[5eraph]

LOL. My first IBM compatible PC came with Tandy Deskmate, a Windows 1.0 clone. Never used it.

Can say the same about my next PC, an IBM PS/1 which came with Windows 3.0. I wiped the hard drive after the first month because it was nothing but a waste of space. I was 15.

[JorgeA]

5eraph, on 10 April 2012 - 07:15 AM, said:

My first IBM compatible PC came with Tandy Deskmate, a Windows 1.0 clone. Never used it.

I still have an Amstrad PC6400 that came with separate floppies for MS-DOS and GEM, the CP/M GUI. I was a DOS guy and never felt the urge to complicate my life with a GUI.

--JorgeA

[CoffeeFiend]

Dave-H, on 10 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

It had a 120 MB hard drive "more than you'll ever need!"

Before that, people were saying the same thing about 20MB hard drives, and that was a luxury not many could afford either. Floppies also seemed quite large. I mean, you could fit several full games on one, and I'm not talking about 1.44MB floppies either! People have always said that. I almost wonder if people were saying that when cavemen were making drawings on cave's walls... And these days we have no problems filling drives of a few terabytes. These days online hosts have petabytes of data. Megaupload for example had between 25 and 28 petabytes of data -- that's over 25 000 000 GB. I'm not sure how much space Amazon's S3 has, but they have price breaks for customers that use more than 50TB... I don't see this trend stopping anytime soon, nor will people stop saying "this is more than we'll ever need".

JorgeA, on 10 April 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

GEM, the CP/M GUI

All these years I thought GEM was an Atari ST-only thing... Not that I've ever used CP/M (I mostly used 8 bit machines before MS-DOS).

[5eraph]

CoffeeFiend, on 10 April 2012 - 09:18 PM, said:

All these years I thought GEM was an Atari ST-only thing... Not that I've ever used CP/M (I mostly used 8 bit machines before MS-DOS).

Atari 400 was my first. With a tape drive.

[dencorso]

Who remembers this?

Attached File(s)

•  SoftCaro.gif (101.74K)
  Number of downloads: 31

[JorgeA]

dencorso, on 10 April 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

Who remembers this?

Wow, not me! I was around back then, but I'd never heard of the Software Carousel.

BTW, was that a photo you took of the monitor? It wasn't a screenshot, was it? (Nahh, couldn't be...)

--JorgeA

[CoffeeFiend]

dencorso, on 10 April 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

Who remembers this?

Me neither. But I remember seeing a lot of DOS menu systems back then, some of which used to be somewhat popular (but my memory fails to remember their names unfortunately).

The main problem with them is that they used memory, and it wasn't uncommon to require "at least" some amount of conventional/EMS/XMS memory to run some app (where we had fancy optimized config.sys menus, some with qemm), and the menu used enough for the program not to run...

[JorgeA]

CoffeeFiend, on 10 April 2012 - 09:18 PM, said:

Dave-H, on 10 April 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

It had a 120 MB hard drive "more than you'll ever need!"

Before that, people were saying the same thing about 20MB hard drives, and that was a luxury not many could afford either. Floppies also seemed quite large. I mean, you could fit several full games on one, and I'm not talking about 1.44MB floppies either!

I remember one time my dad and I were at the computer store, probably 1983. He turned to me, pointed to a wall display with 10-packs of single-sided, single-density (160K) 5.25" floppies, and said:

"What will I ever need ten of these for?!"

I replied, "Yeah, really!"



--JorgeA

This post has been edited by JorgeA: 10 April 2012 - 10:39 PM

[dencorso]

JorgeA, on 10 April 2012 - 10:18 PM, said:

dencorso, on 10 April 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

Who remembers this?

Wow, not me! I was around back then, but I'd never heard of the Software Carousel.

BTW, was that a photo you took of the monitor? It wasn't a screenshot, was it? (Nahh, couldn't be...)

--JorgeA

Yes, it's a photo of a monitor, but not mine. Alas, I don't have Software Carousel anymore! That photo is from a review of it at InfoWorld (Jan 05, 87). Read it, by all means, Software Carousel was much more than just a DOS menu system, since it instanced and swapped all memory above itself, and would run real great on a PC-XT clone having an AboveBoard or any other form of LIM EMS. And just required PC/MS-DOS 2.00+!

[JorgeA]

dencorso, on 11 April 2012 - 12:05 AM, said:

Alas, I don't have Software Carousel anymore! That photo is from a review of it at InfoWorld (Jan 05, 87). Read it, by all means, Software Carousel was much more than just a DOS menu system, since it instanced and swapped all memory above itself, and would run real great on a PC-XT clone having an AboveBoard or any other form of LIM EMS. And just required PC/MS-DOS 2.00+!

dencorso,

Thanks, that was a fascinating read!

It reminds me of a question I had a long time ago, which was whether it's possible to devise a CLI- or DOS-based system that addresses lots of RAM, such that you could dispense with Windows. (For the longest time, whenever the topic came up I would proudly announce that, "I don't do Windows!") I guess now that the answer would be that it IS possible.

--JorgeA

[Fredledingue]

Fascinating read indeed.

At least we have the satisfaction, we who are sticking to w9x against all the ires and reprobation of webmasters, programmers and post WindowsXP fans, to remember that there was something *before* w9x.

w3.1 is our ancestor. A symbol of the w9x simplicity (even if it was useless). Something like a cult item. LOL.

I was interrested to read that w3.1 was mostly useless because there weren't enough apps designed for windows.
It's like 64bit apps today. Two years after 64bit windows version it's unclear whether you need it, and what's the advantage of it. We are still far from 100% 64 bit computers.
But we will come to it eventualy as we came to full windows app computers in the years to Y2K.

I'm sure that if we put as much effort to upgrade w3.1 as we put on w9x, we could have a suprisingly fonctional platform.

When was the last w3.1 service pack issued?

__________________________________

[CoffeeFiend]

JorgeA, on 11 April 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

whether it's possible to devise a CLI- or DOS-based system that addresses lots of RAM, such that you could dispense with Windows

DOS extenders did let apps use loads of RAM easily (DOS4GW, Pharlap, etc). Also, DESQview used similar tricks (memory paging & swapping) to give us multitasking in DOS (yes, as in running more than one app at the same time under DOS). It was actually very easy living without Win 3.x -- the main disadvantage was that you had no solitaire or minesweeper

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

to remember that there was something *before* w9x

Win9x isn't special. Of course there was something before. And there was something before that as well, and so on (lots of things before MS-DOS too). I'd much rather "remember" MS-DOS which was quite a bit more useful, had far more software, was a lot easier and a lot of fun to develop for, was used a lot more and still is to this day... There's also a lot of nice old 8 bit and "non-PC" platforms worth remembering a whole lot more than Win 3.1 IMO.

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

It's like 64bit apps today.

Very bad analogy IMO.

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

Two years after 64bit windows version it's unclear whether you need it, and what's the advantage of it.

How is it unclear in any way? If you want to make full use of 4GB+ of RAM (you can get 8GB of DDR3 for like $40) then you want a 64 bit OS, and that's also its main advantage (being able to use lots of RAM). It's really that simple. I'm not sure what you're not understanding there.

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

When was the last w3.1 service pack issued?

There were no such things as service packs back then. Or updates for that matter.

[JorgeA]

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

At least we have the satisfaction, we who are sticking to w9x against all the ires and reprobation of webmasters, programmers and post WindowsXP fans, to remember that there was something *before* w9x.

Fredlelingue,

I agree!

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

When was the last w3.1 service pack issued?

CoffeeFiend is right, there were no service packs ever issued for Windows 3.x, although there were several iterations, including 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, and Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and 3.11 (the one I have). One could argue that each of these successive editions served the function of a service pack, especially as some of them were issued not as standalone OS's, but as updates or extensions building on the previous version.

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

CoffeeFiend, on 11 April 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Fredledingue, on 11 April 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

When was the last w3.1 service pack issued?

There were no such things as service packs back then. Or updates for that matter.

Sure there were!
The last update pack to Win 3.1 transformed it into Win 3.11 (do not confuse with Win 4 Workgroups 3.11).
It is WW0981, still available from MS, originally released Dec 31, 1993, and described more fully in this KB text: Win311. KB0032905 contains a full version history of the pre-9x/ME days. BTW, since the advent of 386-enhanced mode windows, it's not really correct to think about it as a windowing system running on top of DOS: it did in fact "possess" DOS, by patching it in-memory and replacing part of its functionality with its own VxDs, so the resulting OS was really a Windows/DOS gestalt. And that's how it worked ever since, up to (and including) Win ME.

PS: I finally voted in the poll today. I used Win 3.1 for about half again a year, then applied the upgrade to Win 3.11, just as it was released, and moved on to W4W 3.11 by the end of '94, and thence to 98 FE in mid-'99. So, considering the question applies to all variants of Win 3.1 taken together, all in all it's been about 7 years. ..

[billyb]

I still have 3.11 and its huge manual somewhere. I thought it was clunky on the couple of computers I installed it on. There were SO many dos programs that I was using that I couldn't see the attraction of 3.11. Like others have mentioned, it seemed like a clunky gui.

I didn't even really use win95 when it showed up....my existing biz dos programs were still fine through that era. I think I had windows 95 on only one computer and hardly ever used it. Things gradually began to change for me once win98 appeared.

This post has been edited by billyb: 11 April 2012 - 08:48 PM

[Fredledingue]

Quote

Very bad analogy IMO

Do you have a better one?

64 bit OS was the first important developement since coming from Dos to Windows.
And I remember that when 64bit came out, there was a while when poeple wondered whether it's worth it ot not.

[5eraph]

The shift to the NT codebase in XP was a huge reliability improvement for consumer versions of Windows once the kinks were worked out in SP1. Plug and Pray devices matured greatly. And SATA and USB 2.0 support was added—all of these important developments occurred before a Windows x64 compatible OS was released.

It may not have seemed worth jumping to an x64 OS at that time, but it was a very important milestone.

This post has been edited by 5eraph: 12 April 2012 - 05:30 PM

[dencorso]

Well, in any case, the jump to x64 began with Win XP x64, so it's way back already (April 25, 2005, for the x86-64). And, at that time at least, the situation was precisely as Fredledingue put it: there was scarcely any other x64 software available besides the OS itself. And next to none had compatible hardware populated with enough RAM to actually see any benefit that might accrue. And the absence of 16-bit compatibility was a real downside then, easily overcome by using VMware, Bochs or VirtualPC, but not present right out of the box.

[jds]

CoffeeFiend, on 03 April 2012 - 06:31 PM, said:

I'd like to call it "World's most useless Microsoft operating system of all time" if anything (if win3.x can even be called an OS, with its MS-DOS requirement)

No, the "World's most useless Microsoft operating system of all time" was what ran on the Hitachi Peach, an amalgam of machine language and BASIC. This thing ran so slowly that to duplicate a floppy disk (I can't remember the capacity, probably 1XX KB) took one hour, about 20m to format the new floppy, 20m to copy the tracks, and another 20m to verify. No joke, that's really how long it took!

BTW, I entirely agree with your views on MSW3.X, its only use was to run IE 3.02a on old hardware (best 'net performance I've encountered, although useless today).

Joseph_sw, on 08 April 2012 - 10:51 PM, said:

i always consider win 3.x as "Shell" and not an "OS"

but.. , win9x also sits on top of MS-DOS 7.x

i remember mucking with 9x settings (by accidents) that it would return to DOS instead of powering-down the computer, when you choose to shutdown.
win9x will gives messages something like: "You may shutdown the computer", but with C:\> prompt ready.

and, with BootGUI=0 in msdos.sys,
i loves type "win" to (re-)run the win9x,
just like i did on windows 3.x before.

Yeah, rename 'win.com' to 'gui.com' (and call it in 'autoexec.bat' if you wish), and "shutdown" will bring you back to DOS instead of shutting down.

Joe.

[dencorso]

dencorso, on 11 April 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

BTW, since the advent of 386-enhanced mode windows, it's not really correct to think about it as a windowing system running on top of DOS: it did in fact "possess" DOS, by patching it in-memory and replacing part of its functionality with its own VxDs, so the resulting OS was really a Windows/DOS gestalt. And that's how it worked ever since, up to (and including) Win ME.

The fact that it is "evicted" from DOS on shutdown just shows how cleverly written it is. It does not mean unmodified DOS was working under it all the while.