I've commented this a few times in the past unsuccessfully so here I try again:
Ages ago I stumbled upon a website that described a way to run Windows 1.0 EXEs on Windows 10 (32bit obviously). Iirc it involved patching the PE header with a hex editor to say it's for Windows 2.0 or maybe 3.0 and then using an old version of Borland resource editor to recompile the embedded resources, since the that format changed some time between 1.0 and 3.0 and that old editor happens to support both variants.
The page had screenshots of some old programs like reversi, calc etc running on 10. Some looked a little glitchy but it basically worked.
Unfortunately the site either went down or my googlefu is weakening.
As an alternative, WineVDM should be able to run most 16-bit Windows software on Windows 10 64-bit. (I think this may not be what you are talking about, but at least on 64-bit Windows, there is no ordinary way to execute 16-bit code at all. Somebody probably did get it working in 32-bit Windows 10, though.)
Ages ago I stumbled upon a website that described a way to run Windows 1.0 EXEs on Windows 10 (32bit obviously). Iirc it involved patching the PE header with a hex editor to say it's for Windows 2.0 or maybe 3.0 and then using an old version of Borland resource editor to recompile the embedded resources, since the that format changed some time between 1.0 and 3.0 and that old editor happens to support both variants.
The page had screenshots of some old programs like reversi, calc etc running on 10. Some looked a little glitchy but it basically worked.
Unfortunately the site either went down or my googlefu is weakening.