Slashdot Mirror
Windows 95 in 4.47MB
Silvorgold writes "BOFH of MSBetas.net has been able to compress Windows 95 into 4.47 megabytes, making it the world's first sub-5mb bootable, registry editable, command-promptable, usable version of Windows 95.
He has written a small description about what he did, and also included screenshots (with his digital camera), and don't worry, these aren't fake screenshots."
PicoBSD made EVIL!
site killed before first post. that's gotta be a record.
"Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the screenshots :) Oh, and don't hot-link to them, my host will kill me. Thanks!"
Yes. Yes, he will.
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
Can someone please explain why we would want to boot a 5MB version of an operating system that came out over 8 years ago?
I think you could do a lot more useful things with a Linux distro at 5MB.
Is there any software that specifically need Windows 95 only?
Already /.ed and not yet 5 comments?
Oh wait, it's Windows95.
Great! Now I can crash my PDA with 8mb of storage space! Thanks!
Does it have a full-featured blue screen of death?
Are you an open source warrior?
Here's a mirror:
0x0D 0x0A
#126 - Slashdotter - Aug 8, 2003 02:58
/. - Aug 8, 2003 03:04
Slashdotting, coming your way....
#127 -
Here comes the flood of Slashdotters....Prepare for server meltdown
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
ou can discuss this at our official community, over at NeoNerds.net.
:)
;)
:) Oh, and don't hot-link to them, my host will kill me. Thanks!
Update: Chat with me in real-time at irc://irc.xbetas.com/Micro95
A FULL set of configuration files; Win.ini, system.ini, Registry, is available in our IRC channel. If you're thinking of building your own version of Micro95, be sure to head over there to find out more information about the project.
Okay, over the past couple of days you will have heard plenty of news about the latest Windows 95 in 10mb, created by Richard L. James from over at Wimborne.org. And then, there was redruM69, who managed to get 95 down to 5.35mb.
However, what you are about to hear is a world first.
Tonight, I created the world's first sub-5mb bootable, registry editable, command- promptable, usable version of Windows 95. And what's more, you can build the system yourself, if you know how.
But if I simply made this claim, you might laugh, you might mock. You might even go "hahaha you lamer". So I'm not just going to make this claim. I'm going to prove it. Here's the screenshots (taken with the camera):
Lemme guess. They're fakes, right? No they're not, but you don't believe me anyway, so here's the directory listing.
Windows 95 4.47mb Directory Listing
Well, I'm afraid that's all I can give you. I'm currently working on loading this into RAM, and also an installer for those of you with a legit copy of Windows 95. Aaaand I think that's all I can do
The system uses UPX compression on the main EXEs and DLLs, btw, in case you were wondering how I got it down past redruM69's 5.35mb. I also removed some extra files, and restored functionality which the other micro 95 builds don't have. I'll try UPXing the entire system and windows folders later, see if I can get it down past 4 or 3mb
My 16mb Office project will continue, as well as myself and Richard's collaboration on the micro 95 with TCP/IP Stack project, for those of you who wish to use this as a small browsing OS, etc. I'll also see if I can restore sound support to this, as I'm aware quite a few of you are interested in using this project as a basis for car MP3 players.
I'd also like to make it quite clear that none of this would have been possible without the help of Richard L James and his Shrinking Windows project. Also worthy of a big mention is redruM69, who sucessfully brought Windows 95 down to 5.35mb.
You can discuss this at our official community, over at NeoNerds.net.
Update: Chat with me in real-time at irc://irc.xbetas.com/Micro95
A FULL set of configuration files; Win.ini, system.ini, Registry, is available in our IRC channel. If you're thinking of building your own version of Micro95, be sure to head over there to find out more information about the project.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the screenshots
BOFH
The server was running on the 6 meg Windows 95 w/ IIS.
Another one of those "See what I can do, mommy" achievements. What do you want, a junior G man badge? System 7 was bootable on a floppy, but I`m not going to go around and tout it.
-Yim
Maybe next story posted should be a collection to pay his ISP bill.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Heh, the Contiki server was up for a longer time ;)
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
only 3 comments and its /. already. Why post news on an OS thats going to be 10 years old?
I can go down to the Fry's and get myself a nice 200 gig drive for a couple of hundred and change nowadays.....
Does anyone have a mirror of the site? I can't even get to google's cache of.
I'm still waiting for Windows 95 on a floppy.
Tierce
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
In other breaking news, the crew at DOSBeta.org have created a fully bootable DOS 5 system on a single 3.5 inch floppy.
soo.. . why exactly DID they leave all the cabs, secondary software, unused images, back pad programs never intended for public use on a public cd commercial release (150 av megs for those who never tried)? Bigger is better.. lots of extra stuff for control, included room to grow. That means lots will be pruned, so anyone who is suprised by this, go to asm 04 after taking a few machine level programming classes. What I'm really interested in is seeing how small we can get a bootable linux with an independantly and fully function hack *W*ine type program so i can load all my needs onto the newer 128 meg hardrive keychains.. along with my *ORIGINAL* mp3's, artwork, photos, scripts / resumes, etc.. so i might have a bootable navicable computing environment that might be used anywhere near a modern computer.. regardless of resources.. think about it.
p
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
This HAS to be a hoax. Windows95 ain't usable by any reasonable definition of the word.
Why should I be polite? He knew that the server couldn't handle it and specificly asked people not to hotlink because it wouldn't have the bandwidth. A slashdotting is roughly 32487293472938749237 times worse than somebody hotlinking some images to a forum or something. Slashcock knew what would happen and they did it anyway. Fuck them, they do it every time.
Some people like to step on bugs to hear the sound it makes.
Same principle here.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
This leads to obvious comparisons of the size of Win95 compared to WinXP, and the changes in just 8 years.
What I find telling as well is that the Mac OSX calculator.app is SIX times the size of the total RAM in the first Mac, and over twice the size of a complete OS install.
Yeah read my above post. Durrrrrrrrr.
I wonder how what kind of beating that win95 install could take?
sigs... who needs em
Actually, this is interesting, if not particularly important.
It shows just exactly how much JUNK that a Windows install puts on your system. Crap you don't need... in most cases, crap you don't know about, can't get rid of, or don't want. I'm pissed because my Windows partition is 6 gigs and WinXP takes up nearly 2 gigs of that, while still running slower than my 7 year old computer did back in 1996. Windows is actually a pretty fast operating system, once you take away all the junk. This just shows how much junk there is.
Although, if someone had come out with this 6 years ago, I'd be clamoring for the code - I would have loved this instead of having to clear out the advertizing junk and IE and Outlook Express manually...
P.S. Why the fuck was I marked as troll. That's a perfectly valid argument, and 100% true.
how soon till someone gets around to doing the same to XP. also, is this not a violation of the EULA?
No the first mac had 1MB RAM and the OSX calculator is not even 800kb. Also the OS install was only 350kb?
If you could add PCMCIA support to Windows PE, I could really use the help.
Complete list of uses for this:
[end list]
John Kerry is a Joke!
Work on Linux is ongoing, and there's a whole community on offer if you have problems. Windows 95, OTOH, is at least a generation old, and has already been EOL-ed by Microsoft.
More than mere navel gazing.
Durrrrrr. I did. What's your point?
I have 2000 on my 6gb laptop HDD, but I would like to run XP (for Netstumbler)... any links or advice to minimize the install?
Hrm, well, for one he says he is using an executable packer, but this isn't necessarily going to increase RAM usage.
I wonder how much RAM is required?
I used to run Windows 95 on a 486 DX4 75 laptop with 8 MB RAM. It was suprisingly responsive compared to my 486 SX 25 (I think I got that right, anyhow, it has been a while).
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
There were at least three versions of Windows 95, the last (OSR2) of which was very similar to Windows 98. Do we know which version was used, as presumably the later and more functional releases were larger?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Obviously you didn't. Read it again you fucking idiot. Jesus christ people as stupid as you make me want to rape something until it dies.
How Small the people with the source code could make it.
From the page:
;)
;) ) as the executables/libraries get uncompressed to memory when they get loaded by the Windows PE loader.
:)
The system uses UPX compression on the main EXEs and DLLs, btw, in case you were wondering how I got it down past redruM69's 5.35mb. I also removed some extra files, and restored functionality which the other micro 95 builds don't have. I'll try UPXing the entire system and windows folders later, see if I can get it down past 4 or 3mb
UPX compresses most executables to 30% of their normal size. But it also makes the system slower (well its Win95 so thats not a big issue
I'd like to see how small you can get the smallest floppy Linux using UPX, `strip` and some size squeezing GCC and linker flags
If you check the UPX examples you'll see that you can even get Emacs to less than 1 MB 8)
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
Oops: :) Oh, and don't hot-link to them, my host will kill me. Thanks!"
-BOFH
"Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the screenshots
That's kinda ironic after yesterdays article on Contiki, now isn't it?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
From their forum: :: prays :: I hope that b/w limit doesn't kick in
<BLOCKQUOTE>
#7 - BOFH - Aug 7, 2003 00:52<BR>
Eek... I think we're on an OC12, though, so we should be okay...
</BLOCKQUOTE>
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
No doubt a site wrecked this quickly is running an NT server...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
I guess that is what he was using as an OS for his server, he got /. 'ed when the post went up
Whats A sig anyway
This had come out YEARS ago! A sub-5meg Win95 would've been a absolute godsend; I was still using Windows95 on my main computer up until this year even, so a tiny "distro" of it would've been truly excellent and a very good thing.
and not really much different than what's happened to that server ..............
Reminds me of that tiny copy of Windows 3.1 that came on the Windows 95 disc. Used only during installation, a certain cab file contained all the necessary files to run 3.1 apps. All one needed to do was decompress the file, copy the Program Manager or any other shell program to the same directory, and add it into the win.ini (or was it the system.ini?) file. The entire thing was so small, it fit comfortably onto a 1.44 meg floppy.
I think the file was user.cab, although I'm not sure. Guess I gotta dig up that old 95 install disc.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
The first Mac, the original "Macintosh", had 128 KB of RAM and a single internal 400 KB 3.5" floppy drive. Several months later, a 512 KB version was available. The "512K Mac" was sometimes called a "Fat Mac".
I don't recall how large the first few versions of the OS were, but I do recall that the OS (including the desktop "Finder", several utilities, control panels, and a printer driver or two), MacWrite, and MacPaint could fit on one 400 KB disk with room to spare. Such a disk shipped with the original Macs.
You could run it easily on a DOS emulator on an old machine, for example, when I only had a 210MB HD on my RiscPC, I was glad to compress win95 to around 8-10MB in order to run a JDK, so that my DOS disc image would remain below 70MB...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
From this page, it appears that the previous 'record holder', 5.35 MB, did not use an executable packer or other compression.
;). Just what is the purpose of this, and at what point do your modifications, whether extreme, or just running binaries through an executable packer, defeat the purpose of doing this in the first place?
"Apparently only 5.35Mb in size (at the moment.... I'm told this might go down!) - without using UPX / any compression"
So, is what this fellow has done a superior acheivement, or did he mostly just run an executable packer on a few binaries?
Certainly if the idea here is to just shrink the physical disk space usage we can do better than either of these entries by compressing all files and hacking the Windows I/O subsystem calls to handle our compression.
I think all of this raises an interesting question. (ok, so it's not interesting at all, but I've had similar issues come up in a lot of other unofficial sort of 'competitions' like this, and we all just kind of use interest at that point
Is the idea to have the smallest possible OS capable of doing x or y?
Is the idea to have the smallest possible OS that looks like Windows 95?
Is the idea to have the smallest possible 'distribution' of Windows 95 attainable by just removing unecessary features?
Do we want smallest in terms of RAM usage, or smallest in terms of disk space? What do we then if we run it on a RAM disk? Which space counts?
Surely depending up just what is the goal here, we can do a lot better than 4.47 MB.
I guess I don't 'get it', what they're doing =)
That's Windows users for you!
There is a micro Linux distribution floating around somewhere that provides an X server in under 2 MB of physical disk space (but 4 or 8 MB of RAM), but I can't recall the name of it just now.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
This saves some useful space, at least from the trash can where windows 95 belongs.
From the site you linked to.
10M/sec on a P133.
Assmuing it was used on everything, then the _entire_ OS can be decompressed in less than half a _second_ on a lowly P133.
I don't think speed is anything to worry about here.
Too bad he couldn't fit it on a floppy.
OK at first glance this article may seem silly to some people, but it got my attention. I tried a few years ago to make a "version" of Windows 95 that could boot off a CDROM, a RAMDISK is created and then the Windows OS is decompressed to RAMDISK and then booted. Basic Internet access is achieved with email etc WITHOUT a Hard-Disk. In other words, you have a bootable CD that you can use in case your hard disk dies. OK sure I bet Linux can do this, but it would be nice to have an emergency CD you could cart around with a modem that would get a modern machine on the internet WITHOUT the arcane commands of a Linux OS. Even at 640x480x16!
used to be very popular on the Amiga, as were ramdisks. I remember back before I had a hark disk having a single compressed boot floppy that would copyitself into the RAD:, which was a recoverable and bootable ramdisk. the system startup scripts would check to see if the boot volume was RAD: or a floppy and take the appropriate action. After the initial load system reboots were very fast. This also made life with only a single or if you were lucky dual floppy drives very much easier.
but good luck
I know this guy, and next we are going to be doing this with WinNT 3.51 and making it look/act like XP. We don't know about 4.47 MB, but it will be small enough to fit on one of those mini cd's and will be bootable from that mini cd to a complete and full Windows XP like enviroment.
Sig: I stole this sig.
7,033 bytes, to be exact. I'm sure the icon for the OS X calculator is at least twice that size- ever mind the UI buttons. o.O
Cant' you guys go back to the 'drrrrrr...' sound? it was soothing me to sleep..
Menuet Homepage
Because I could really use something like a Knoppix for Windows. I mean a CD-bootable Windows install that won't scribble on my precious Slackware.
Is the comments at the end about the ISP bill...
several times I've been able to make Windows fit into 0 MB.
C|N>K
Yay!!!
A big chunk of the space are used in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
. ..
Volume in drive C has no label
Volume Serial Number is 0E1F-1EE3
Directory of C:\WINDOWS
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
DESKTOP <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p DESKTOP
FONTS <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p FONTS
IOS LOG <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p IOS.LOG
PIF <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p PIF
RECENT <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p RECENT
SYSTEM <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p SYSTEM
TEMP <DIR> 08-06-03 10:36p TEMP
WIN386 SWP 0 08-07-03 4:15a WIN386.SWP
STARTM~1 <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p Start Menu
SHELLI~1 <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p ShellIconCache
WIN INI 204 08-07-03 1:53a WIN.INI
SYSTEM INI 209 08-07-03 4:15a SYSTEM.INI
COMMAND PIF 967 08-07-03 4:14a COMMAND.PIF
EXITTO~1 PIF 967 08-07-03 2:15a Exit To Dos.PIF
DOSPRMPT PIF 995 08-06-03 4:53p DOSPRMPT.PIF
IFSHLP SYS 3,708 08-24-96 11:11a IFSHLP.SYS
WIN COM 24,503 08-24-96 11:11a Win.com
HIMEM SYS 33,191 08-24-96 11:11a HIMEM.SYS
REGEDIT EXE 68,608 08-24-96 11:11a Regedit.exe
EXPLORER EXE 91,648 08-24-96 11:11a EXPLORER.EXE
COMMAND COM 93,812 08-24-96 11:11a COMMAND.COM
12 file(s) 318,812 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\FONTS
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
VGAOEM FON 5,168 08-24-96 11:11a VGAOEM.FON
VGAFIX FON 5,360 08-24-96 11:11a VGAFIX.FON
VGASYS FON 7,296 08-24-96 11:11a VGASYS.FON
MARLETT TTF 17,412 08-24-96 11:11a MARLETT.TTF
SERIFE FON 57,936 07-11-95 9:50a SERIFE.FON
SSERIFE FON 64,544 07-11-95 9:50a SSERIFE.FON
6 file(s) 157,716 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\IOS.LOG
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\PIF
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\RECENT
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\ShellIconCache
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu
. <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p
PROGRAMS <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p Programs
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs
. <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p
STARTUP <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p StartUp
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
. <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 11:08p
0 file(s) 0 bytes
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
.. <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p
COLOR <DIR> 08-06-03 10:34p COLOR
IOSUBSYS <DIR> 08-06-03 10:35p IOSUBSYS
VMM32 <DIR> 08-06-03 10:36p VMM32
SYSTEM DRV 2,288 08-24-96 11:11a SYSTEM.DRV
MMSOUND DRV 3,104 08-24-96 11:11a MMSOUND.DRV
NT
The site www.msbetas.net is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
And you all though it was running on the advertised super slim win95.....Leave giants like Contiki to host web sites!
Should we send them an award for the fastest slashdot time on record?
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
I just left out the GUI.
He used a better method, though: He deleted everything but win.exe, then tried to run it. When it failed, he monitored what file it was trying to process, and added that from a full installation. Repeat until it boots, and you can do this for any OS.
Seems that the sites did not survive the slashdot effect
Sorry was in bad mood when made account
Step 1. compress win 95 to 5 megs
Step 2. compress win 95 to 4 megs
Step 3. compress win 95 to 3 megs
Step 4. compress win 95 to 2 megs
Step 5. compress win 95 to 1 megs
Step 6. compress win 95 to nothing
Step 7. Repeat process with all Microsoft products and Microsft itself until there is nothing.
I don't understand.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
"I took redruM69's 5.35Mb version and upx'd it. W00t! 1 4r 1337!!!!!! f33r m33!!!!"
Hmm. Not exactly ground breaking stuff.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Have you tried using Resource editor to pull out icons/things that arent needed from DLL's & EXE's? Also, with those .ini files, try using just CR instead of CRLF codes, squeeze just a few more bytes out.
It seems they got too much time in their hands.
Making Windozz 95 useable - now that is an accomplishment!
If you look closer on the screenshot you will realize that they dosn't prove anything. Windows can be installed on another partition then 'C:' and after that it's pretty easy too 'construct' these shots.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
My old Mac could boot system 7 off a floppy disk, and it had the same feature set as W95.
Incidently Mungkie used win95 at one point for a number of epos projects. Using win95 we managed to create an uncompressed OS image of ~3.9Mb which meant we could normally fit our entire system and application on a 32Mbit ROM (we can half that size with compression but more system RAM is then required). Now using linux we can get the system in the same ROM but we get far far better features, security and a more stable system. We have now switched to linux only development on all work (unless a customer insists on a MS platform).
Now just to reiterate the exact reasons for reducing system size!!!. SMALLER SYSTEMS ARE CHEAPER AND SIMPLER TO DEVELOP, PRODUCE, AND MAINTAIN.
The savings made in development time mean we have more time to eat bananas.
The savings made on hardware costs make our systems (that we sell!) more competetive and increase our profit margins.
The savings made in maintenance mean our products are reliable and our customers want to buy from us again, and saves us time and money in supporting customers and paying for call centers.
Win95 was OK in its time but things have changed.
embedded linux
5 MB of proper code, and
645 MB of added junk.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Lets see. Bill was worth about 50,000,000,000 dollars at this time too..
That is: 11,185 dollars and 68 cents PER BYTE.
I think he did pretty good, eh?
--ken
George, tell me about the rabbits...
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Here is Win95 reduced to about 33K..and if I reduce the color palette, I think I can get it under 25K at the same resolution...
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Distributing files via dcc from IRC channels is certainly a novel idea.
Here are some other URLs for you:
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Step 8. ???
Step 9. Profit!
Sorry, I couldn't sleep if I didn't post that.
already this site has been slashdotted??????
Are you sure? I thought EFNet droped and split as a matter or normalcy.
"please don't hotlink images" is not "please don't hotlink article" you fucking numbnut.
is it because of me or is that web site offline? No web site is configured at this address.
Apparently there are other folks that do this for Win98 and WinME as well. They provide some good arguments (marketing, that is :) for why this is better than WinCE.
The litepc folks also have utility called 98lite professional that removes all web integration from Win98 - just to show it was doable (at about the time MS said it couldn't be done)
surely my windows 98 installation filled 500 mb or something like that? And it fit on a 680mb CD ?? What is the brilliant thing here?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
We all know that MSBetas is down at the moment, BOFH (the head admin) will be working on that soon, until then, the main discussion is at: http://www.neonerds.net/viewthread.php?tid=377 (requires registration to post) and there's also an IRC room available: irc.ufnet.org or irc.xbetas.net i think, and the room is #micro95
Didn't that use to be SCO's makret..? '-)
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
(BTW, geeks used to call Windows 95 "MS-DOS 7.0 with illegally tied UI". Furthermore, geeks used to brag about their Norton Commander customizations, which is probably why The Borg decided...) Anyway, to make a short story long, this very topic is what got my fists to clench vis-a-vis Microsoft. I got mad while I was debugging my programs. If you're programming something in C and then have to fsck around in assembly language to use long file names with a modicum of portability, it's not a good-mood environment to begin with half the time. Then along comes this weird runtime error message something like, "For this (kernel call) to work, you must be using the full graphical Windows 95."
Hello? What on gawd$ green earth doe$ a graphical u$er interface have to do with file $y$tem kernel call$? It'$ a fuggen enigma, no? ;-)
If my memory serves me right, there were about 3 different ways to access the long filename services in MS-DOS 7.0, and for each detail in each way, you had to use either undocumented features or tiptoe around a gauntlet in code. Everything worked if you decided to stick with Microsoft's crammed-down-throat GUI, but if not ___. The D.O.J. slapped a wrist about it, but whatever.
Anyway, if I felt sorry for having wasted your time on this, I would announce that regret here. As it turns out, the whole MS-DOS 7.0 compatability stuff of my programs was/should_have_been inside of sections that were #ifdef'ed out of the compiler's view for target environments not in Windows 95 anyway.
Sadly, I just finished blowing through my points. Still, the people need to know!
Cause ppl can't handle the truth...
Hey, this is dangerous! If you shrink Windows any further it might just collapse to the size of a black hole and swallow everything in the universe!
Looks like he tried to use Win95 to run the site maybe?
/.'d
Error: No site configured at this address.
Your post would have been modded up, if only you had called it M$-DOS 7.
Slightly OT, but does anyone know of any OS's / Distros that can boot from USB? If so, how do I set this up? My whizzy new laptop supports it, but...
No sig for you.
Used this method (usually combined with stacker and 2m format) lots when I was at university, we didn't have access to hard disk storage so we'd squash things onto disk to use; I got the following working off single disks :
:) Although for doom a friend of mine wrote a program that hacked the .wad file and ripped out all the sound files 'cos those didn't compress with stacker.
Win3.11
Win3.11 booting into netscape
Win3.11 booting into Mirc/Pirch
X-wing (without cutscenes/movies)
Lemmings 2
Borland C (dos ver)
Turbo pascal 7 (dos ver)
A few others, including shareware doom off a single disk so that we could play it across the (novell) network without having to log in and be traced
I saw "Die, Server, Die" back in 1995 when it was released. Despite the protests of adults who really did know better, I watched it. The ferocity of the article in parts literally made me back away from it, starting and screaming with the slightest noise; it made my skin crawl. Damn, but it was good!! Though the article is old, it's still in color, and I can still to this day remember the lurid splashes of red in some of the bloodier scenes.
The plot of "Die, Server, Die" is very simple. Cowboy Neal plays the part of a wealthy, but crippled, BOFH, on whose property Windows crashes one day. After noticing that the area where Windows landed becomes lush with abundant vegetation, he has his servants retrieve pieces of Windows, and he tried to replicate the effect the installations had, first in his greenhouse, then with other living things, like animals.... Of course, you don't get to know this until the latter part of the article.
The preceding information is revealed grudgingly by the landowner only after his guests, an attractive couple, become increasingly alarmed by the things they discover on his grounds. One of them is a bestiary of...things...kept under lock and key; a zoo of the failed experiments on animals with installations of Windows. The worst is an attack by a deranged, zombie-like clippy-thing one night during a storm; after fighting it off, it literally decays in the rain as they watch.
Not only do you get unusual moments of Slashdot like these in the article, but they are staged with masterful direction, especially the suspense building to the moment of shock; it is unbearable. Very few articles could make my hair stand on end, even that long ago, and "Die, Server, Die", was one of them. Of course, in the grand old tradition of Slashdot articles, the best is saved for last, and you're not disappointed. Even the BOFH, who, repenting, tries to destroy the Windows installations in his possession, is infected with what they carry, and in turn, he must be destroyed. But will the hero carry the day? And if he does, what of the other Windows installations still in the ground? And the things in the utzoo?
"Die, Server, Die" is a superb showcase for one of Slashdot's legendary performers, Cowboy Neal, and it's a fantastic example of intelligently directed and made Slashdot. Run, don't walk, to wherever you can get a mirror of this article.
Actually, I did that myself. Windows 3.1, shaved down, kept solitaire. One HPII printer driver. A shaved down version of WordPerfect 5.1, with one font. All on one diskette. There was room for a couple of documents too, as most only took up 1 to 2 K. No tables or anything fancy.
This was early laptop days, when they were bulky and pricey, so I would make them for guys going on travel. All they needed was any old computer and they could boot, type and print their stuff out.
If you have the resource kits, both 3.1 and WP were 90 percent bloat.
Arachne 1.70 is a dos based system, and that can be useful since it has a web browser, email client and other features and very small size. Does very well getting X up with it's small collection of drivers. It's not linux, but worth looking into if you need a gui and don't have much space. (I wonder, however, in this day of big cheap hard drives and fast processors, why such small size is needed.) Arachne 1.70 fits on a floppy but requires a small HDD to run. Can see all hidden files, and can be used to repair Windows in an emergency. It's no tomsrtbt linux, however. Has a graphical text editor that can write web pages, etc. I've installed Arachne on top of caldera opendos and MSDOS 6.21, also used Windows 98 DOS. Very interesting little distro, with full documentation.
yeh, I was just yesterday thinking of moving everything back to 95 - this rocks!!!
At 8:00 AM EST, the link gives this message: No web site is configured at this address. Even without the screen shots, I still think this project is fairly cool. It's like the projects that take old video game consoles and try to see what sort of software can be pushed on to them using modern tecniques (reported on Slashdot some time back). It's mnore important for the way of thinking that drives it, rather than the actual project. It shows people still care about making things efficient and samller desipte ever expanding hard drive sizes and rising processors speeds.
You can ataach that OS to an e-mail and stupid people will click on the attachemnt and overwrite their OS....
Now that would be funny!!
Reminds me of when I worked for compaq tech support back in the day and the official line was "There is no MS-DOS 7.0, there is only Windows 95. Rebooting into DOS mode is just that - a mode of Windows 95." Man whatta load of crap. But I guess it was true "from a certain point of view."
Meanwhile at the university, your PHB was getting drunk and laid on a constant basis, having the time of his life, and is now getting paid more than you.
Berto
WIN95 is proprietary software. Are you still using proprietary software ? Me, no.
;-)
I'm only using Free Software to guarantee my & your freedom.
http://www.debian.org/ can run on 2Mb flash
http://www.openbsd.org/ can run on 1 Mb flash
It just shows what Microsoft could have done if they weren't Microsoft!
I've never fucked a retard in my life, you insensitive clod!
... all but 256 were duplicates. So that's 195312500 per unique byte!
Man, if I had that job, just sit and make up bytes all day long...
if it'll be able to boot/load from a PS2 memory card...
"No web site is configured at this address."
/. was on the way.
Looks like he hid his website when he heard
As I read this post, I almost got the feeling that it was randomly generated. It seems like a menu of phrases that sound kind of "hacker-esque", somewhat scoped to the topic of compression and binaries, then randomly strung together into a semi-cohensive and partially-coherent post. Of course, I could be totally wrong and this guy is simply talking out of his ass. Apply Occam's Razor. :)
Join Tor today!
4.47 megabytes? Some guy told me I'd never need more than 640K!
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
When I got my 286, I thought it was an accomplishment to get Windows 3.0 installed on a 10 meg hard drive!
Well, should make those GHOST images of Windows easy to transport over. Could stick 'em on a CF card.
Could you imagine if MS had originally released Win95 with such a small footprint?
I imagine I would have liked the OS a lot more. When it first came out, I stuck with 3.11 (until I found out about Diablo) because it ran much faster and had a smaller footprint. I remember being thoroughly disappointed at the performance hit when I first booted into Win95...
Now I know that a smaller footprint doesn't automatically mean more better performance. However, there seems to be an unofficial connection between the two, because the programmer who strives for a small footprint is probably a better programmer, and is looking for ways to best optimize his/her code. Also, with such a small footprint there is quite likely less bugs. Cutting down that much bloat probably means that identical pieces of code could be cut down to one instance, and if that one instance has a bug, it will not only be more noticeable (since it gets executed more often) but also easier to fix.
But I think I know why MS didn't take this approach - money. Sloppier code = less development costs, and bigger bloat means more hardware upgrades, which means more Windows licenses (and Office licenses, etc.). Not to mention the general public would be more impressed with a gigantic OS than a tiny one. So I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
I wonder how much bloat could be removed from XP while still maintaining 90% of the features.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
I have a Win-95 computer, used for all my engineering work until last year and now only 2-4 times per week. I never loaded games, and was very careful about programs I added. However I used it for circuit analysis, PCBoard layout and other complex programs including photoshop. Except for Netscape and LView open at the same time, it almost never crashes or hangs-up. It is one of the earlier WIN-95 versions, and I never upgraded or added patches. I run Norton's crashguard and Zonealarm and Karenware PTCookie to keep most junk off.
Since I have the same problem free performance on that particular Win-95 with Cyrix P166 as I do on Win-2000(Athlon1.8G)at work, I am convinced that a small version of W-95 might be a very good idea for those people who only use their computer for email and for searching/buying on the internet.
Am I the only one who still used Win-95?
Hmmm. Not much good for me; that would delete my nice squeaky-clean karma-free Linux /boot partition :-)
When I still was not fully converted to unixoid
operating systems, I made a Windows(R) 95 B 2.1
set consisting of
- 2x 3.5" HD 1440K floppies
- 1x 3.5" DD 720K floppy
The first (HD) one was bootable, and it had
registry, command prompt and VGA 256 colours.
If I had included Explorer, it'd grown up to 3x
3.5" HD 1440K floppies - but I needed not even
overformat (1600K) the floppies.
I think I've still got them in the subbasement.
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
First, here's how I do it:
Have two NTFS partitions, say, D: and E:.
Let's say I already have a 768mb pagefile on D.
I set a 768mb pagefile on E, clear the pagefile size from D:. Click ok. Message telling me I'll have to reboot for changes to take effect. Don't reboot.
Then I change my mind for some reason. I clear the pagefile size for E:, and set a 768mb pagefile on D:.
Blue screen! "NTFS_FILESYSTEM" or something like that.
Then after rebooting, Windows happily tells me I have no virtual memory. I can log in as an administrator, but I haven't tried it as a normal user.
Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
Make that a five MB bag.
Not much good for me; that would delete my nice squeaky-clean karma-free Linux /boot partition
/boot partition first on the disk, then a 2GB FAT partition (just in case I eventually need to run DOS, it can sit empty for years, because I never found any reason to install DOS).
/boot. Lucky me, that I only wrote that command on slashdot and non in my root shell.
Well, who knows who have what on which partition? I usually put a small
However it turned out the computer I wrote this on actually have a 32MB FAT partition before
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Has anyone not heard of QNX demo disks, ZipSlack, or the many pre-made Car MP3 linux distros?
People, it's not that hard! Why suffer with a non-pre-emptive, not protected-mode OS to do these common things?
Backwards compatibiltiy, and games, I can understand. A cool Win95 tiny system would be a great way to bootstrap an old DOS or DirectX game on a CD.
But for car MP3 players? I hope you like the music to crap out every so often, if you change tracks too quickly. You'd best be running CubePlayer with some kinda custom input controller if you want it to work predictably.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I find it rather interesting that nobody has yet mentioned litePC and their EOS product - they got Windows ME down to less than 32MB _with_ Internet Explorer. They also make 98lite, which lets you easily install stripped down, but fully functional builds of Win98 and ME. I hear ME is actually pretty good after "liteing" it. XPlite is still in progress.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
If that is all you need use Freedos then.
I'm both saddened and relieved to hear this. I never managed to get a stripped-down version of win95 onto a floppy. However, I did manage to get win31 on a single 1.44mb floppy, back in the day; (using a self-extracting rar archive that uncompressed to a RAM drive, of course) I even had sound support, via the PC Speaker Driver for win31, so it could go 'tada' on boot-up! ;)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I for one would like to see apple increase speed and decrease size on OS X. It would be nice to be able to produce small, compatible binaries for the regular os x and a stripped-down-and-streamlined version for less powerful devices. I think I heard an unreliable rumor about that once.
Well, if you dumped all the legacy supporting stuff, cut out the (many) unnecessary functions, turned bundles into tarballs to cut back on the wasted space and/or compressed them (didn't I hear something about built in zip compression?) and severely scaled back the graphics, it could be doable.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
A 5 Meg X86 Windows OS fills an important niche. Windows CE is really centered around ARM and StrongeARM architecture. There are many companies that are still producing X86 Single Board Computers (SBC) and System on Chip (SOC) devices. I regret to say that the X86 legacy will never die and we should profit from peoples ignorance.
but I have OS 8 running on my Sharp Zaurus. (thanks basilisk and xfree!)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
the Linux kernel can use gzip or bzip2 compression. This is usefull for 2.4, and very near necessary for 2.5 and 2.6.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
They have taken the bridge and the firewall.
We have barred the ports, but cannot hold them for long.
The server shakes. Drums, drums in the deep.
We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark.
We cannot get out...
They are coming...
Tweet, tweet.
My first computer had 1024 bytes of RAM. That was for program, screen memory and system variables. (4K of ROM for programs) It booted faster than the TV. Those were the days. In fact, those days are still with us (...he says as he returns to playing with his Ateml AVR circuit...)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
is a Floppy RAID to put it on.
It's generally quite stable.
So, we now have a Windows OS small enough to fit on a 5 meg BIOS chip... *evil laughter*
Cost of Windows 3.1 $39
...... Priceless
Cost of Windows 95 $99
Cost of Windows XP $199
Cost of putting Unix Code into Linux $1,000,000,000
Reducing Windows 95 to less than 5 Megs
There are some things money can buy, for ever thing else there is Microsoft.
In Soviet Russia, cheap drives are hard to buy.
Files:
http://skci.com/~nevlow/
Site:
http://skci.com/~nevlow/mirror
...Windows doesn't work without YOU!
The best thing about it is that you can delete it so much quicker than the other versions of Windows.
Floppy Raid Array
I want to try it!
http://www.ohlssonvox.com
...bootable, registry editable, command-promptable...
...usable...
Sure.
Never.
Some day ago, i took a hard disk crashed laptop :)
(Compaq aero) and use a floppy to boot, network
enable, load printer server configuration, and
load in a 2MB image disk in memory, required
MS-DOS files + Windows 3.1 + VB 4.0, so i can
browse the network, select printer jobs, or make
some little program to run in the free 2MB of
memory available... sure it was fun... i think i
will do it again someday
...Windows compresses YOU!
...Windows uninstalls YOU!
...Windows floppy boots YOU!
...Bill Gates removes excesses YOU!
...Executables remove YOU!
...Solitare plays YOU!
...Site slashdots YOU!
And a bonus AYBABTU:
All your Windows are belong to us!
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Since our site got raped by you guys :P, we've got an official discussion thread going at our sister site
http://www.neonerds.net/viewthread.php?tid=377
You'll need to register, but since we're not Microsoft we won't sell your details to a porn site. Also, catch me on IRC and I'll tell you anything you wanna know.
BOFH
Has the site been slashdotted or taken down?
I didn't think that MS would sit still while someone make monkeyed versions of their old software. Even ones they've end-of-lifed.
I've ran systems before without page files just fine.
ever touched a woman that wasn't related to you? Have fun reading the man pages on emacs and learning klingon. fucking dork.
Why is this a troll, you dumb fucks? Read the news lately about outsourcing to India/Russia/China, etc... 1999 is forever dead and I'm quite sure the average middle manager makes more than the average IT worker. Get a clue fools.
Plus, like the good old days of Stacker, you often gain speed (or at least moderate the lost speed) by saving disk access and transfer time. CPU decompression is often a lot faster than hard disk reading.
When I was younger I managed to put win95 on a diskspace compressed 1,44MB diskette.
Every other comment bitches about how there are no uses for this. I can think of one interesting application straight away.
USB pendrives are becomming cheaper and more popular. Most of them support booting. Copying a mini distro of windows 95 would be quite a useful feature - you pop your stick into any PC, and have your own customised GUI with a few programs you use regularly, programs you need to open documents stored on your pendrive preinstalled, etc.
Well dang you! Now we're getting almost back on topic again, and we don't get that naughty, edgy "Slash Dot really doesn't want us to be saying this," kind of a feeling! ;-)
Y'know, back then RAM still was a tad spendy. People actually saved up for a little while to move from 8 MB RAM to 16 MB RAM. Even though there was swap space, that precious RAM space mattered. That was part of the deal, part of my gripe. (In the back of my mind I wanted my own code to be used in some kind of embedded project some day with a squeaky tight hardware budget and with very little electric power to the processor.) About "actual DOS", you were right both times. Since you were in customer support, I suppose you remember how the machine could be F8 booted in any of several modes. There was at least one mode that looked like "in DOS" with the screen operating in hardcore text mode, but it was actually with the entire Windows 95 setup loaded in RAM. In that case long filenames behaved themselves, but all those extra hardware resources were used for nothing (but the super-duper fast text-mode video-hardware outputting code, that could exploit the time-efficiency of BIOS interrupts, could very easily crash the whole system in that mode). Then there was a genuine MS-DOS 7.0 mode, wherein only extreme care in assembly language could access long file names, and there really was no GUI code loaded into memory (in which case, access to the hardware-level text mode video output was safe, saving both runtime and RAM resources). I suppose Microsoft permitted the possibility of the GUI-free mode in the first place in order to accomodate a bootable floppy without having to do inelegant things like the Linux boot floppies (with "boot and root disks"). Then I suppose to prepare for the inherent disasters of only one descriptor table entry for all "concurrently" running programs (the nature of the oxymoron, "DOS Protected Mode"), Microsoft probably wanted an available all-hell-has-in-fact-broken-loose mode, raw COMMAND.COM, in order to enable the launching of primative diagnostics or whatnot else. (Remember the red MSD screen, finding your COM port addresses and other such trivia?)
Jeeze. It feels really strange to be "talking" like this--like I'm such a poseur or something. With 8 times as much time and effort devoted to studying "internals" of later releases from Microsoft, I don't suppose I could know even half as much (proportionally) about what is going on. I haven't bothered trying either. Just as everyone else, I have gotten really really jaded about any breathless "insider's" info on the Registry or API or system tuning information. Microsoft has come a long way in the fine arts of obfuscation and in making things, um, meretricious as Eric Raymond would put it. I think 1995 was a good year for sending curious tinkerers from the pages of "MS-Something" internals books to Linux books, most of which had a CD with an entire operating system inside a little envelope right with the book. Mine was "Red Hat Linux Unleashed" with Red Hat 3.0.3 and (I think) kernel 1.2.3something. Why fsck around with guesswork about tweaks in the System Registry when you can directly edit the relevant configuration files and can call any kernel function you please in any language! It's flabbergasting--is flabbergasting a word?--to think that you can even rewrite chunks of the kernel and startup programs. Instead of "LILO", you could make it say, "J-LO" or instead of "starting file systems" it could say, "Hi, mom! ext2fs is in! :-)" without really engineering anything.
It's the principle of the matter, right? I don't adore computers quite enough to do such things
This has to be the most irrelevant story ever published here. Specially if coming from CowboyNeal.
Today HD space is hardly an issue
Nobody uses Win95
If you want to embed Win95, please visit your psychiatrist first
His sites down already. Micro$oft must be reading /. and thought that it was copyright infringement.
I think it should be law to do this to all of M$'s operating systems before they are released to the public. Fight bloat! For older machines, especially those that do not have Linux- and BSD-friendly hardware, this is a great way to get them up and running quickly. You can sing Linux praises all day, but if all the customer wants is a terminal or simple server function, Windows will install quickly and serve adequately.
Got to remember these old jokes:
Longer list here...
Q. What's the difference between a violin and a viola?
A. A viola burns longer.
One day, in the middle of a rehearsal, the conductor sees the second chair viola in tears. He stops the orchestra, and asks, "What's wrong?" The violist replied "The oboist turned one of my tuning pegs!" The conductor asked "Don't you think you're overreacting?" "NO! He won't tell me which one!"
due to the way windoze displays file/folder sizes (truncation, not rounding) the size is 4.48MB (not 4.48MB) if you wish to display two digits of accuracy to the right of the decimal point:
4,695,650bytes / 1024 / 1024 == 4.478
round that down to one fewer digit: 4.48
Perhaps if we keep compressing Win95 smaller and smaller it will reach critical mass, implode in to a black hole and take the rest of the Microsoft software with it.
*ahhhh*
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
My two main winboxen (Win95, Win98) run without a pagefile, and I've run Win2K without one as well. These boxes have way more RAM than is necessary, but that's not as critical a factor as I would have believed. ***
The occasional program will whine because it thinks this means there is "not enough memory" but it doesn't bother Windows in the least.
*** One of my Win95 junk boxes came to me with only 32mb RAM and no swapfile (because someone had removed the 2nd HD, where it was supposed to reside, and had failed to change the swapfile location setting). I didn't discover this little defect immediately, and meanwhile was using it to test a video capture doodad -- not exactly a minor job. Bizarre as it sounds, it never crashed, and actually ran faster that way than with 64mb RAM and a swapfile. (And being a lowly P75, it's slow enough to make every performance nit visibly obvious.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This was a good trick in the days of MFM hard disks and 3-digit access times. On my 286, I found it was worthwhile to PKLite executables solely because it was one or two fewer sectors that old ST-225 HD had to grind its way through.
OTOH, while M$'s incarnation as Doublespace did add something to performance as you note, I found that genuine Stacker degraded performance.
Stacker did squeeze another two megs out of that 20mb HD, tho. In those days of $100/mb HD space, that was a valuable tradeoff.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Windows just dosen't work....
Looks like I struck a nerve, bitch. Go jerk off!
Wicked !!!!,b good if the link to site bout win95 in 4.9mb actually wrked tho,haha
...someone has a 3.9MB win95 version
w in95-4mb.txtw in95-4mb.jpg
Go here for filelist: http://www.wimborne.org/richard/shrinkingwindows/
screenshot: http://www.wimborne.org/richard/shrinkingwindows/
e-mail: nerd@i-hate-you.org
Ah yes, those were the days... I was able to get Windows 3.11, DOS 6, a tiny DOS communications program called Lync, and a text editor all on a 1.44MB floppy with Stacker. It can be done, with lots and lots of patience. Windows was able to open Program Manager off the floppy, but that was it. :^)
The disk has since developed bad sectors, and is unusable -- I really wish I had made a backup of it, just for amusement and nostalgia purposes.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware