This is a tutorial on how to get TCP/IP and Netscape working in 86Box on macOS.
First create a folder with any name you want (I chose "Windows 3.11"), put a copy of 86Box.app in it and open it.
I have chosen the following specs because they are compatible with Windows 3.11 out of the box.
They are slightly different from the ones I found in an other tutorial. (That tutorial had you installing third-party drivers).
The necessary floppies can be downloaded from archive.org.
Download the three "Dos622" ones and the eight WfW311" ones.
You must change the boot order so the floppy starts before the hard drive and must also configure the hard drive so the BIOS can see it.
While the machine is booting, press fn + Backspace to enter the BIOS.
Go into "BIOS FEATURES SETUP" and set the "Boot Sequence" to "A,C" by pressing fn + Down Arrow.
To configure the hard drive, go into "IDE HDD AUTO DETECTION". Type Y and Enter to add the "Primary Master" hard drive. Press Esc multiple times to ignore the other ones.
Press F10 to save and exit.
To install Windows 3.11, you must first install MS-DOS 6.22.
Start the virtual machine and after a few seconds, the screen should look like this :
Now, load the first MS-DOS floppy (I recommend choosing the "Write-protected" option so the machine does not mess with the floppy images) and press Enter.
The instructions are simple to follow. Just keep the default settings.
You will have to change floppies during the installation.
After you are done, the screen should look like this :
Now that MS-DOS is installed, you can install Windows.
Load the first of the eight floppies, type "a:setup" and press Enter.
Again, follow the instructions and change the floppies.
When asked about the network card, just click Continue and make sure the IRQ is set to 5 (3 is already used for COM2).
When you are done, reboot the computer.
After MS-DOS starts, type "win" and press "Enter".
For fun, you can setup the sound card.
Go to Control Panel > Drivers > Add, select "Creative Labs Sound Blaster 1.0" and click OK.
Select "220" for the port and "7" for the interrupt.
Windows makes a sound when starting and exiting.
By default, Windows 3.11 only supports NetBEUI and IPX protocols. To use TCP/IP, it must first be installed.
You can download the floppy from archive.org.
To install it, load the floppy then go to Nework > Network Setup > Drivers.
Click "Add Protocol...", select "Unlisted or Updated Protocol", click OK, select TCP/IP and click OK. The files will be copied from the floppy automatically.
Now, DHCP must be enabled. Select TCP/IP from the drivers list and click Setup. You may then enable DHCP.
You will have to restart the machine after clicking OK on all the windows.
To get your IP address, go to Main > MS-DOS Prompt, type "ipconfig" and press Enter.
"10.0.2.15" means Windows can see the emulator.
Now that you have an IP address, it is time to surf the web !
Download the floppy from archive.org and load it.
Then go to Main > File Manager, select the A: drive and double-click setup.exe.
Follow the simple instructions.
Before opening Netscape, you will have to create the C:\temp folder. To do that, open File Manager, select the C: drive, select the root of the drive (c:\), click File > Create Directory and enter "temp".
If you open Netscape now, you will get an error because Netscape expects a "text/html" Content-Type, but mcom.com gives one with a charset. Just click "Cancel Transfer".
To fix that, download jwz's http10proxy.pl script on your Mac and open Terminal.
It is a proxy that will add the "Host" header and remove the "charset" from the Content-Type.
Move to where the file is and type these two lines :
chmod +x http10proxy.pl OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=YES ./http10proxy.pl
You will get a permission error. Ignore it. The proxy should now be started (you can stop it with ctrl+C). To set it up, open Netscape, click Options > Preferences and enter your Mac's IP address as the HTTP Proxy and 8228 as the Port.
You are now ready to surf the web !
You will have to start the proxy again whenever you want to use Netscape.
At the MS-DOS prompt, type "edit autoexec.bat" and add "WIN" at the end.
Press alt+F, X and Y to save and exit.
Windows will now automatically start when the machine is started.