China DOS Union

For various reasons, I now want to make a Chinese MiniWindows 3.x boot disk, using Chinese Win3.1/3.2 as the basis. However, unlike English Win3.x, Chinese Win3.x requires DBCS double-byte and Chinese font support, otherwise all Chinese characters will be displayed as garbled text. Does anyone know what files are at least needed to support a Chinese MiniWin 3.x? Please also give me some suggestions, thanks.

I always feel it probably won't fit on a single floppy disk, because even just SIMSUN.TTF (Song font) is still over 1MB after compression. Is there any other way?

Chinese fonts are indeed huge, but I still hope a miracle can happen—CN Mini Windows 3.1!

Can it use only bitmap fonts?

Then Roy had better try it, I don't know too clearly either.

If 1.44MB won't hold it, you can use a 2.88MB floppy disk or make it into a bootable CD. Doesn't it work just the same? I believe you will definitely succeed. Sometimes if one road doesn't work, you can change direction and try another. Don't hang yourself on one tree.

Using a CD as a boot disk requires a burner, and many people don't have that condition. Besides, CDs can't be written repeatedly.

Ordinary people generally don't have 2.88M floppy disks; I don't have one either.

I agree with Shen Jie, don't be constrained by 1.44. That's really too small. Struggling forever over a hundred or two hundred K, but if you switch to 2.88, it suddenly doubles, and it feels like the sky and sea open up. The quality of floppy disks these days really isn't something to praise. Often before I've even finished testing one boot disk, it dies first. It's different if you put it on a CD. It's faster, and also virus-resistant.
By the way, one more thing: WIN3.1 only has an English edition, WIN3.2 only has a Chinese edition,

Correction:

Win3.1 has an English edition, a Simplified Chinese edition, and a Traditional Chinese edition;
Win3.2 only has a Simplified Chinese edition.

Moderator, use WinImage to make a 2.88MB boot disk, right! Then use WinImage to generate a *.ima file and use nero to burn a boot disk. Also, there are rewritable CDs, for example CD－RW, even 3-inch CD－RW. They can be rewritten more than 10,000 times, the burning speed is only a little slower. Besides, once a good boot disk is made, it won't always be changed back and forth.
After the experiment succeeds, you can also burn it onto a special business-card CD－R. It looks much better and is also more convenient to use. (One last reminder: after generating the *.ima file with WinImage, be sure to defragment it in WinImage at the end, this can improve the boot speed quite a bit too.)

My idea is: boot with DOS7.1 (because hard disks nowadays are all FAT32) and include CD-ROM boot support, create a 10M-30M virtual disk, copy all files of WIN3.2 from the PWIN32 folder on the CD-ROM to the virtual disk, then execute WIN.COM in the virtual disk. This way it won't be limited by 1.44M or 2.88M. You only need to edit AUTOEXEC.BAT. The difficult point is how to run PWIN32 under DOS7.1? I still haven't succeeded yet.

Running Win3.2 under DOS 7.1 is not a problem. For example, using my Super MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk, it is definitely possible to start Win3.x. Download address:
http://newdos.yginfo.net/dosware/mdos71bd.zip

Also, the MiniWindows 3.x I made is MS-DOS 7.10+Windows 3.11.

Below is the relevant part from the README.TXT documentation file in the MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk I made:

18 - 可以直接启动Windows (Able to launch Windows directly)
==========================================================
This MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk provides the function of launching Windows directly, including
versions such as Win3.x and Win9x, working seamlessly with Windows. The specific method
is to enter the WIN command at the DOS command line to start the corresponding version of
Windows. (Note: this has already been enhanced for close integration with Windows by using
the 3xStart program).
Also, as stated in the features above, this MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk fully supports long
filenames, FAT32 partitions, large hard disks, and various other functions, so it will not
have any incompatibility with Windows.
Note: if you boot this boot disk from a floppy disk, please make sure the floppy is in the
drive when starting Windows. To enter the Windows 9x interface, first enter the folder where
Windows is located, then run the WIN command.

And then! There was once before............. what happened later! I also think that if 32-bit WIN32S could be added to CD boot, that would be very meaningful! That way the system could be maintained under WIN!