Microsoft Discontinues Windows 3.x

rugatero writes "The BBC reports that, as of last Saturday, Microsoft is no longer issuing licenses for the 18-year-old Windows 3.x. Many here may well be surprised to learn that anyone still has use for the antiquated software, but it seems to have found a home in a number of embedded systems — including cash registers and the in-flight entertainment systems on some long-haul passenger jets (Virgin and Qantas are cited). Considering Linux's credentials as an embedded OS, this news could very well indicate the possibility of more migrations in the pipeline."

Comments

How dare they!

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 3.x is a lean, stable, functional, and secure OS! How could they do such a thing?

Re:How dare they!

[MrNaz]

Surprised? Surprised to learn that Win3.1 is still in use? I think the descriptor they're after is totally fucking gobsmacked so hard my gob flew across the room and bit me in the ass when I passed out and fell on it.

Re:How dare they!

[Dwedit]

Now that's a ROFL.

"WARNING - The system is either busy or has become unstable."
An error has occurred in this application. Close / Ignore

Windows 3.1 was full of random errors and crashes.

Re:How dare they!

[phyrz]

I wonder if Qantas is using 3.1 for its navigation system as well? It would go a long way to explaining their recent issues...

Re:How dare they!

[Gordonjcp]

Surprised to learn that Win3.1 is still in use?

I've got an old Compaq Portable II, which has Windows 3.0 installed on it. It's got an 8MHz 286 CPU, and a whopping 1.5M of RAM.

Now, surprisingly enough, it doesn't feel slow. Complex windows take a noticeable amount of time to draw, but it does have unaccelerated graphics (I don't mean 3D, I mean even graphics primitives in hardware - it's just an EGA card, which is a plain vanilla framebuffer). I can only imagine how responsive it would be on a more modern CPU...

Re:How dare they!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Windows 3.x is not OS, it is the window manager for MS-DOS what is the OS. On windows 95 the some OS parts were replaced from MS-DOS with Windows GUI, so the Windows became part of OS. Then Microsoft integrated browser libraries to OS and the bad security began right there. Now Microsoft has removed the graphical subsystem from OS and browser too, so NT6 is the first OS what is a truly secure, so Vista users does not get so much malware on their system!

Linux is samekind, it is just a monolith OS. But it does have simple framebuffer to draw graphics but systems what use Linux OS, does not include graphic systems as part of OS.

Re:How dare they!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it would be like one of my first game I made in assembly (on a C64). It was a "snake" kind of game and as soon as I typed run the game was displaying the "game over" screen. The reason is the game was so fast I didn't even had time to see both "snakes" going straight into the wall.

So I guess on a modern hardware, Win3.1 will be so fast the only thing you will see is a blue screen of death.

Re:How dare they!

[Yvanhoe]

Well, they talked about discontinuing XP this year and were still providing 3.x licenses ? WTF ?

Re:How dare they!

[Tontoman]

I came back from Australia two weeks ago, and Qantas entertainment system spent about half the time broken down. They even apologized for it in their announcement. Now I know why!

Re:How dare they!

[theaveng]

It might work, but I doubt you could play movies on it. That's one of the problems I have with my Windows 98 laptop. Technically it can play amy movie I throw at it, but only the MPEG and Quicktime movies play at proper speed. The rest are like watching in slow motion (10 frames per second).

>>>Windows 3.x is a lean, stable, functional, and secure OS!

NONE of the DOS-based Windows (1,2,3,95,98/me) were stable. They were kludges sitting on top of an ancient DOS, trying to be a Mac-like environment.

The only truly stable Windows were the NT-based ones (including XP) which were built from the ground up.

Re:How dare they!

[peragrin]

Now that is the one that got me. you can't get win2k, licenses but you could get win 3.1?

at least win2k was mostly stable. the only good thing about win 3.1 was the ability to get into DOS easily.

Re:How dare they!

[bhtooefr]

Well, they're perfectly fine when single-tasking, and being used as a GUI framework for a kiosk app. And, because they take so little resources...

Re:How dare they!

[bhtooefr]

"The system is either busy or has become unstable" is a Win9x error, no?

Windows 3.1's error of choice was the General Protection Fault... but it was better than the Unrecoverable Application Error of Windows 3.0...

But, the bigger problem in Win3.x is running out of "resources," especially in Windows 3.0... while newer versions of Windows were still susceptible (I've actually successfully run a Win2k machine out of resources - it took a very, very buggy beta version of Opera that had serious resource leaks, and 16384 GDI handles to be used up (contrary to popular belief, there AREN'T unlimited GDI handles left over, as opposed to 200 for 3.x, but I did it,) 3.x's multitasking capability was hindered not by the poor cooperative multitasking model, but by the limited resources.

Re:How dare they!

[bhtooefr]

Win3.1 is also a hell of a lot more lightweight than 2k. Think about it, you're setting up an embedded kiosk with a Geode LX (slower than a Pentium II) and 32MB RAM. Are you gonna run Win2k (which stretches the limits of that thing) or 3.1?

Anyway, XP Embedded is probably what Microsoft's intending as a replacement...

Re:How dare they!

[RulerOf]

Anyway, XP Embedded is probably what Microsoft's intending as a replacement...

That would actually rock. If there was full AD support and ADM/ADMX files that could be used on appliances... Wait, that probably makes my job harder.

Seriously though, if you haven't had a chance, grab WinFLP. It's based off of XP embedded. I use it, stripped down (which doesn't say much) on spare machines for gaming.

Re:How dare they!

[feldicus]

How is this marked informative? Where I come from, something has to be readable to be informative. Remember kids, structure friend is your sentence!

feldicus

Re:How dare they!

[rjhubs]

I've only been on two quantas flights in my life, but on both of them (20+ hours) I too had at least 2 hours of entertainment system troubles. Can anyone verify if these are really run on 3.1... I have some doubts.

Re:How dare they!

[hairyfeet]

Yeah,it kinda blew my mind too. Kinda like how Intel announced in 2004 that you only had 2 more years to get a new Pentium 2 because the last trays would roll out of the factory in June 06. WTF were they still making P2s for? And who would be using a 266MHz P2 in a new device when you could get a Via or an ARM CPU that would do so much more with less juice? Crazy,just crazy.

Re:How dare they!

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

XP is almost Vista. Therefore XP had to be stopped.

Re:How dare they!

[Dogtanian]

And who would be using a 266MHz P2 in a new device when you could get a Via or an ARM CPU that would do so much more with less juice?

Companies that sold systems/products built around P2s and P2-compatible chipsets that weren't worth spending money redesigning just to work with a slightly cheaper Via whose extra power they likely wouldn't be using anyway. The ARM isn't compatible on a software level either; not only would the hardware need redesigned but so would the software.

Or companies that had niche computer systems built around P2s that would be a PITA to refit with the processors you describe since that would require a mobo (and possibly software) update, and other hardware replacement. Etc...

The P2 would also have been a reasonably proven design by that time, and while Joe Public might not have such good reasons for conservatism and compatibility considerations, many companies and institutions do. I doubt the P2 was selling in big numbers by 2004, but I'm equally sure that there was a niche market for it. Processors have been continued a lot longer than that after their mainstream time is over, you know.

Re:How dare they!

[Jorophose]

Now Microsoft has removed the graphical subsystem from OS

No, sadly it's still there. It's just that now you have the option to boot into cmd.exe for Server 2k8.

The kernel and explorer.exe/iexplorer.exe are still all integrated.

Re:How dare they!

[Lord Kestrel]

I had a box with an old Creative DXR card, which did hardware MPEG2 acceleration. It was enough to make DVDs watchable on a K6-200.

That explains it

[DigiShaman]

in-flight entertainment systems on some long-haul passenger jets

Ahh, so that's what they ment by "Every seat is a window seat".

Re:That explains it

[MindlessAutomata]

That's not the sky, that's a BSOD.

Re:That explains it

[MrNaz]

I'm trying to find something funny to say about crashing, Windows and Qantas' recent in-flight incidents. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere...

Re:That explains it

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they still haven't tracked down that bug in Solitaire that would make the whole system hang.

Re:That explains it

[holywarrior21c]

Don't worry. Just make sure you don't get the window seats. or antiviral cream might reduce chance of crashing at the cost of flight speed.

Re:That explains it

[jsse]

That reminds me of a scary journey with Taiwan airline.

My flight didn't offer on-seat TV, but overhead TV only displayed information such as course and weather. Sometime the information pages would switch to camera view displaying what looked like real-time images from a camera shooting below the airplane.

It was good to look at, until it suddenly crashed, accompanyed by a loud sound that was probably caused by normal turbulence. Some passengers didn't know what was going on and started to scream uncontrollably.

I recognized they familiar screen, and attempted to conform the coward by saying that "Don't worry, it's just WINDOWS crashing."

More panic broke out, and the cockpit was in total chaos.

BTW, talking about the scary part, I almost got arrested for causing terror in the air. Had I not repeated what it looks like a WINDOWS crashing in my laptop I'd still be in Taiwan prison.

Re:That explains it

[d0n0vAn]

Every time the plane banked too sharply on take-off or landing, I prayed for a crash, or a mid-air collision -- anything.

Re:That explains it

[Joe The Dragon]

The Nintendo Gateway System runs on windows 3.1 / 9x.

Re:That explains it

[Jason Levine]

Interestingly enough, I was flying back from a wedding this past weekend and the jet had an in-flight entertainment system. They had to reboot it to clear up some problems and up popped a familiar logo. No, not Windows, but a cute little penguin. Unfortunately, I don't know what distro they were using. (I do know that the resulting touch-screen interface -- probably a custom job for Delta -- was familiar enough that some ordinary-looking users had no trouble using it.)

Re:That explains it

[recrudescence]

Wow! How do you make a BSOD on demand!? I mean, I guess it's probably a very straightforward thing to do ( :p ) but I guess I'd never given much thought on it, just in case I needed to demonstrate or something.

Re:That explains it

[jsse]

Luckily for me, my journey was to demonstrate this to my clients for selling some linux appliances (firing up BSOD at the end of my powerpoint demonstration something like that's cheap joke I know ^^). You may refers to here, but I'm not sure it works for all version of XP (I forgot which I had, long time ago anyway), and backup before you try.

The moral of this experience is to avoid mentioning "WINDOWS crashing" in a plane. ^^

ahah!

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains why I've taken 4 qantas flights in the past year and the inflight entertainment system hasn't worked once..

Re:ahah!

[HalfFlat]

I can corroborate: travelled with Qantas I think six times internationally in the last two years, and every time there were problems with the entertainment systems; on two of the flights, they were not able to get it working at all.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[derfy]

Well, it's news that matters, right now, so....

Two weeks.

China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[vovin]

Just in case you were interested China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight.
I flew another airline that also used Linux but I don't recall which one. It's not very often you get to see the boot up but in one case they rebooted the system after they landed and in the other my partners crashed when we were trying to change the default language.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[jrumney]

I flew Cathay Pacific recently, and they were using Linux for their in-flight entertainment too (my screen was stuck in standby at the start of the flight, so I got to see it reboot).

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[antifoidulus]

I think more use Linux then use Windows. Every airline that I have flew on internationally that had an in flight entertainment system(Delta and Continental for sure, probably others) used the same in flight entertainment system that was linux based. I got to see the penguin a lot when my system repeatedly rebooted on a flight from Atlanta to Munich..... Now that the companies saved money by going Linux, maybe they can invest it in some touch screens that can actually take abuse.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[PCM2]

It's not very often you get to see the boot up but in one case they rebooted the system after they landed and in the other my partners crashed when we were trying to change the default language.

Oh my God, that's terrible! My condolences for your loss, and I will never use Linux again.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[2Bits]

Just about every in-flight or on-board system in China used Linux by now. Those in the subway (Shanghai), on the bus, on the train, etc. Sometimes, you are on a bus, the bus runs over a hole or a bump, it shakes too much, the system flickers, and then you see a Linux boot up screen. Boot up time is pretty short, from black screen to fully animated screen with sound in less than 15 seconds.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[HonIsCool]

Sadly, I'm not sure it's such a rare thing to see. I've flown SAS and Finnair to Japan and both used Linux systems for the in-flight entertainment system. Unfortunately both systems also crashed and had to be rebooted repeatedly :( Once they had to actually move me to another seat because the system wouldn't play anything other than the flight map... Of course, both still beat KLM which didn't even have a private system, just a preset movie on a monitor hanging over the aisle.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[atraintocry]

whooosh

(sound of airplane flying overhead)

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[Mark Hood]

South African do too - and it was constantly crashing, rebooting, sluggish and poor.

Obviously any implementation can be rubbish, regardless of the underlying OS - but when you're on a 12 hour flight you would really rather not spend 2 of them trying to interrupt the boot sequence with the in-seat controller just to see if running fsck will help ;)

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[daniduclos]

KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines also uses Linux - I saw the boot during one flight. It was a red hat - took a picture of it :)

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[vovin]

First of all I don't know *why* it crashed I just know what I was doing.

Just because the entertainment system is using Linux as the OS doesn't mean they did a great job or are using solid hardware.

I flew on a Singapore Air flight and whenever all the entertainment consoles were in interactive they crashed. Seemed like a power problem to me. My guess is that Singapore Air was using a windows variant at the time [circa 2005].

Personally I'm jazzed whenever I see an airline using Linux, even if it is just for the entertainment system.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[cnettel]

I remember one KLM flight where about half of the seats (including mine, the full pattern was not immediately apparent) had some serious problems where the on-demand video files seem to have been crosslinked. You chose something, but got something else. The indexing didn't work, so no seeking. Suddenly, the video broke up and you were in the middle of another title. The instruction video was replaced by an excerpt from Shrek 2.

And, oh yes, I saw that penguin a number of times before they gave up trying to fix it by rebooting. The sad thing was that this in-flight entertainment system was the very best I had ever used, in the other direction, a week earlier. Responsive, a great selection of movies, seeking, pausing, etc. This was in 2005, and on some later intercontinental KLM they didn't still have the system, but it might simply be a matter of another airplane in the fleet where it hadn't been installed yet.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[daniduclos]

Of course, both still beat KLM which didn't even have a private system, just a preset movie on a monitor hanging over the aisle.

Well, I dunno when it was the last time you flew KLM, or which itinerary you did, but I flew KLM in 4 transatlantic flights this year, and they had a private system, yes, running red hat. True, it had problems in 50% of the time, but it was a private entertainment system.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[HonIsCool]

Two weeks ago, coming back to Europe from Japan. Same when going there as well. Someone said it depends which day of the week you are going, heh.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[Uber Banker]

In 2001 I travelled from London to Hong Kong on a KLM 747 (well, the second longer leg). I was upgraded to business class, row 1 first deck where the deck narrowed towards the nose of the plane. And they had American Psycho as part of the on-demand movies. It was awesome. I was unaware if it ran Linux, it just worked, which is what all components of an aeroplane should do.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[BlackCreek]

KLM, from the Netherlands, uses Linux for in-flight entertainment too.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[mpe]

I flew Cathay Pacific recently, and they were using Linux for their in-flight entertainment too (my screen was stuck in standby at the start of the flight, so I got to see it reboot).

Probably because it's powered from the cabin bus, which is the dirtiest and least reliable power supply on the aircraft. It will also glitch by design when switched between external and internal power.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[Bert64]

Yes, using linux to save money moreso than any other reason...
They also try to save money on the hardware too, so its quite often not hardware thats designed to be in a vibrating environment, and will crash during turbulence etc.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[mapkinase]

Thank you for the heads up. Now I am definitely switching to Linux-based in-flight entertainment system on my Gulfstream 5

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[sootman]

Song also used Linux. They had this cool system where you could listen to some music, view a map of where the plane was, and (most fun of all) play a trivia game where you could see the scores of everyone else on the plane who was playing. Once it was off when we got on the plane and when they came up I saw a familiar boot sequence, even had Tux in the corner. I had just turned my phone off and the system was done booting before I could get it back on to take a pic.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[danieltdp]

Why bother? Its slashdot. You must be new here. Next question.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[blackest_k]

It looks like Linux has got a place in the Sky

http://www.linux.com/feature/119544 (October 2007
"The Linux-based eX2 in-flight entertainment system (IFE) from Panasonic Avionics was the big winner at this year's Avion Awards, sponsored by an IFE trade group. The Best Overall IFE awards went to Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways, all running variants of eX2"

"About the awards

The World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA), based near Washington, DC, sponsors the Avion Awards. This year's winners were chosen based on a worldwide poll of 36,000 air travelers, says Elinor Kinnier, public relations manager for WAEA. Poll-based awards were given for overall and regional excellence -- a change from prior years, when a panel of judges chose winners in a variety of specific categories as well as an overall winner."

Panasonic uses redhat as a basis of their in flight Entertainment Systems with over 3000 planes fitted with them and as you can see they have been getting better

http://www.panasonic.aero/innovation.html

Panasonic seems to be doing well, with their inflight systems as Quantas has ordered 4 more systems for airbus 380's

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5534592156.html

Virgin have an inhouse system called RED for trans atlantic flights.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/10/mega-hands-on-virgin-americas-airbus-a320-with-red-in-flight-e/ again Linux based.

Seems like Linux is taking off all over and a commercial success story.

Re:China Airlines uses Linux on their in-flight

[Samah]

I took a flight from Adelaide to Melbourne a few years back for a concert (Queensrÿche, actually), and while I was onboard I had a go at their "in-flight entertainment system".

With some great effort, I loaded up Tetris, which was buggy as hell, and managed to make their frontend actually crash. It dumped me out to a Windows CE desktop with an IE icon and everything. I managed to restart the thing and it started downloading the OS over wireless modem connection. I was scared.

Darn

[Misanthrope]

I guess this means my sweet 386DX with the 2400 baud modem is going to be hacked the next time I dial into Prodigy to access Mad Maze.
I wonder if this will simply end up with companies using Wine over linux to run their legacy apps?

Re:Darn

[neumayr]

Uhm, I have never tried, but is Wine actually Windows 3.x compatible?
I'd imagine many of those legacy apps are 16 bit, controlling ISA cards that used to cost a lot more than the PC controlling it.
I don't think Wine would be able to execute 16 bit apps, or that rewriting the driver for Linux would be feasible in that case.

Re:Darn

[freedom_india]

Man i pine for the old days.
I had a 486DX2 running at 66MHz with 8MB RAM and windows 3.11 WFW. It used up 24 3.5 floppies.
I even cracked a shareware which provided simulated taskbar for Win 3.11 (this was just after Win 95 release). The code was COOKIEFEAST.
I also tried to run the JDK 1.0.2 on it by adding 32-bit extensions to the Win 3.11 but it never ran.
The bootup was significantly faster than my vista today (am downgrading to XP today; call up Dell and tell them to shove their Vista DVD up their a**** and send me an XP CD).
 

Re:Darn

[nsheppar]

Oh man I remember that, that maze was awesome. My dad and I spent hours on it, mapping the mazes to figure out where we were going.

Re:Darn

[kv9]

The bootup was significantly faster than my vista today (am downgrading to XP today;

you misspelled upgrading.

Re:Darn

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You still need a copy, which is sort of the problem, but DOSbox supports Win3.1

Re:Darn

[Tatsh]

I use Wine to run WEP games all the time, even on x86-64 Gentoo Linux. It works better than native Windows. It translates the old widgets to Win32 widgets correctly unlike Windows XP for many widgets. The only thing Windows XP translates correctly is the menus. It does not fix theming so therefore an app will only look like it fits in your environment if you use classic theme.

Re:Darn

[temcat]

Hehe, I had exactly the same config. Upgraded to Win 95 OSR2, worked surprisingly well for me as a production PC with Word 97 till 2000.

Performance boost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrading from Windows 3.x to Vista Ultimate should provide a significant performance boost for any application.

Why not XP?

[nebaz]

I know it's not the same situation, but finding systems with XP is now difficult. Why not wait until 2017 (or how ever long now + (now - windows 3.x coming out) is to support XP. (I know levels of support are different, but I'd like an easier time of finding XP)

Re:Why not XP?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that support for XP will actually be fairly similar. Its just that that will only be of use to you if you are a legacy customer with a load of XP embedded machines. Embedded is a totally different world. Heck, according to The Register Intel only stopped shipping embedded 386s, perfect for running embedded Win3.1, in September of 2007.

Unfortunately, the economics of user and embedded environments make for very different horizons.

Re:Why not XP?

[afidel]

MS will probably sell XPe licenses until the next embedded windows OS has been out for some time. This will likely be around 2015 (Win7 ships 2010, add 5 years) so your estimate probably isn't far off.

Oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

They are all nice to you when you retire. "Have fun on the beach," they say. Then one day, when you are relaxing in your hammock enjoying your time off maybe sipping a gin and tonic, the phone rings. "It's Linus and the Mac fag," they say, "They're back." "No way, I'm out of the game," you say. Then Windows ME bangs on your door, his back riddled with bullet holes, you know now and then that the computing world needs you. Up in the attic, you grab a handful of floppies and your trusty 2400 baud modem. "Fuck it," you mutter.

Re:Oh yeah

[TLSPRWR]

Can you PLEASE pursue a career in writing novels? The rest of the world thanks you.

I still have it.

[arrenlex]

Somewhere in our basement there is still an old machine which dual-boots windows 3.1 and windows 95A.

It probably doesn't boot anymore, as it was having motherboard problems late in life, but a year or so ago I converted it to a virtual machine image under qemu. I can, within 5 minutes, boot a virtual machine into a legal copy of windows 3.1 that runs and contains useful applications that we don't have equivalents for.

It's amazing that all this software still exists and is used by people, even after 18 years. Old tech is not as dead as you might think.

Re:I still have it.

[poetmatt]

On a funny level, I'm curious what you think is a useful application on windows 3.1 that we magically somehow don't have an equivalent of. What do you have in mind?

Re:I still have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

we have lumber cut optimizer which is not available for new platforms. it optimizes the number of boards the lumber cutting saw can slice for a given varying shape of wooden log.

Re:I still have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

On a funny level, I'm curious what you think is a useful application on windows 3.1 that we magically somehow don't have an equivalent of. What do you have in mind?

My university lab has a 15-year old piece of scientific equipment that still works perfectly. It cost about $200,000 new. It is controlled by a pc running windows 3.1. Not windows 3.11, and not windows for workgroups, they won't work.

Now, you could replace it all with new equipment (over $100k), or spend a lot of time fooling around with circuit cards, analog-to-digital converters, oscilloscopes, and write some complex software to control it all from a modern pc, or just run windows 3.1.

And they have quite a few old computers with PCI slots (hard to find these days) stockpiled in case of failure.

Re:I still have it.

[elthicko]

I liked that skiing game where at the bottom you got eaten by the yeti or something ;)

Re:I still have it.

[nmb3000]

On a funny level, I'm curious what you think is a useful application on windows 3.1 that we magically somehow don't have an equivalent of. What do you have in mind?

One word (well, two words really, but only one when smashed together like marketing people like to do): SkiFree.

Sure you can get a 32-bit version that runs under XP and even Vista, but come on! That's nothing like playing it the way it was meant to be played - 16 bits, 100% CPU usage, and Windows 3.1. Everything else is just a poor copy.

Re:I still have it.

[Slisochies]

SkiFree

http://ski.ihoc.net/

Re:I still have it.

[Whiteox]

There are a lot of TSR drivers out there that still need it (or DOS). Depends if you want a graphical interface.

Re:I still have it.

[AliasMarlowe]

On a funny level, I'm curious what you think is a useful application on windows 3.1 that we magically somehow don't have an equivalent of. What do you have in mind?

Don't know about "useful", but my younger daughter likes the Magic School Bus games which are from the Windows 3.1 era. They don't run under wine, since they have wierd attitudes towards video hardware (they fail in different ways, some install but screw up on running, others don't install).

These ancient games are the only reason we keep a venerable P3 which dual boots to Win2K. Its other purpose in life is running Stepmania under Xubuntu with a couple of dance pads...

Are there any decent equivalents of the Magic School Bus educational games nowadays?

Re:I still have it.

[pembo13]

Yah that was pretty ill. Got it on a shareway gamepack back when sharewhere was cool. Skifree. I'm sure you can Wine that now though.

Re:I still have it.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

On a funny level, I'm curious what you think is a useful application on windows 3.1 that we magically somehow don't have an equivalent of.

Program Manager.

Re:I still have it.

[RichiH]

> I'm curious what you think is a useful application on windows 3.1 that we magically somehow don't have an equivalent of. What do you have in mind?

Although that is more a DOS than a Win domain, there are many old controller cards for machines, radio equipment, measurement solutions etc. Those things were custom-built. A few dozen to a few hundred might exist world-wide. The software is often even more restricted than simply 'I need OS foo'. You might need a certain serial port chip or whatever. Replacing those systems would often incur costs of six figures or more.

A friend of mine works at Rhode & Schwartz where they have to support a lot of legacy systems. They keep old hard- & software around because _really_ large customers require it. One guy still uses DOS 6.1 for his daily work (development & maintenance) and he is _important_.

Just think about all the 'OMG, we need Cobol people' stories recently.

Re:I still have it.

[drsmithy]

And they have quite a few old computers with PCI slots (hard to find these days) stockpiled in case of failure.

Huh ? Most motherboards I've looked at recently have at least a couple of PCI slots on them.

Sure you don't mean ISA ?

Re:I still have it.

[bcmm]

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\PROGMAN.EXE in Windows 2000, XP, and XP SP1. In XP SP2, Program Manager was replaced with a dummy version which serves only to convert old-style shortcuts to explorer shortcuts, for compatibility with very old installers.

Re:I still have it.

[Bert64]

PCI slots? Don't you mean ISA?

On the other hand, you spent $200,000 on a piece of proprietary equipment that depends on a single piece of proprietary software? Being forced to keep win3.1 (you'l never be able to get a new copy legitimately) and a stockpile of antiquated hardware to run it on is the price you pay... Perhaps you should press for open specs and open code next time you buy a $200,000 piece of hardware, if your spending that much the company should bend over backwards to provide what you need...
Or was it just a lack of forward thinking? Never thought about long term support for the equipment you bought?

Re:I still have it.

[confused one]

Actually, his situation is not that uncommon. Proprietary hardware OFTEN comes with proprietary software; and, the company will most certainly not give you the specs or source code for their proprietary technology. Given that the equipment is 15 years old, it is probable that the instrument has long exceeded both its design life and its support life; ie. the company which manufactured it no longers supports that product.

Even after the product is no longer supported, it is often impossible (or at least very difficult and expensive) to obtain the hardware spec and source. A company might end-of-life one product but still use the technology underlying it in a new product. Another common scenario is that the company simply no longer want to have to support the old technology.

Now, as someone who does support equipment like this, if the parent had not posted anonymously I would have emailed him to let him know that ISA bus is most assuredly still alive and that brand new systems and ISA based I/O are still available.

Re:I still have it.

[vegiVamp]

Cardfile. Just a plain, simple, almost stupid application that lets you enter a title and then free text on the rest of the card. I think it supported OLE embedding, but I won't vouch for that.

These days I use TiddlyWiki for that kind of stuff, but it's been a long time without such a simple, but unbelievably useful application.

Re:I still have it.

[LWATCDR]

"Perhaps you should press for open specs and open code next time you buy a $200,000 piece of hardware, if your spending that much the company should bend over backwards to provide what you need..."
You don't write software for a living do you. You also probably don't deal with these types of systems.
The company may be under a several NDAs on some of the hardware they are using. So you figure that they should look for hardware that isn't under NDA? Well good luck they may not exist.
Next you may have bought some software libs that you use in your program. You will not have the option to open source those.

So the customer could just look for a company that offers them Open Specs and code....
Well they can look but they probably will not find any.

I have dealt with software libraries that the parent company decides to stop supporting. IT SUCKS. I will avoid that situation at all costs these days.
BUT sometimes you have no real choice.

Re:I still have it.

[bhtooefr]

And I'm pretty sure Cardfile.exe would run in modern versions of Windows, up to Vista/x86.

Re:I still have it.

[Machtyn]

Are you sure you didn't mean ISA slots?

Re:I still have it.

[Hatta]

This was 1993. There weren't many options back in 1993. Back then, you had to pay a large amount of money to get a compiler for a unix box, even with the academic discount.

GCC 2.4.0 was released in 1993.

Re:I still have it.

[danieltdp]

Cardfile. Next question.

Re:I still have it.

[Walter Carver]

Oh man... I am trying to run Win 3.1 inside QEMU but I am having bad luck with video drivers :( My old Pentium is blazing on Win 3.1 but I don't know how to convert all that data into an image. I mean, the real hardware is different than the QEMU emulated hardware.

Re:I still have it.

[Jazz-Masta]

At work we have a server with files datestamped 1988. Old accounting software from 1987, only usable in DOS.

We also have a server with SCO on it running some ancient program.

I hope to GOD these two servers NEVER break down, because I'm the one that will have to restore them. The main issue is finding another computer that will install this stuff. We still have all the original install disks for everything, but the problem is finding hardware that is supported. Usually people are worried about forward compatibility when upgrading, but no, nothing USB, nothing PCI-E, etc will work on Win3.1.

I guess we could virtualize it...but where's the fun in that?

Re:I still have it.

[Bert64]

Then the customers need to be more vigilant and forward thinking, if the majority of customers start demanding open specs then companies supplying hardware will fulfil their customers needs, or risk losing out to someone else who will.

Re:I still have it.

[KhipuX]

Perhaps you should press for open specs and open code next time you buy a $200,000 piece of hardware....... Or was it just a lack of forward thinking? Never thought about long term support for the equipment you bought?

Mmmmm, lets just look at the open source scene 15 years ago.... just look at the shit loads of programmers who would have kindly contributed there skills free of charge to let you use your 'mass' produced $200,000 science equipment or your lumber machine.

Re:I still have it.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Perhaps you should press for open specs and open code next time you buy a $200,000 piece of hardware, if your spending that much the company should bend over backwards to provide what you need

You either don't know how business works or you haven't worked with expensive systems.

I write software for instruments that sell for upwards of $500,000 and I can assure you that we do not give out our source code or specs to our hardware and somehow we still manage to have a market-leading product with over 1,000 systems installed.
OTOH, we commit to 5 years (I think) minimum support after the last sale and 15 years is the expected lifetime of the product (meaning we expect to sell it for 15 years, not that a particular one will only last 15 years). If we've discontinued the product you may have to pay for support, but at least it will still be available.

I'll also second the poster above who noted that ISA bus is still available. The machine I am talking about uses ISA and USB bus devices of our own design and there are still many manufacturers of industrial PCs who provide ISA busses.

Incredible

[DesScorp]

Ok, I'm genuinely surprised at this. Considering how unstable 3X was, I'm shocked that anyone is using it for anything. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see DOS used in embedded systems, but 3X? Lots of people should have been fired a long time ago for going there in the first place.

Re:Incredible

[NJRoadfan]

OS/2 1.3 lived on for many years in ATM machines. Unlike Windows 3.1x, it was considered the most rock solid 16 bit OS out there. What did a majority of the machines get replaced with?... oh Windows.

Re:Incredible

[ritcereal]

It was probably developed when the companies first decided to do their own in house development. My guess is that they didn't want to hire Linux developers and 3.x was the cheapest windows option the could find with the features they wanted. It's all about how much it costs at the end of the day.

Re:Incredible

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen Win 3.0 code still in use in a major chain restaurant's back office systems as recently as 4 years ago. The systems worked fine with actual Win 3.0 and OS/2. The applications ran as-is on Win 2000 without many changes.

Tried, tested systems are usually more stable than new systems with lots of new code.

Go figure!

Re:Incredible

[HiVizDiver]

Well, to be honest, if they're running 3.1, they ARE running DOS. :)

Re:Incredible

[DerekLyons]

Considering how unstable 3X was, I'm shocked that anyone is using it for anything.

Unstable? Maybe to your average Joe Luser who, ignorant of computers, let programs install all kinds of crap in CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT and WIN.INI... Or didn't know how to properly set paths, or any one of dozens of other ways to tune his machine. But to those who did know how to tune, and how to clean up after crappy installs, Win 3.X was very stable.
 
I think Windows 3.X got a bad rep because, unlike vanilla DOS systems, you actually had to know what you were doing to set everything up properly. Few people bothered.

Re:Incredible

[RMH101]

It also taught me a lot: getting stuff working in the first 640K, installing hardware pre plug-and-play (IRQ and DMA settings), etc. Just like CP/M before it, Win3.11 was partly responsible for me becoming a geek.

Re:Incredible

[jbatista]

Some software is still around (spec. at my workplace) for operational tasks, which was developed for Windows 3.1. Long, long time ago, and I was still entering junior high. That software has proven its reliability (I'm speaking only of the software, not the window manager) for many years, the original maintainers have come and are long gone, and there's an unspoken policy here about not messing with each other's work to the point that people grumble and moan and complaint if it's concluded that a problem must be solved by changing code even if it's a single line. So they keep it because it's asking for trouble to change something that works merely on the ground of updating the OS/hardware. It's like keeping the old battered, many-hundred-thousand-mileaged car because it's paid for and still works.

Re:Incredible

[Hatta]

Your post reminded me of this classic column by Dave Barry.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[MrNaz]

Yes, and all nerds by now know that when it comes to governmental issues, the president no longer matters. A new CEO for General Electric however...

Back in 1991...

[FreakWent]

I used to coax Win 3.11 to run on a 286 with 1024LKb RAM.

That was a desktop then, but would probably qualify as embedded today!

Re:Back in 1991...

[confused one]

nope, I don't thing you'd find a 286 in an embedded app. They've all gone 32 bit (wrt x86). I may be mistaken but I don't think anyone actually makes a 80286 compatible chip any more.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[superdave80]

What, you think Obama beating McCain is going to be news to anybody? He's had this thing locked up ever since the stock market went to crap.

Damn it!

[fahrbot-bot]

I was finally getting my config.sys and autoexec.bat files optimized. I suppose I could try putting Vista on my 33 MHz 486 (don't worry, it's a DX) ...

Re:Damn it!

[misleb]

Dude! I finally broke the 640k conventional memory barrier with QEMM386. You should try it!

Re:Damn it!

[Clandestine_Blaze]

I suppose I could try putting Vista on my 33 MHz 486

Yep, just be sure that the turbo button is pressed on if you want to be able to move the mouse around.

Re:Damn it!

[IorDMUX]

When I was 12 years old, I actually did that as a Christmas present to my family/brothers. I wrote boot menus into config.sys and autoexec.bat allowing the computer to be booted with memory optimized for Windows 3.1, CD-ROM free Windows/DOS (saving precious "Conventional" memory), or one of many Game Modes. The game modes replaced the dozen boot disks we once needed (remember those?) by writing their customizations directly into the config.sys and autoexec.bat files.

Sigh... *wipes away a nostalgic tear*

...Well... Now that I think about it, I really did hate those files.

Re:Damn it!

[bluescreenbert]

I actually had the turbo button connected to a jumper on the mainboard that was responsible for the CPU clock. Thus pressing the Turbo button was running my 486DX33 with 40Mhz.

Re:Damn it!

[marcosdumay]

Yeah, but your software must know about it, otherwise it will still be restricted to 640k.

Re:Damn it!

[Nimey]

I did that too; our machine had only 4MB of RAM and hence couldn't run most decent games when running Windows 3.1, or indeed when running anything but the DOS kernel and command interpreter.

Some of my menus were two or three layers deep; IIRC the top-level was Windows or DOS, and under DOS were the different game genres, and under that were options for individual games.

I don't miss the bad old days.

Re:Damn it!

[DeathElk]

Now we know where you got your name!

Ahh, 3.11 -- best Windows ever?

[mattytee]

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 gets my vote as the best OS Microsoft ever released, warts and all.

Reliability, ease of configuration, scriptable network installation (remember how you could just toss all the install files in a directory?), and I miss those good old PIFs.

Unlikely though it sounds, I ran a physical window manufacturing plant on Windows 3.11 with some DOS machines too -- all on 10base2 ethernet at 2Mbps. Bus topology and thin coax -- I still have nightmares where a NIC dies somewhere between the data entry machines and the Paradox (for DOS) server.

The glass cutting optimizer was maybe the highest-uptime box I've ever seen, and it lived in a terrible environment of dust and glass shards and extreme heat and cold. Windows 3.11, we hardly knew ye!

Re:Ahh, 3.11 -- best Windows ever?

[crankyspice]

10base2 ethernet at 2Mbps

10base2 ran at 10 Mbps, not 2Mbps. The '2' was the original spec'd maximum cable run (10base2, 200 meters, 10base5, 500 meters).

Re:Ahh, 3.11 -- best Windows ever?

[mattytee]

Wasn't the coax itself limiting speed, it was the NICs. NC2000s only supported 2Mbps.

Re:Ahh, 3.11 -- best Windows ever?

[dangitman]

Unlikely though it sounds, I ran a physical window manufacturing plant on Windows 3.11

You made windows with Windows? I'd be most worried about some kind of recursion error.

Deep in the bowels of MSland....

[retech]

there's an entire division of people packing their desks up right now and going home.

"We had a good run team." One of them says as they walk off into the sunset.

Re:Deep in the bowels of MSland....

[EnglishSteve]

"We had a good run team." One of them says as they walk off into the sunset.

I totally read that as "walk off into the usenet". Heh.

Re:Deep in the bowels of MSland....

[isorox]

"We had a good run team." One of them says as they walk off into the sunset.

I totally read that as "walk off into the usenet".

Heh.

Better than "wank off onto the usenet"

ATM machines

[PCM2]

OS/2 1.3 lived on for many years in ATM machines. Unlike Windows 3.1x, it was considered the most rock solid 16 bit OS out there. What did a majority of the machines get replaced with?... oh Windows.

And as I've said in earlier stories, that's a bummer.

Here in California we still have two types of Bank of America ATM machines. The older models, with the amber monochrome screens, I am told still run OS/2. The newer ones, with the color LCD screens, run Windows, and they are MUCH slower than the old ones and their interface is much less streamlined and intuitive.

Now I ask you: It's an ATM machine. What was gained by the transition? The new ones allow you to do some fancy things -- such as setting preferences, so you can hit a "Quick Cash" button and get a predetermined amount with one keypress -- but most folks are just trying to get money out of the things and never spend the time to configure their own preferences. Really the only benefit of the new machines was the ability to show color ads during the transaction, but otherwise the OS/2 software was perfectly capable of handling the required operation (and even more so).

Sometimes I wish more applications developers had experience with the embedded systems world. Know what I mean?

Re:ATM machines

[cgenman]

They also use the windows default sounds... Incorrectly! The ATM's use the "Error Beep" to confirm proper operation. After years of conditioning, it drives me nuts.

At least do a little legwork.

Re:ATM machines

[totally bogus dude]

My favourite misuse of standard sounds is the software that powers our "Telstra" broadband cards (I think they're Sierra wireless cards). When you disconnect the data session -- or it's disconnected for you -- it plays the TADA sound.

Always struck me as being an entirely inappropriate way to indicate the connection has been ended.

Re:ATM machines

[moosesocks]

Some of the new Bank of America ATMs will scan your checks at the machine, allowing you to make instant deposits without a slip at any hour of the day.

IMO, this is a pretty darn cool feature.

Their use of the Windows default sounds, though, is indeed maddening.

Re:ATM machines

[DragonWriter]

Now I ask you: It's an ATM machine. What was gained by the transition?

If they are like the color BofA ATMs I've seen in Northern California, they play full motion video ads, which are maybe not what customers want, but presumably very significant to banks.

Re:ATM machines

[phantomcircuit]

Ever notice that the part that is slower involves you looking at an advertisement?

Me thinks that is not a coincidence.

Re:ATM machines

[Bert64]

The color LCD screens let them bombard you with advertisements while you wait for the sluggish ATM to dispense your money...
I also prefer the old style machines, they just work better and they're tried and tested.

Re:ATM machines

[l3v1]

"Error Beep" to confirm proper operation. After years of conditioning, it drives me nuts

No sane being ever leaves the "Beep" driver enabled and the "Sound scheme" on anything else than "No Sounds".

Re:ATM machines

[ConceptJunkie]

No sane being ever leaves the "Beep" driver enabled and the "Sound scheme" on anything else than "No Sounds".

That was always the first thing I did when installing Windows. If any sane being even did leave those stupid sounds on, I'm sure he wouldn't remain sane for long. It's one of the many, many default settings in Windows that to this day I cannot understand what drugs they were using when they decided to do that. Another is hiding the file extensions by default. In 13 years I have yet to think of a reason why that could possibly be useful or helpful, but many, many reasons why it would cause confusion, frustration and problems.

Re:ATM machines

[Chaos Incarnate]

In 13 years I have yet to think of a reason why that could possibly be useful or helpful, but many, many reasons why it would cause confusion, frustration and problems.

Easier to hide it than to teach lusers not to remove it.

Re:ATM machines

[DNS-and-BIND]

What does ATM stand for? And what would an ATM machine be? A machine that dispenses ATMs?

Re:ATM machines

[gbjbaanb]

Now I ask you: It's an ATM machine. What was gained by the transition? ..... Really the only benefit of the new machines was the ability to show color ads during the transaction

I think you answered your own question.....

Re:ATM machines

[Archangel Michael]

and why I don't bank there.

I'm sorry, I want my money and not be bombarded with ads to pay for fancy ATM machines that can display ads.

I'll stopp using ATMs when the Ads machines are universal, and started to use REAL Tellers.

Re:ATM machines

[shermo]

I created something called 'simplified system model', which was shortened to SSM. So of course people refer to it as the SSM model. Drives me nuts.

Re:ATM machines

[nxtw]

Tada was the shutdown sound in Windows 95 (as well as the startup sound in Windows 3.1), so it's not *that* bad.

Re:ATM machines

[DeathElk]

The the lusers will remain lusers...

In other news...

[FlyByPC]

...Ford announces they are discontinuing production of Model-A parts. Wright Aircraft and Bicycle Company is also rumored to be considering scaling back licensing of its iconic Wright Flyer, citing loss of market share to "those new-fangled planes with landing gear and ailerons."

Re:In other news...

[Chrisq]

Strangely there is a niche market for small engineering companies to make new model a parts. They have to keep those vintage cars going somehow.

Ah, the memories...

[Stormwatch]

I still remember the first time I used a PC running Windows 3.11... I was in my early teens. I recall it was during a party at my uncle's place. I played with it just a bit, but it was enough to make a very strong impression on me. The interface, the usability, those things led me to make me a very important choice. That day I swore to myself: when time comes to get my own computer... it must be a Macintosh.

Re:Ah, the memories...

[rdnetto]

I used DOS and Windows 3.11 when I was a kid. 12 years later, I'm still using Windows. Why? Because I'm familiar with it and know how to hack it. I'm guessing that's why so many ex-Unix users learnt Linux. As it is, I'm only learning Linux now.

I used Windows 3.1 recently--no, really

[Ambiguous Puzuma]

Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, a game written for Windows in Visual Basic 3 back in 1995, still has a number of loyal players. Last time I checked Mordor did not work with Wine, and many people have had issues running it in Vista (it apparently requires UAC to be disabled). Mordor plays perfectly in DOSBox with Windows 3.1 installed, though.

Re:I used Windows 3.1 recently--no, really

[sa1lnr]

http://home.clara.net/lesmcdm/images/desktop.png

I still am. ;)

My local pharmacy POS still uses DOS on 486 machines.

Entertainment? Win3.1?

[StreetStealth]

How would an in-flight entertainment system even run on Windows 3.1? What kind of entertainment would you be viewing?

Playing Cinepak-compressed video at 15 frames per second in 8 bit color? Maybe playing Minesweeper?

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[cnettel]

No real problem in doing MPEG-1 in an overlay, i.e. good enough for some 320x240 "VHS quality" material. Add to that quality material using WinG!

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[rhyder128k]

I used to have to masturbate to material of that quality, you insensitive clod!

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[residieu]

Minesweeper's overrated, Skifree was the real thing.

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[danieltdp]

That's easy: solitaire! Next question.

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[Ritchie70]

It may not actually be doing the video. It may be doing the UI, then kicking over to a basically hardware solution.

In 1990 - 92 I worked for a company (Regency Systems, of Champaign, IL) that had full speed video overlay from an external video source running under both X-Window and Windows 3.1 (actually probably Windows for Workgroups 3.11.)

The secret? It was all hardware. There were 3 full-length ISA cards, with their own proprietary bus on the TOP of them. One was the video card, one was some sort of combiner board, and one was the video capture board. The video being displayed was from an external source, such as video disc.

They also had a five-board solution, with one capture board, two combiner boards, and two video cards that allowed you to drive two monitors and have a Windows 3.11 desktop that was 2048x1024.

As I recall, each card (or at least all but the "combiner" board) had a TI TIGA chip on it, running code. The TIGA chips were general purpose CPUs in their own right, albeit with some operations optimized for graphics.

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to have to masturbate to material of that quality, you insensitive clod!

Minesweeper?

Re:Entertainment? Win3.1?

[roc97007]

Centerfold scans in 16 colors... that takes me back...

Hey, it was a step up from ascii art.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[Anonymous Coward]

And nerds everywhere rejoiced. Finally people on /. are getting laid.

And that's the crux of the matter, specific use

[Mr. Roadkill]

WfWG 3.11 with specific, well-engineered apps? Great.

Any MS OS with bloaty, ill-conceived apps from a multitude of vendors, many of which don't play nicely with each other? (I'm looking at you, Netscape and Hewlett-Packard!). Not so much.

I've little doubt that even though there will be no new licences issued by MS, there will continue to be pockets of it in production systems for another decade or two.

Re:And that's the crux of the matter, specific use

[Mr. Roadkill]

No, that's not what I'm talking about at all.

Netscape 4 and certain HP Laserjet drivers didn't play particularly well together, meaning that it was necessary to place a setting in the windows config files to ensure a particular area of the memory was initialised or allocated in a particular way so they wouldn't fight over it... or at least that's my sendmail-addled recollection of it, nearly ten years on.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[philspear]

Wait... what obama story? Did something happen?

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[cgenman]

Either spend a whole lot of time and money getting it ported over to an operating system that doesn't cost any money to license, or spend a whole lot of time and money getting it ported over to an operating system that doesn't scale with your existing hardware base, costs money, and can be end-of-lifed like the operating system it is replacing. In that view, Linux looks pretty good.

I think the part that you're missing is that windows 3.x is no longer aquirable for these applications, and as such new hardware will need to be re-engineered for a newer operating system. In this case, a free and unencumbered OS might be the right way to go... either Linux, BSD, or FreeDOS.

Just watched Windows 3.1 start

[DaveAtFraud]

I just watched Windows 3.1 start up a couple of weeks ago. The town where I live had an e-cycling day where you could recycle a variety of electronics for either free or only a nominal fee. So, I fired up my old 80386/25 DX (with an installed 80387 co-processor) just long enough to do a "format /u c:" and then dropped it off for recycling along with a bunch of other old computer junk I had accumulated over the years (full length, 8bit monochrome video cards, lots of various ISA cards, a few 10-base T NICs along with some co-ax cable and such).

I still have a "true blue" IBM PC/AT (6MHz 80286) with a full height 30 MB hard drive and dual 5.25 inch floppies that I decided to hang onto just in case it actually becomes a collector's item. And, in the same vein, a still shrink wrapped copy of Windows/386 (5.25 inch floppies for installation media).

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Just watched Windows 3.1 start

[temcat]

Just wonder how much you would ask now for your AT if you were to sell it.

Re:Just watched Windows 3.1 start

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, I still have my copy of Windows 1.02 on floppies, too. I just can't bring myself to throw them away. At some point I ditched the 5-1/4" Memorex disc that held an entire summer's worth of coding in basic and assembler/machine code (the one with the stiff cardboard sleeve and the Memorex name expanding from an M to the full word as it repeated down the sleeve). I think I keep the windows as proof of original license, but realized that the 120kb apple disc probably wouldn't really get me anything. Besides, who needs yet another copy of hello world, the alphabet printing backwards, or four different programs to generate D&D character stats?

Re:Just watched Windows 3.1 start

[DaveAtFraud]

Don't have the foggiest. The closest thing on eBay is a PC/XT for ~$300 (at the moment).

Cheers,
Dave

America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[titzandkunt]

Might be able to sneak it in if you phrase it something like that...

Re:America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[compro01]

I think that was Republicanism 6.5 or so.

Re:America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[Idiomatick]

Bush 6.5??? He had to have been an early alpha or there are some serious flaws in the system genera... oh nvm

Re:America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[sorak]

I prefer Bush Vista

Re:America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[sorak]

Yeah, there was:

1. The "F@## you, I got mine" republicans of the nineties
2. The "I'm a moderate, I support civil unions" republican who ran in 2000
3. The "Oh noes, the homos are going to git married" republican of 2004
4. The "I'm not Bush, but I do have his playbook" republican of 2008.
5. The "the south hates me, conservative christians hate me, and some speculate that I may be a gay atheist" republican of 1861.

This is fun. Are there any others?

Re:America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[Gilmoure]

6. The I've passed more environmental legislation than any other president republican of the early '70's.

Re:America discontinues Republicanism 1.0

[porl]

hahaha insightful?? i love slashdot :D

porl

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[overcaffein8d]

yeah, i hear he's just really a figurehead

Useful application on windows 3.1

[YasharF]

The Microsoft Macro Recorder was sometimes useful in 3.1. The recorder could track your keystrokes and mouse clicks and repeat your actions during the replay. I think it converted the actions into a macro script that could also be manually edited in a text editor. The nice thing about it was that it was like a quick visual batch file to automate procedures without having to write scripts.

Hmm, coincidence?

[BlindSpot]

The place I just started working at decomissioned their old point-of-sale software only a couple months ago. They still have to use it for reporting and I was asked to troubleshoot their printer the other day, so I had them start up the software and print something, and there was the unmistakable look-and-feel of a Win3.1 app. <shudder> Well now I know why they had to decommision it! (It was running under Win95 though.)

cash register?

[mathfeel]

I was at Sears auto center today. I could almost swear that their repair/billing system looks like something written for 3.x running on win95/98.

Can't confirm it one way or another though.

Re:cash register?

[zakezuke]

I was at Sears auto center today. I could almost swear that their repair/billing system looks like something written for 3.x running on win95/98.

Can't confirm it one way or another though.

The last time I was at sears auto center, well, it was 2000. I think it was 2000/2001. Anyhow their setup was a 486slc PS/2 with a 3270 or 5250 terminal adapter. Win3.1 would have been the default, and those things were limited to 16 megs of ram even though they were geared to accept more, pesky 486slc limitations.

It wouldn't shock me if they were still on ye'old main frame and they only thing they needed for their billing is terminal emulation software. The last company I knew of who made them was Attachmate According to Wikipedia they own Reflection which was a product by Walker Richard and Quinn. The PCI Attachmate Irma 3270 adapter in it's heyday cost well $500-$1000 for the hardware and software.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_Sept_9/ai_18655802

You really have to wonder about the wisdom of keeping such a network in service. Odds are pretty decent they are on twisted pair where all the adapters go to centralized terminal server which typically was an IBM product booting from a 5.25 inch 2.44meg disc. It seems rather trivial to upgrade that to something that supports Ethernet rather than a relativly primitive dedicated terminal lines. This is one of those cases where you say "this looks like a job for linux" and you'd be correct. Cisco I'm sure has some offerings for 3270 servers that would do the job. Not that you can't get an ethernet card for ye'old mainframe back east.

But I'm getting side tracked. Sears near as I'm aware uses 3270/5250 terminal emulation on a PC. Win 3.1 @ 16 color is more than adquate for the task.

Re:cash register?

[zakezuke]

I was at Sears auto center today. I could almost swear that their repair/billing system looks like something written for 3.x running on win95/98.

Can't confirm it one way or another though.

Let me try that again.

Sears AFAIK is still mainframe based with 3270/5250 clients hooking up to a terminal server, over a t-1 to the mainframe.

It became popular in the late 90s to offer PCs with terminal emulation software as terminals were relativly costly, and PCs dropped below $1000 each with monitors.

The last company I know of other than IBM to make 3270/5250 terminal adapters was Attachmate, and those were $500 to $1000 a pop.

If they were on a 486slc PS/2, it would cost too damned much to upgrade from win3.1, and why bother if all you need is a glorified terminal. You "could" upgrade PCs and get something with win98/2k/xp/vista, but unless you already have a PCI terminal adapter, to swap in a new PC would cost $500-$1000 above and beyond the cost of the PC for a glorified terminal.

Re:why does it automaticly mean linux?

[neumayr]

Not necessarily a point for Linux, but Win16 apps usually assume to have low-level control over the hardware. Something they wouldn't have in XP or Vista.

Re:why does it automaticly mean linux?

[cheater512]

Can you imagine Vista, running on the back of every seat in a A380?

Super computers are heavy you know, and have you seen Vista's power usage?
The jet needs the engines for flight you know.

win 3x on Stress test machine in wafer fab

[danwat1234]

I used to work at ON Semiconductor in Gresham OR, and they have win3x on a wafer stress testing machine as of 2008. Its an old machine, but still perfectly good because as the feature sizes get smaller with Photolithography, stress testing is the same (as far as testing the flatness of the surface). So yeah, there are still uses for that OS I suppose.

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[bartwol]

My experience has been that companies behave very pragmatically with their valued customers, and that this pragmatism is rarely limited by stated policies. I question your willingness to accept the "It's-over-for-Windows-3.11" policy at face value, as in doing so, you conveniently ignore the likelihood of a simpler, less expensive solution to the stated problem.

Consider this from Microsoft regarding end-of-life of its "desktop products":

Lifecycle and Licensing FAQ
1. Does the Windows Desktop Product Lifecycle Policy affect how long I can legally use a Microsoft operating system after I've licensed it?
No, this policy only affects the ability to obtain new licenses through certain channels, the time period and the way that Microsoft will provide product support for each operating system. The ability to use a Windows desktop operating system after it has been legally licensed is unaffected...

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[iminplaya]

Yeah, they finally caught him.

Free the code!

[Anonymous Coward]

They could release the code, but I guess they can't give the core of Vista away...

Re:Why?

[timmarhy]

there is still cost associated with it, just keeping it in stock is costly. they have probably reached the point they are losing out keeping the boxes in the warehouse. still 18 years is a hell of a long time. i can hardly think of any OS version that is still selling that's 18 years old.

Not just for automation

[Fallen Andy]

The macro recorder was a great tool for testing for leaks - especially GDI handles. Even Borland's Turbo Pascal for Windows IDE had GDI leaks (splash bitmap). Sadly missed on later versions of windows...

Andy

Re:Linux credentials - what about GUI load?

[0123456]

I suspect most of the overhead is X, which used to barely run in 256 color mode on an 8MB system in the 486 days.

A year or so back we were running ARM Linux with a custom GUI and HD video playback in 32MB (probably using around 20MB just for framebuffers), so 8MB for a kiosk application should be doable. You're unlikely to find such a system out of the box though.

In modern machines...

[master_p]

...Windows 3.1 installs so fast, that I can hardly see anything other than the reboot option, after installation.

And the GUI is so fast, and so snappy, sometimes I have to do things twice just to check if the action has been done.

Of course, the GUI system in Windows 3.1 was only one layer (Win32 drawing directly to the frame buffer), while todays systems are 7 or 10 layers before a pixel is actually drawn on the screen.

Re:In modern machines...

[pembo13]

Abstraction, gotta love it.

Re:In modern machines...

[jandoedel]

Where can I buy this 3.1 thing you speak so proudly about? If it is really that fast, I must have it for my EEE. Imagine, being able to boot up, and browse all the internets in only one second! My productivity will googlify!

Twenty-four?

[Ralish]

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 came on 8 3.5" 1.44MB floppies, while MS-DOS 6.22 came on 3 3.5" 1.44MB floppies, so, 11 all up.

So, either you were using some incredibly ass backwards OEM distribution, or, your memory has faded a little. ;)

Either way, care to explain?

Re:Twenty-four?

[freedom_india]

Sorry. I was wrong. Thanks for the correction though. Guess after 13 years i forgot how many floppies i kept shoving into that gaping hole...

Re:Twenty-four?

[Ralish]

It's OK, I have a weird fetish for obsolete proprietary operating systems, mainly because they are much harder in general to find than OSS ones for obvious reasons. So, I know stupid crap like this. :)

Yes, I have no life.

Re:Twenty-four?

[bhtooefr]

I believe Windows NT 3.51 was 21 floppies...

Anyway, there's something much newer than what you used, for the taskbar... Calmira. And, there was a fork updated in March of this year...

(And, speaking of NT 3.51... Microsoft actually wrote their own Explorer shell for NT 3.51, called NewShell, although it wasn't meant for general release. Installing it on 3.51 actually causes it to report as NT 4.0, as the original NT 4.0 alphas were merely NT 3.51 with NewShell installed.)

Northwest Airlines too

[Leto-II]

My last cross Pacific flights with NWA had Linux in the seats. Wouldn't have known except at one point my seat rebooted itself and I saw a tux logo and a boot sequence.

I still have it:Moxie.

[Ostracus]

"Now, you could replace it all with new equipment (over $100k), or spend a lot of time fooling around with circuit cards, analog-to-digital converters, oscilloscopes, and write some complex software to control it all from a modern pc, or just run windows 3.1."

Oh a challenge. I like it! Details.

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[Chrisq]

Ah, but the marketing department think that the little "windows" sticker will make it more attractive. Plus, the fact you need a hard drive rather than solid state can be made into a selling point.... Those guys with the "linux special" have only 4GB solid state memory whereas se have a 30GB hard drive. The customers won't realise that both have got all they need - 30 has to be better than 4, doesn't it

Security

[WhitePanther5000]

My Windows 3.1 machine is better protected from the internet than any of my other machines. SneakerNet 4 life!

Re:Security

[bhtooefr]

IE5 runs on Windows 3.1. ;)

Re:Security

[MilesAttacca]

I actually installed IE 3.03 on my 386 box just because I couldn't figure out how to get TCP/IP installed and configured any other way. It's a real kick trying to find "mainstream" sites that are still compatible with it -- quite a short list. Google, thankfully, is one of them.

Re:Security

[RulerOf]

If IE6 were to run on it though, most modern internet websites would render correctly.

Shame. I would honestly load it up on one of these work machines for fun.

....Damn. I need to get laid.

Re:Security

[bhtooefr]

I *THINK* SeaMonkey will run under Win32s... great, now I need to source my DOS of choice, WfWG, Win32s, and SeaMonkey, don't I? :P

Re:Security

[bhtooefr]

Well, I just tried it in a VM, and failed miserably - but Win32s was crashing outright even on FreeCell, which is the included app.

Re:Security

[RulerOf]

Oh man... I remember Win32s... I recall using it but don't recall if I ever did anything with it other than play freecell.

Any idea why Win32s wasn't working?

Re:Security

[bhtooefr]

It popped up an error dialog, but it crashed it right away... I'd suspect it's a conflict between some driver installed for Virtual PC (I had the DOS VM Additions installed) and Windows 3.1. Either that, or some instruction that Windows expected to exist on an i386 that isn't properly handled by the Core 2 Duo, or maybe even a race condition revealed by the fact that I threw a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo at something that the designers never expected anything faster than a 75MHz Pentium.

I still have ii:solutions.

[Ostracus]

"Don't know about "useful", but my younger daughter likes the Magic School Bus games which are from the Windows 3.1 era. They don't run under wine, since they have wierd attitudes towards video hardware (they fail in different ways, some install but screw up on running, others don't install). "

Have you considered what someone suggested further down the page? Running Win 3.1 in Dosbox. It will at least eliminate the dualboot part. You may even be able to stick the whole mess onto a USB pendrive.

Sad...

[serviscope_minor]

You can still run Windows 3.11 on DosBOX (complete with a working Microsoft BOB install! Really!). What am I going to do now? :-(

Laserquest still use it in the UK

[realxmp]

I was actually shoulder surfing one of the management consoles of a Laserquest over here in the UK and to my surprise saw Windows 3.x. Given the age of most of their hardware it's probably not surprising. I imagine they can't get the drivers for anything newer (or don't want to hire someone to write one).

My first thoughts, too...

[Joce640k]

What does Win3.1 have to offer compared to, well, anything else.

The development tools, the 16-bit memory model, the limited sound and video... who could they pay enough money to develop for it?

What possible advantage does it have over the zillion alternatives?

Re:My first thoughts, too...

[story645]

What possible advantage does it have over the zillion alternatives?

It's already running on all their systems and works relatively decently. A lot of the software is already developed for it, so even those costs probably don't run too high. Plus I'm sure that there are plenty of coders who developed for it back when it was used by everyone.

There sure is...

[jonaskoelker]

"Windows never crashed"?

Re:There sure is...

[thealsir]

Good title for a James Bond movie.

Re:There sure is...

[feldicus]

I'm terrified by the possible options for the Bond Girl in that film.

feldicus

Re:Those kids these days!

[Anonymous Coward]

...then what's that?

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[petermgreen]

The other option is to just stockpile licenses while they are still availible.

Election have ended

[DrYak]

Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

No sorry. The election is over. /. will now resume its usual regimen of trolls about petrified naked Natalie Portman and welcomes given to our latest overlords-du-jour.

XP

[Arancaytar]

Wait, I thought Microsoft had been trying for the past year to bury Windows XP - and now we find out they were still selling 3.x all along?

Does this make sense to anyone?

Re:XP

[betterunixthanunix]

Makes perfect sense. This is the same company that is calling an XP to Vista migration an "upgrade," and the same company that took 20 years to realize that a functional CLI was actually relevant in the IT world.

Re:Those kids these days!

[marcosdumay]

And the three-finger salute realy restarted the machine by that time. No soft restart (learn that Linux!), no set of options (learn that XP!), and was never ignored (learn that crashing Vista!), just a restart, managed by the BIOS, the way IBM meant it to be!

Now, all you kids get out of my lawn!

Why discontinue a software product?

[zakezuke]

It seems to me that it's somewhat silly to actually "discontinue" a software product. After all, it's software. It's not a physical product. It's something you can download, and it seems somewhat nutty to not accept coin for it if asked.

There are exceptions when you don't want a prior product like XP to compete with a current product, say vista, but win3.1 is some of those cases where there is really no threat of it competing with a current generation product.

I'm not saying that microsoft shouldn't abandon support for win3.1. Far from it, only it seems to make little sense since win3.1 was used on a number of systems, and if you lose your drive and for some reason simply have to have that legacy system operational, there is some wisdom is keeping the product available for purchase. Otherwise you run into some questionable situations where you "need" win3.1 but can't buy it.

IBM for example at one point offered PC DOS 5.0 as a free download. It was a commercial product but by 1998-1999 it had NO commercial value. According to wiki you can get PC-DOS 2000 (Chinese Edition) for free. They seem to understand the value of this being a vital port of legacy systems, and make it available. Microsoft offers a ton of files from their dos distribution available.

That's my only bitch, if you need it, the only solution is hunting around for it, or pirating it.

ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/dos/

Re:Why discontinue a software product?

[danieltdp]

People discontinue products to force people to buy new stuff and, thus, make more money. Next question.

Re:Why discontinue a software product?

[zakezuke]

People discontinue products to force people to buy new stuff and, thus, make more money. Next question.

Well, in the automotive world, they make parts for older vehicles. To be honest, I don't know how long they made the parts for the older vehicles. I can get gaskets for 1980s Volvos without a problem, though they do have to be ordered often times from the UK.

But we are not talking a car, we are talking about computers which are often a part of a larger information system. It's sometimes prohibitive to adopt the newest software solution if you are locked into some old obscure hardware.

As far as Microsoft goes, that difference does it really make to them if you buy a copy of xp, Vista, or a copy of 3.1 windows. How about 3.1 windows and a legacy version of word? It's pretty good for for the hardware manufacturers though, I have to admit that.

Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part is that now only get turned on by pixelated women.

Re:Me too!

[ciderVisor]

Pixilated women: helping ugly guys get laid since 1927.

Re:Me too!

[ciderVisor]

'Redundant' ? 'Pixilated' has a different meaning to 'pixelated'.

Re:Me too!

[Gilmoure]

helping ugly guys imagine they're getting laid...

Re:Me too!

[ciderVisor]

*sigh*

'Pixilated' != 'Pixelated'

Maybe next time, I'll hold up a sign saying "Did you see what I did there ?".

Re:Me too!

[Gilmoure]

Oh, pixilated. Nothing like wimmin' hopped up on flavored sugar and booze. Damn, but I love Halloween!

Re:why does it automaticly mean linux?

[MrKaos]

The jet needs the engines for flight you know.

Yeah, but how will you run MS-Access then?

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[Bert64]

Except for XP and newer versions with online activation, which will become unusable for new installs after the activation servers are turned off...

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[Bert64]

What does windows 3.1 make of a 30gb hard drive?

Re:Those kids these days!

[syousef]

Win3.1 did not have BSOD!

Informative????? Try incorrect!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEsK7TZhomE

More other news...

[crispi]

The Abacus and Difference Engine have been freed from copyright.

Windows 3.x will be scheduled to be freed from copyright in 2038...ish

I can't wait.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[johannesg]

Wait... what obama story? Did something happen?

Yeah, it was quite unexpected: after his highly successful second term, during which he finally managed to get rid of the national debt and negotiated some pretty decent peace terms with Australia, everybody thought he would take the position of ambassador to the Chino-Russian Mars colony. Instead he is opening a chocolate shop in Belgium, together with his wife.

Gee, were you in a coma the last 8 years?

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[MikeDirnt69]

What if we tell everybody that Obama use *nix, McCain is a kernel hacker and Sara Palin is CowboyNeal real mom? W00T!

False glitches

[CustomDesigned]

I flew across the US with my daughter, and I immediately turned off the in flight "entertainment" system on our seats. Well, I turned the brightness and volume all the way down - you couldn't actually turn the dang things off. The attendants kept walking by, seeing our screens dark, and without talking to me, rushing to the front of the cabin to announce, "Please be patient, we need to reboot the in-flight movie system." This happened about 6 times before they finally figured out that I was turning them off on purpose.

Win 3.x is an OS?

[fia]

If I remember well Win 3.x was installing as an application over DOS 6.x? Does my memory plays a prank to me? I remember I bot my first 486 DX4 (100Mhz) with DOS 6.22 as an OS and Windows 3.11 Workgroup.

Which windows are we talking about again?

[Mr. Underbridge]

NONE of the DOS-based Windows (1,2,3,95,98/me) were stable. They were kludges sitting on top of an ancient DOS, trying to be a Mac-like environment.

Wait, are you talking about MS Windows or X Windows?

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[theaveng]

>>>Wait, are you talking about MS Windows or X Windows?

You already know the answer. I'll give you a hint: What does the "title" say at the top of your browser?

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[Mr. Underbridge]

You already know the answer. I'll give you a hint: What does the "title" say at the top of your browser?

Whoooosh...

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[Gr8Apes]

NONE of the DOS-based Windows (1,2,3,95,98/me) were stable. They were kludges sitting on top of an ancient DOS, trying to be a Mac-like environment.

Wait, are you talking about MS Windows or X Windows?

You must be new here.

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[bytethese]

Mozilla Firefox...

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[Dragonslicer]

NONE of the DOS-based Windows (1,2,3,95,98/me) were stable. They were kludges sitting on top of an ancient DOS, trying to be a Mac-like environment.

Wait, are you talking about MS Windows or X Windows?

Yes.

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[theaveng]

LOL!

Good answer.

Re:Which windows are we talking about again?

[taupin]

>>What does the "title" say at the top of your browser?

"Slashdot | Microsoft Discontinues Windows 3.x"

So I'm using the new Slashdot OS?

Re:Those kids these days!

[bhtooefr]

You could change a win.ini setting (or possibly a system.ini setting - not a registry setting, as the registry in Win3.1 was only for file associations) to disable the BSOD, but Ctrl-Alt-Del ALWAYS called the BSOD on Windows 3.1 by default.

However, Windows 3.1 always passed a second Ctrl-Alt-Del to the BIOS.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[Elektroschock]

President B. Obama asks Ballmer to release Windows 3.1 sources while Ballmer rebrands Microsoft as communism and promotes "local software".

To Linux?

[PhotoGuy]

Migrations to Linux from Windows 3.1? If you had an existing app out there, already developed, already deployed, would you convert it to run on Linux, or simply pick the next-supported Windows OS (98 if it's available, XP if necessary). That's a better way to ensure compatibility, stability (well, at least as much as 3.1 was providing).

A conversion to another OS is likely to create more bugs/instability, even if the OS is more stable itself. I doubt we'll see a noticable bump in Linux embedded adoption because of this.

(That being said, freeing themselves of licensing costs, and the possibility of using Wine for backwards compatibility are certainly worth exploring for any such companies.)

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[Chaos Incarnate]

What does windows 3.1 make of a 30gb hard drive?

About 15 partitions.

Isn't this old news?

[BenoitRen]

I seem to remember a similar story more than a year ago. What the hell?

Re:Isn't this old news?

[dakameleon]

You must be new here.

Re:Isn't this old news?

[BenoitRen]

This is the second time someone has replied this to me on Slashdot, and also the second time that the one who did had a higher UID than me. :P

Re:Isn't this old news?

[dakameleon]

Point taken sir! :)

(though truth be told, I resisted registration for a long time, to the detriment of an early UID)

Re:Isn't this old news?

[Tacvek]

This is the story you are probably thinking of: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/10/186236

It is not over a year ago, but is several months back.

Re:MS and proprietary OS

[Chaos Incarnate]

It would be interesting to see, but I can understand why they don't want to pay someone to audit the source code for such a release.

Citirx

[noldrin]

I've always thought it was interesting that you can still download a Citrix client for it.

Adult

[Mathness]

The BBC reports that, as of last Saturday, Microsoft is no longer issuing licenses for the 18-year-old Windows 3.x

They don't have to anymore, Windows 3.x is now an adult and Microsoft is not required to pay child support any longer.

Some may say it is harsh to just kick it out on the street, to fend for itself. But it will be interesting to see how well Windows 3.x does on its own, will it be flipping burgers or will it be working in IT?

Personally I hope it isn't jelous of its younger siblings who gets all the attention, otherwise we could end up with a messy OS gone postal.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Another man duck-walks across the flight deck.... He's about sixty, with a dirigible of white hair that was not ruffled in any way by the downdraft.
"Hello, everyone," he says cheerfully.
"Who are you?" Tony says.
The new guy looks crestfallen. "Greg Ritchie," he says.
Then, when no one seems to react, he jogs their memory. "President of the United States."
"Oh! Sorry. Nice to meet you, Mr. President," Tony says, extending his hand....

-Snow Crash

Memory Allocation

[hayriye]

Good bye GlobalAlloc()! Good bye GlobalLock() and their local counterparts! By the way, heap management was damn hard in 16 bit Windows. You only had 8192 memory handles which you must share with other apps. It was a pain to develop applications for it.

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[dkleinsc]

Instead he is opening a chocolate shop in Belgium, together with his wife.

Watch your language!

lolwhut

[Nimey]

As someone who used Win3.1 frequently when it was still popular, I can assure you that it had /frequent/ BSODs. It also had frequent General Protection Faults and the occasional Unrecoverable Application Error. Also, since it used cooperative multi-tasking, one program freezing up would bring down the entire computer; quite often this occurrence would require a hard reset, because Ctrl-Alt-Del wouldn't work.

Some of this could be laid on bad 3rd-party drivers, but most of it was bad design and insufficient compartmentalization.

Re:Foolish Linux idealogues

[FreonTrip]

Using something like FreeDOS or "MS-DOS 7.10," not as much as you'd think. Some programs may report incorrect hard drive sizes, but if you're using a command.com that supports FAT32 then Win3.1 honestly doesn't care. :)

You can get WfW 3.11 on the Internet

[Nimey]

I set up a VirtualPC VM this past Sunday, installed MS-DOS 6.22 and WfW 3.11, and also Microsoft's TCP/IP stack for WfW and Internet Explorer 5.01, and Win32s. I added in Calmira, which is a free 3rd-party shell that can give a Win95-style or WinXP-style interface (depending on which variant), and (oh yes) Microsoft Bob. That last is as bad as they say. The Microsoft TCP/IP stack only partway supports DHCP; you have to manually input the gateway and DNS servers.

Thing runs fairly decently on the Internet, provided your site doesn't need newer stuff like AJAX. Sourceforge is Right Out, and for some reason I can't click links for Google search results. The S3 driver I downloaded can even do 1600x1200 at 16 colors, and 1024x768 at 24-bit color.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good Win16 or Win32s-compatible browser? Don't suggest Mosaic -- I have it running on WinXP and every time I load a website it crashes. I know of Netscape 4.0x and Opera 3.62.

Re:You can get WfW 3.11 on the Internet

[RedBear]

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good Win16 or Win32s-compatible browser? Don't suggest Mosaic -- I have it running on WinXP and every time I load a website it crashes. I know of Netscape 4.0x and Opera 3.62.

Fun times, eh? Sounds like you've found pretty much every browser that's available for that antiquated environment. It's really too bad 16-bit Windows and the classic Mac OS have both been abandoned by modern browser developers. They would still both be perfectly good as a base to run a web browser on a lot of older hardware. That's all a lot of households really need these days. Some simple document processing and "the web".

But browsers are advancing and leaving those old operating systems behind, so we have to move on to Windows 95/98 or the few Linux distros that are actually aimed at running on older low-memory systems. Even Firefox, the beacon of the open source world, declared Win95/98 obsolete years ago and new versions only work on Win2K and later (or is it only WinXP and later now?)

It's sad, really. A lot of older Macs especially are capable of supporting a decent amount of RAM (128, 256, 512, even 1GB) and are still in good working condition but aren't compatible with any version of OS X, even with that third-party application that enables you to install OS X on some pre-OS X Macs. So, no modern web browser for you. Even if you can live without things like Flash the general web just doesn't work very well with older browsers anymore. We're finally leaving the era of tables-based pages and entering the thick of the CSS-based era, which makes the web really ugly on browsers that don't understand CSS stylesheets. Technically it "works" but it's not pretty.

So millions of functional older machines are now only good for running old games on obsolete operating systems in this totally web-oriented world. What a waste of what is often perfectly good hardware that will usually last several more years or even longer. Just the kind of thing I used to naively expect the open source world would keep from happening. Funny how few free software developers even give a crap about the previous generation of hardware much less the hardware ten generations back.

That's Win16

[Nimey]

Windows 3.1 was 16-bit. There was an optional compatibility layer called Win32s (for Win32 subset) that would allow you to run certain Win95-compatible programs. NCSA Mosaic was probably the best-known Win32s-compatible application.

Re:why does it automaticly mean linux?

[HikingStick]

The semiconductor industry would love it, since each passenger plane would suddenly need terrabytes or RAM!

DOS

[Philip K Dickhead]

"In Soviet Russia, Windows 3 discontinues YOU!"

That's why those letters now stand for Denial of Service. ;-)

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[johannesg]

Instead he is opening a chocolate shop in Belgium, together with his wife.

Watch your language!

Oh yeah? Well, Belgium you too! ;-)

Re:Those kids these days!

[The MAZZTer]

That's not technically a BSoD, you can press any key to return to Windows. It's a reboot confirmation screen (CTRL+ALT+DEL reboots in DOS).

Continental

[Frankie70]

I flew Continental recently & they also had Linux in their inflight entertainment system.

NT Based OS...?

[Burning1]

The only truly stable Windows were the NT-based ones (including XP) which were built from the ground up.

I think you mean OS/2 based. ;)

Re:NT Based OS...?

[Foolhardy]

NT was written from scratch. At one point it was going to replace the old OS/2 codebase, but the breakup happened and it ended up replacing the old Windows codebase (albeit after the old line had 3 more major releases).

Linux migrations--maybe not

[thethibs]

This is more likely good news for QNX.

Re:MS and proprietary OS

[bhtooefr]

Why study MS-DOS, when it's a reverse-engineered CP/M-alike?

Novell OpenDOS is where it's at - it's already open source, and while it does have reverse-engineered MS-DOS bits, it traces its lineage directly all the way back to CP/M.

Geek Fraud

[billcopc]

FTFA:

Stefan Berka said he had recently re-installed Windows 3.11 on a computer and was surprised at the results.

That's nice, so someone paid $300 to get Windows 3.11 reinstalled by someone who probably wasn't even born when it came out.

These Geek Squad perps are so expensive, it's cheaper to just buy a new PC!

Re:Those kids these days!

[danieltdp]

Its wikipedia, of course! Next question.

Why can't you just rewrite the control program?

[Nimey]

Or see if the original vendor offers something for newer versions of Windows?

It's fucking stupid that the scientific world hasn't switched to using something portable like Java or even .NET for instrument-control applications. We have a few instruments here that have Win9x or WinNT4 computers plugged into them, because that's all their control software will work with.

The winner is, I think, an IBM PS/2 with 486DX that dual-boots between OS/2 and something else, and has something like five instruments' passthrough dongles daisy-chained out the parallel (or maybe it's SCSI) port. I don't know what they'll do when that computer dies.

Re:Why can't you just rewrite the control program?

[confused one]

They probably could reverse engineer it and write newer code. The manufacturer might offer software for a newer version of Windows or they might not. The manufacturer might have discontinued that model instrument and the only upgrade path is to buy a new instrument.

As to portable code... It depends on what they're doing. As a technician, I've worked at a nuclear physics research facility and I can tell you from experience that we generally had the source; but, it was a mix of Fortran, C, Java, LabView, LabWindows, TCL/TK, etc. Whatever was appropriate at the time. Porting everything to Java or .NET would be prohibitive, taking too much time, cost too much money. There's a performance penalty as well.

Finally, these are not as portable as you might think. Over a period of 10 to 15 years, they're moving targets -- Java in 1998 is not the same as Java in 2008. .NET CLR v1.1 is not the same as .NET CLR v3.5. Not to mention, the hardware specific libraries will change as the architecture changes.

By the way, when that 486 fails, the hard part will be finding another copy of OS/2, not replacing the computer.

Re:Why can't you just rewrite the control program?

[LWATCDR]

"' passthrough dongles daisy-chained out the parallel (or maybe it's SCSI) port."
Sounds like it could be an IEE-488 bus.
And it is standard.

New ISA-compatible computers, eh?

[Nimey]

I'm definitely interested. Would you post some links?

Re:New ISA-compatible computers, eh?

[confused one]

Google is your friend. These are industrial computers, not your typical desktop machine. You can build out from a chassis, selecting the appropriate backplane and processor card:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us&q=picmg+isa

If you're a hobbyist looking to play with ISA bus or old cards, here's a link to a company which makes an ISA to USB adapter. I found these guys on the web; but, to be honest I've never tried their stuff:

http://www.arstech.com/

Thought I was kidding, didn't you...

But I was still using it!

[He Who Waits]

I'm still using Windows 3.0 on my HP 200LX Pocket PC. Does this mean I'll have to switch to one of these new Palm Pilots?

my flight was running linux

[oudzeeman]

I was on a flight recently and there was trouble with the in flight entertainment. They tried rebooting it twice, and we all got to watch our seatback screens booting linux complete with a penguin in the upper left of the screen during the boot.

Re:Those kids these days!

[RiotingPacifist]

Is that not what alt+print+b is in linux?

what about another 10 years of XP?

[jriding]

so it takes 18 years to stop selling Windows 3.X but only 8 years to stop selling XP???? what gives?

Wait for Obama to define

[Dareth]

... network neutrality, then we will know if we got screwed or not.

Windows for Workgroups

[chronopunk]

Oh noes!!! I still have my Windows for Workgroups 3.11 license.... no more updates? :(

Re:Slashdot, where's the Obama story?

[TrekkieTechie]

Oh, really? There's a bathroom right over there.

Re:Those kids these days!

[Dogtanian]

And the three-finger salute realy restarted the machine by that time. No soft restart (learn that Linux!), no set of options (learn that XP!), and was never ignored (learn that crashing Vista!), just a restart, managed by the BIOS, the way IBM meant it to be!

Are there any cases where the "reset" button on the front of a PC *doesn't* force an immediate hard restart in the same way that ALT-CTRL-DEL did back then?

It lives on!

[dakameleon]

Even in Vista, the spirit of Win3.1 still lives on in the Add Font dialog box!

(Anyone know if they've updated that yet in Windows 7?)

Re:Those kids these days!

[syousef]

That's not technically a BSoD, you can press any key to return to Windows. It's a reboot confirmation screen (CTRL+ALT+DEL reboots in DOS)

It was entirely possible to have an error resulting in that screen from which even ctrl-alt-delete would not work. You needed to press the reset button or shutdown and start again. To say that Win 3.1 didn't have a blue screen of death is not correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death

"The Blue Screen of Death (also known as a stop error, BSOD, bluescreen, or Blue Screen of Doom) is an error screen displayed by some operating systems, most notably Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system error which can cause the system to shut down, to prevent damage."

"Bluescreens have been present in all Windows-based operating systems since Windows 3.1"

Re:Those kids these days!

[JackieBrown]

That's why I never ran badapp despite all the good things I heard about it.

actually, you can run ANY WinOS securely

[alizard]

as a guest VM if the host OS is *nix. Or at least as securely as one can be run. If I didn't need Windoze for legacy apps, I wouldn't bother with it in any form.

When running Windows firewalls on a guestVM, I've NEVER seen a firewall alert based on traffic from outside the local network. When I did this for the first time with Win4Lin 9.x running W98SE, it was also the first time I could run in 'popup all alerts mode' without getting interrupted with an alert every few seconds. Or ever.

3 years later, running XP on a guestVM on Sun Virtualbox . . . no alerts. (though I did have to specifically allow traffic from between the LinuxOS and Virtualbox... if you find that stuff isn't working, check the ZoneAlarm log)

if you can run this on your laptop

[alizard]

try installing a Linux OS, install Virtualbox, and install W98SE on top of it. Assuming that Virtualbox runs as efficiently as VMware Server did, you might be pleasantly surprised at the results. My experience with virtualization with W98SE is that it runs faster than it did as a native OS, and W98SE is actually fairly secure when run as a guest VM. The point is that in virtualization, Linux does the heavy lifting and what's left is an easy job even for a MS OS to do.

I was getting satisfactory performance with a 900 MHz CPU. I'll admit that things improved when I upgraded to a dual-core Athlon 64/4200.

Re:Why?

[Bert64]

You don't need to keep physical copies in stock, you just provide it for download as a set of floppy images and let the end user worry about transferring it to real floppies.

Re:Those kids these days!

[marcosdumay]

Well, I don't know about any PRINT shortcuts, but there is a SysReq one that also sends the reboot signal to the BIOS. My post was a joke, I don't know why it was moddeded insightful (damn karma system). Instant reboot is too dangerous a thing to be easy to access on a modern OS, and after everybody was trained to press CTRL + ALT + DEL because of unreliable DOS software, all those OSes did the right thing by disabling it.

Cash registers?

[DaVince21]

Windows 3.12 for Cash Registers? Man, you don't want to believe it.

Re:Those kids these days!

[jonadab]

> Win3.1 did not have BSOD!

Apparently you never used Windows 3.1 much.

> Everything would just freeze and you had to do three-finger salute.

Oh, it did that too.