Reading this article and others by the same author on his travails of getting Windows 3.11 to install and then bridging it to modern(-ish) tech was like being transported back to the 90s when I was first learning about computers. Seeing those screenshots of the unmistakable Win 3.1-style dialogs was a real nostalgia hit. What a treat.
10 points (well, an upvote, I guess) for anyone who knows why the Windows DOS-mode installer says "Press F3 to exit"
> Seeing those screenshots of the unmistakable Win 3.1-style dialogs was a real nostalgia hit. What a treat.
When I first saw that UI in 1990 or so, I was so confused how one program could accidentally cause another one not to respond. And how all the filenames had to be in 8.3 format.
Press F3 to exit setup without rebooting; A bug in the MS-Client installer prevents a file necessary for Windows 3.1x support from being installed. This isn't necessary if running solely under DOS, but it doesn't hurt in anyway, so let's install it just to be safe.
Warning: [Omitted] source link is blocked as malware by Firefox, quote gleaned from [DDG] search results.
There was never any that much hardwired functions for F1 and F2 on PC (apart for the convention that F1 is almost always help).
On the other hand there is a related issue: on DEC (and some other) terminals with LK201-style keyboards (which in turn inspired the "modern" PC/AT keyboard layout with F1-F12) the keys in positions of F1-F5 had fixed functions. This is the reason why there are about four different escape sequences across vt220-compatible terminal emulators for F5. There simply was not any DEC terminal that had F5 on its keyboard (F1-F4 are almost always mapped to PF1-PF4).
10 points (well, an upvote, I guess) for anyone who knows why the Windows DOS-mode installer says "Press F3 to exit"