Much later, the HX DOS Extender (https://www.japheth.de/HX.html) had something vaguely similar called Win32 emulation mode. Meaning that you could load a Win32 PE image, and it could call quite a few Win32 APIs, all while running under plain DOS (in 32-bit flat mode), with HX DOS providing the implementation.
It had just enough parts of the API implemented to be able to run Quake 2 in DOS.
”Win32s lacked a number of Windows NT functions, including multi-threading, asynchronous I/O, newer serial port functions and many GDI extensions. This generally limited it to "Win32s applications" which were specifically designed for the Win32s platform,[4] although some standard Win32 programs would work correctly”
It was a strange time back then for anyone who wanted to get online. Win3.1 had no TCP/IP stack so many folks used a third party download called Trumpet Winsock. IIRC you might have needed win32s in order to use it.
Looking back, Microsoft were clearly in an incredibly complicated transitioning phase, with very little margin for error (no patching over the Internet!)
Trumpet Winsock works on a 286, but apparently NCSA Mosaic version 2.0 needed Win32s.
So I guess there would have been a time in 1994 where many people were forced to retire their 286es. Though Mosaic was quickly replaced by Netscape Navigator in late 1994 which worked on Win16.
And then Windows 95 came along, and it really needed a 486 with 4MB of ram, ideally 8MB.
