What you need to know
- Someone has installed Windows 3.1 on an iPad and posted instructions on how to do it yourself.
- You'll need the Windows 3.1 floppies and a means of getting them onto your iPad, though.
Windows 3.1 was the very first version of Windows that I used back in the day and at the time it seemed pretty amazing. That was a long time ago, and if you'd told me that something like the iPad would exist all these years later I might not have believed you. I definitely wouldn't have believed that you would be able to run that same Windows 3.1 on an iPad — and yet, here we are.
Benj Edwards over at How-To Geek has shared all the details on their Windows adventure, including the process of getting everything up and running so you can do it yourself. You'll need a copy of iDOS 2 (opens in new tab) from the App Store as well as Windows 3.1 installation media. But assuming you have those things, getting everything up and running is surprisingly easy.
Here's the tricky part: To install Windows 3.1 in iDOS 2, you'll need to somehow copy the Windows 3.1 installation files over to your iPad. The good news is that there's a completely legal way to do this if you own original Windows 3.1 installation floppies—by literally copying all the files off of the floppies and putting them into a folder. If you do own the disks (and thus, a license to use Windows 3.1), you might also be able to find disk images of the floppies somewhere on the web, but we're leaving the legal and ethical implications of doing that up to you.
You can follow along and get Windows 3.1 installed on your iPad in no time, but I'd do it soon. iDOS has a history of disappearing from the App Store and you never know when it's going to happen again.
Don't yet have an iPad to run your favorite version of Windows on? Check out the best iPad deals we could find to bag yourself a bargain.
