![]() I was pleasantly surprised several years ago when I was able to make an insurance company's proprietary DOS app run just fine on Windows 2000 and XP by doing nothing more than supplying an extra flag to or cmd.exe. Many programs won't run on the first try, but can be made to run with the right compatibility options. ![]() Something that won't cost you much right now (aside from time) would be to try copying the Windows 3.1 installation to a VM or emulator such as DOSBox, or even try to run the software directly on a newer version of Windows. I don't know much about lean manufacturing, but I do know that when a critical system goes down with no contingency plan in place, it has an immediate and direct effect on operations. ![]() However, at some point something bad will happen to this PC, and at that point you're going to lose a lot of money if you don't have a well-tested backup plan in place. As Rich pointed out, there are many reasons not to run a web browser on your bandsaw controller PC. That said, you might want to reconsider your decision not to try running the software on a newer machine. (I also mentioned this in a comment the other day, but deleted it because I didn't think it was advisable.) If you want to try that, I'd start with "portable" versions of Opera, Mozilla/Firefox, etc. Technically, you might be able to get a more modern 32-bit browser to run on top of Win32s (which gives you a subset of 32-bit functionality for 16-bit Windows). If you really need something close to the controller, I'd say WiFi+cheap tablet/used iPod Touch, but I'd obviously say you need to secure your WiFi network as well. If the controller-software people were at all smart, they'd have a clause not allowing any other software on the controller box, or you void some support from them. I'd tell my boss that this is connected to a bandsaw and we don't want any problems with the controller software. Internet Explorer 5.x had its last support of any kind in 2010. Win 3.1 was end-of-lifed about 4 years ago (surprisingly recently in my book). Then, many answers recommend IE5, which is unpatchable at this point. Any wise network engineer would require a firewall (if you could find one for Win3.1) and at that point you bog the machine down. There were (possibly still are) viruses for 3.1 (err, DOS really), so opening it up to any network should scare you. This means that as apps try to cooperate and share the CPU, they don't necessarily have to, and some app or browser window may use up all of the CPU, throwing off the timing for the controller software. Even Win95 was better, though not by much. There's also not a lot of Win3.1 support for realtime. Since you have old browsers looking at modern HTML/CSS/JavaScript, there are a lot of possibilities for browser bugs and the odds of scrambled memory are relatively speaking, high. There's no process isolation so a bad browser window (or any app) can scramble memory in the controller's memory space wreaking havoc. Think of it as DOS with a GUI, which is what it is. Win3.1 is a horrible OS to have as a controller. To add to the people recommending not to do this: the more useful that you make the Win 3.1 machine (by allowing it to do other work), the longer the machine is just useful enough to not replace with something that makes sense. Sorry to put this as an answer, since I can't give you one, but seemed too big for a comment. Hosted through a combination SQL server and IIS. Have done some updates since we first acquired them. So I figure it might be a good idea to disclose the software being Things like Java or flash are not necassary. The site correctly and does not respond to the button pushes like The computer running 3.1 is also the controllerįor $150,000 bandsaw made in Germany, so any chance of upgrading theĪctual computer without spending quite a bit of money up front to the Ok, so I know what you are thinking: "What on earth are you doing The existing browsing options for that OS simply break on most sites. The idea is that that it can render a site such as Simply put, is there a modern browser that runs on Windows 3.1? Sometimes there's situations that restrict the ability for an environment to be upgraded, and web browsing is a must these days.
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