at Windows 3. Which was actually
released 28 years ago on the exact day I'm filming this: May 22nd, 1990 -- is when this
was released to manufacturing not when I'm recording this video. Contrary to some conspiracies,
I am NOT a time traveler so just ignore those IBM 5100s and flux capacitors you've seen
in my videos. Anyway, I wanted to install this because you know, I'm not terribly familiar
with it. I've used it a few times here and there over the years but as a kid, my first
version of Windows was 3.1. And while there's not a drastic difference between the Windows
3 and 3.1, there kind of is. I mean there are a lot of applications that will only work
with 3.1, in fact way more that will work with 3.1 only, and do not support 3.0. And
then of course there's just some different graphical features and things like that that
this had, and then 3.1 got rid of or improved upon in many ways. And I don't know I just
find that this release is kind of fascinating. Plus, I have a brand new sealed package here,
check that out. This is the three and a half inch US release of Windows 3.00 and it was
sold apparently by Forsythe Computers Incorporated in Saint Louis, Missouri for 149 dollars at
one point. “New! Breaks the 640k memory barrier. Unleash all the power of your PC!”
Yeah I definitely want to do that since my 486 has 16 megabytes of RAM. You can see the
sticker here has a special bonus, “Comes with Daybook, a personal organizer with a
runtime version of ToolBook™ by Asymetrix.” Don't know what that is yet, but we'll find
out. While I could admire this packaging all day I'm itching to get inside here and see
what we get. So let's do a bit of an unboxing before we get to setting everything up on
the 486. [slicing] Kind of wanna save that price sticker if I can. [plasticky noises]
Well, fell right off, that makes it easy. [more plastic noises] Mmm fresh retro Windows.
[cardboard being cardboard.] Man. So crispy, so enjoyable.
[drops things.] Aw ffff...
We’ll just pretend that never fell out of there. Mm, yeah that is packed to the brim. [sniff!]
Mmf. Smells like a library. So there's that Asymetrix runtime ToolBox™ software construction
set for Windows. Got the gigantic Windows 3 user guide here, good grief. Got a product
registration card. Well it’s less of a card and more of a substantial pamphlet. “Important
information read this first.” No thanks. Okay I don't remember seeing this as a thing.
Well, it's not really a magazine. It's more like a, yeah, 12 page monthly publication.
So I guess the Cobb Group had their own Windows newsletter. Aha yes, here we go the Microsoft
Windows 3.0 hardware compatibility list, this is fascinating. The following computers, video
displays, printers, pointing devices, keyboards, and networks have been certified for use with
Microsoft 3.0,” yes. Windows 3 can run on all these things. And pretty much this is
just effectively is a wish list for my collection these days, but a bunch of them, man. What
the heck happened to these things? Like what's what's the ALR Powerflex? That sounds like
an amazing computer. Or the Emerson ET200, didn't realize Emerson made computers. The
Goupil G5-SX? It has some Nokias in there, I've been trying to find like a Nokia, like,
MS-DOS computer just because it seems like that would be fun. Here's a very similar list
for all of the applications that Microsoft has tested to be working with Windows 3 or
have Windows 3-specific versions at this point in 1990. Of course, there were many more than
this that would work on Windows 3 but it's kind of neat to have a brand new operating
system at the time and they went out of their way to test so much stuff. Here's our proof
of license for Windows 3.00. Look how simple that is. Yeah these looked a little more simpler
than what happened with all the Microsoft license things later on -- the holograms and
all sorts of interesting print and security features. Not much going on there. And then
all this this is going to be the floppy disks. “Please, treat it as valuable property.”
I will do that, Microsoft in 1990, I will do that. “Before opening this disk packet
I should carefully read all that crap.” Let’s go ahead and get this disk packet
open here before we take a look at the manual or anything like that. [slicing away.] Oh
man. Wow these look great. They feel great too, these are quality disks. Alright, so
yeah “for DOS systems,” this is a full version of the thing you just Install this
on top of DOS. I have DOS 6.22 installed on the 486 so that is what we'll be upgrading
-- or really adding onto since Windows was more of a shell that ran on top of DOS at
this point and not a fully fledged operating system. So it does require DOS which is why
we're doing it in this order and subsequently we're going to be installing 3.1 on top of
this 3.0 installation in the future. I am curious about this, I’m absolutely not familiar
with this at all. So it looks like it comes with a personal organizer, a calendar, address
book, to-do list. But also this thing called ToolBook™ and that's what I'm more intrigued
by here. “With the full version of ToolBook™ You can easily create your own applications
without being a programmer.” I've used Windows 3.0 before like, it's installed on my IBM
PS/2 Model 90 486 XP thing. This on the other hand, yeah, we'll install this once we get
Windows installed and see what it does. And finally [plop] just want to take a look at
this manual here really quick because it's so large, it demands an audience. Heh! That's
the most appropriate, it has 640 pages. 640k barrier broken, 640 page barrier broken for
this manual. Wow. Ohh. Just absurd documentation, could you imagine getting a book like this
with Windows 10? Or anything these days from Microsoft that's not like some enterprise
solution kind of IT corporate business software. Anyway! That's one delightful mountain of
documentation. All right. Well now I know what Windows 3 comes with so let's hook up
the woodgrain 486 and get this baby installed. All right got the 46 turned on some disks
at the ready. Here we go. And it just said to type setup on the A: drive. “Welcome
to the Microsoft Windows version 3.00 setup.” We will install to “Windows.” Look at
this very classic Windows installer they used for seemingly forever. Okay, so let's see
what it has detected: MS-DOS, VGA. We do have SVGA, we'll just go with VGA for now. Sounds
good. And now to sit through the process of installing eight flop--no, seven floppy disks.
These are all 720 kilobyte, not high-density just double sided double density disks. And
I'm not sure, okay what is it doing here? The heck is this? No clue what that did on
the first disk there, but we'll try it again. You really just never know with floppy disks,
hehe. Even ones that were new, wrapped up and stuff. Okay well, that's what it was supposed
to do and “after setup installs Windows it will perform each of the following, check
procedures: setup printers, applications already on hard disk.“ Nope. Nope. Nope. Because
I don't want to do any of that, I don't have a printer attached right now. Although I hope
to address that in the future. So yeah, it seems to be fine now, we went from disk 2
onto disk 3 so, I'll just continue from here and pick back up once it's done installing.
Hm, didn't even ask for disk 7 just went straight to this. Needs to modify config.sys and autoexec.bat,
“make all modifications for me.” Yeah, go ahead. Reboot. I guess it's not gonna do
it for me, “Do it yourself,” it says. Okay, let's see what it did. We have Windows
over there and we just type in “WIN.” And it loaded so quickly we couldn't even
see the Windows 3.0 splash screen. What a shame, but I do still have that compact flash
storage device installed on here. So yeah, this is Windows 3.0. It is very much like
3.1 or 3.11 but a little simpler. The icons are different, a lot of the capabilities are
different as I mentioned earlier, but we’ll see if we can add a little bit of color here.
Ha ha, fluorescent. Yes [chuckles] cuz why not? Oh, these color schemes are not great.
I remember pastel. I guess we're just gonna put it right back to where it was. We got
a bunch of fonts. Well, actually not a bunch. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 fonts. We can access our PORTS.
And our MOUSE. And our DESKTOP. I remember some of these patterns being kind of interesting.
Nope nope, they're pretty dumb. They're all monochrome. Okay, and I keep I keep wanting
to click this part to get the drop down. But you actually have to click the drop down,
just clicking this doesn't actually do anything here. So yeah, there's a lot of little things
about the UI that they tweaked for 3.1 that just make it way easier to use. Let's try
some wallpapers. Will it let me? Oh I have to tile them. There we go. Some of these are
pretty rad. I like chess. Always liked chess. That's like my favorite of the Windows 3 wallpapers.
I'll probably leave that but I'm just curious what else is in here. Paper? Yeah, whatever.
Party. Augh. I don't know man that might be even better, hahaha. The early 90s-ness of
that is beautiful Oh so is that, oh it's just great. I think I'm gonna leave that one for
now and then I had something magnificent over here, kind of like this. Oh my goodness yes!
This is Windows 3.0! [chuckles] Look at all this man. Oh I just want to drink from jazz
pattern Solo cups and go rollerskating and aw, man. Alright, so see we got some games
here. Solitaire, the classic. There's something about like how smooth everything feels yet
the frame rate isn't ridiculously high either, there's just something odd about it. It does
have all the same decks as 3.1 though. It looks like it is yep, still the same one by
Wes Cherry. So. And then Reversi was the other game that it came with, this was a classic
sort of a holdover really. And then they kind of took it out from 3.1, if I recall. Let’s
see we got some accessories and we got Write. “I can write things with my Model M and
it's loud as ballllls.” It's wonderful. We got Paint-friggin-brush. Oh, yes mmm, look
at that high DPI of my mouse, haha. This little Logitech mouse, it's a -- or maybe it's the
polling rate causing that but either way, it's a very limited kind of mouse situation
going on. We have the Terminal which was, ah man. I wish I had a phone line to actually
try this because I used to dial into all sorts of things like, you know bulletin board systems
and the local library and there was like this thing that the Yellow Pages had. I don't know,
all sorts of stuff if you had a phone line which I don't. I don't even have a modem installed
in this thing just cuz I don't really need it these days. Notepad! Yay It's Notepad.
Recorder, quite handy for recording macros if you ever need to do things with your various
programs, you know spreadsheets whatnot if they don't have macro support built-in. Cardfile!
[TYPING LOUDLY] Yeah in case you need to keep a bunch of cards filed. And we’ve got a
calendar to keep track of your calendar, set alarms for yourself. All these basic productivity
things that were really like a big selling point of Windows so you would be able to get
all of these kind of things just in one spot. You get a clock man, a clock! I Love that
digital clock. You've also got the PIF editor here, which is if you want to make shortcuts
and special, you know, requirements for memory and display usage and all the kinda stuff
for your DOS programs. Pretty darn handy, at least I found it so in -- especially in
Windows 95, but also in 3 and 3.1. File Manager looks -- it looks a little bit different too
from 3.1. So you have this and then just things open up this way and it's, I don't know, I
think it's kind of annoying. I don't like it. I know there's ways to customize it but
point being I'm not a big fan of file manager in Windows 3. You save your settings, sure
go ahead, I don't care. I did wanna try that piece of software that it came with though,
the Asymetrix runtime toolbox. Okay, so we'll run the “RUN” command and it is: TPKSETUP.EXE.
And install it to the toolbox folder. [brief disk drive noises] Well it did that. We’ll
do “introducing tool book.” Ooh. Tour book! An introduction to tool book. “In
this brief introduction, you'll see what it can do. Allow about ten minutes,” well,
I don't know about that but. Yeah, what can it do? I just want to know what it can do.
“ToolBook is almost as powerful as your imagination. You can combine text, graphics,
animation, calculations, interactive--” is this HyperCard? Kind of looks like HyperCard.
“Create a book that uses stereo sound.” Yeah this is pretty much looking like HyperCard
for the Mac. Not exactly what I thought it would be but that's interesting Yeah, check
it out there's an example of things you can do. So that's that part of it, let's try Daybook.
Alright, so we have the Daybook map. You can see a data flow diagram, okay. It's like an
organizer. That's fine. “This this is today. Dang it.” And we can go to yeah, I got a
-- we can put a reminder here, nah we're gonna put a watch on this day and it's gonna remind
me to upload this video. “Upload this video,” and the watch is on top of that but there
we go. Oh, no, we can't -- why can't I make the watch -- well. Screw this. Now, I would
try SimCity for Windows here, SimCity classic. But but this is one of those that will not
work on here because it needs Windows 3.1 or above. For all sorts of reasons, but you
know largely because of all the multimedia stuff. However, I believe that the Microsoft
Best of Entertainment Pack will work on here it says, yeah. MS-DOS version 3.1 or later
which this is 6.22. And Windows version 3.0 or later with a 286 or higher, 640k RAM. Yay.
Long as we can play SkiFree, Rodent’s Revenge, Jezzball? It's not entirely useless. Oh, yeah.
That's what I like to see: all these games. SkiFree, yay! So, yeah, you can play SkiFree
in Windows 3, so that's pretty awesome. And you got Chip’s Challenge without any sound,
hehe. That's -- it is what it is. Jezzball, good stuff, good stuff. Again it's all very
quiet though. That's unfortunate. And the reason for this silence is not because we
don't have a sound card in here, if you'll remember a while back we did another 486 upgrade
video where I installed a lovely Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 card. So this thing does have some
awesome sound, but all we get in Windows 3.0 here is occasional PC speaker beeping and
that's it. [doonk] Like that. Doonk! That’s all you get. What is my cool name, uh cool
name is LGR. My cool quote is “Quotes are cool.” But the reason that we don't have
sound here is simply because Windows 3 does not support it. In fact It didn't even get
support other than this really basic PC speaker warning beep until Windows 3.0a with Multimedia
Extensions. And as far as I know that wasn't actually sold in stores, it was just an upgrade
that was made available for certain vendors that were selling their MPC or Multimedia
PCs. But this doesn't have it. Which is kind of odd because on the front of this if you
look at the screen that is on that little IBM, what is that an 8513 monitor. It has
an article about MIDI, it shows a keyboard in Paintbrush, and there's a Program Manager
window open that says “Music and Computing.” But this does not have music or sound support!
It's just... why were they doing that? They were like teasing something that just wasn't
even a thing yet. But anyway! This computer does have the ability to play back sound so
we'll do that eventually with the upgrade to Windows 3.1. But as it is now that's pretty
much it for this right here, just Windows 3. We'll see you in the next 486 upgrade video
at some point where we will be happily upgrading to Windows 3.1 and probably 3.11 for Workgroups.
But anyway, that was this video and I hope that you enjoyed what you saw here! And if
you did perhaps you'd like to check out some of my others. Of course there was the video
where I put this computer together in the first place, as well as the one where we put
the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 card, and a bunch of other upgrades with more to come in the
future. And beyond that there are other videos every Monday and Friday here on LGR. And as
always, thank you very much for watching!