Was/Is there a version of the Java VM for Windows 3.1?

Question

...And can you still scare up a copy?

This came up in a combination of curiosity and technical archeology today, and while there seems to have been one for the Win 3.1.x platform, I can't seem to get a hard answer. (Or, a place to download it.)

Answer 1

http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm

there's an SDK there, so chances are there's a jre somewhere. I'd also note that's a useful place for windows 3.11 software ;)

Answer 2

There was a version of Netscape Navigator that ran on Windows 3.11 (also required Win32S) and had a built-in JVM (Java 1.1) for running applets. I don't know where to find a copy now though.

Answer 3

The JDK that was suggested actually contains the VM as well. (Assuming it is similar to all recent JDK releases).

Also check Oracle's website as they have every version of the environment available to download.

Answer 4

There were only three ways to run Java on Windows 3.1, as far as i know, and these ways were made by our good old friends (IBM, Microsoft, and Netscape).

Microsoft incorporated their version of Java into Internet Explorer 3.0a as far as I know, and Netscape did so with Netscape Navigator 3.0.

IBM, on the other hand, made an applet development kit (presumably with a JRE) and released it to the whole wide world... before it was discountinued at beta 3.

My laptop is very dead for the forseeable future, so i can't test any of these, but I am very sure that will satisfy your curiosity.

Now, as for the download link problem, IE and Netscape 3 aren't very hard to find, but the Internet Archive does not have the IBM Java ADK. But not to worry (maybe you should worry, idk), retrospace has a link (untested for reason stated at the start of this paragraph, use at own risk). Hope this helps! https://www.retrospace.net/download/adkbeta3.exe

Readme: https://www.retrospace.net/download/adkbeta3_readme.exe.txt