The earlier version of this DOS emulator that can run Windows 3.1 programs was known for being as slow as molasses, despite its faithful emulation of a complex operating system... Insignia Solutions has now tackled the speed problem with version 3.1.
The company has in fact succeeded in boosting performance. While version 3.0 ran barely faster than a Classic on a Quadra 950 with 16MB of RAM, the new version runs almost as fast as an original LC, according to Macworld Lab tests. From the perspective of a Windows PC user, that means SoftPC 3.1 with Windows is about as fast as an 8MHz IBM PC AT — a class of machine that Microsoft has long said is too underpowered for Windows.
The good news is that the performance on slower 040s, like those used in a Centris 610 or Quadra 610, is not much slower, so the product is accessible to more users. The earlier version was essentially unusable on anything less than a Quadra 950. Of course, no matter what system you run it on, you’ll need 16MB of RAM, and you’ll get overall performance somewhere between that of a Classic and an LC.
SoftPC with Windows gains most of its speed in tasks that are not CPU-intensive. But disk access, video display, and math calculations are noticeably faster. Still, don’t read too much into this better performance: for video, the screen still crawls, and Windows does a lot of video processing.
Insignia has made the installation process — once very labor-intensive — easy, and has fine-tuned SoftPC’s memory optimizations. Plus there’s a built-in IPX networking protocol for connection to Novell NetWare servers. Insignia Solutions has the right idea, but the emulation approach used may be simply too CPU-intensive to work speedily on any 040-based Mac. Fortunately, according to informal tests with a beta version, the version for PowerPC Macs doesn’t suffer from the 040 version’s performance problems.
In the meantime, if you need regular access to Windows, get an inexpensive 486SX-based Windows PC or an add-in PC card for your Mac...
Gruman, Galen. (March 1994). SoftPC 3.1. Macworld. (pg. 72).
Insignia Solutions
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softpc31dos5win31.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
