Slashdot Mirror
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."
Windows 3.x is a lean, stable, functional, and secure OS! How could they do such a thing?
in-flight entertainment systems on some long-haul passenger jets
Ahh, so that's what they ment by "Every seat is a window seat".
Life is not for the lazy.
Well, it's news that matters, right now, so....
Two weeks.
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.
Upgrading from Windows 3.x to Vista Ultimate should provide a significant performance boost for any application.
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.
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.
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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...
I hate printers.
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) ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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!
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?
Breakfast served all day!
...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."
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
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.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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?
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
And nerds everywhere rejoiced. Finally people on /. are getting laid.
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.
"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.
Wait... what obama story? Did something happen?
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.
The ______ Agenda
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
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
yeah, i hear he's just really a figurehead
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
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.)
The bootup was significantly faster than my vista today (am downgrading to XP today;
you misspelled upgrading.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
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.
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.
Yeah, they finally caught him.
What?
You still need a copy, which is sort of the problem, but DOSbox supports Win3.1
They could release the code, but I guess they can't give the core of Vista away...
...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.
Bush 6.5??? He had to have been an early alpha or there are some serious flaws in the system genera... oh nvm
You can still run Windows 3.11 on DosBOX (complete with a working Microsoft BOB install! Really!). What am I going to do now? :-(
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...then what's that?
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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?
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!
Rethinking email
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/
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The sad part is that now only get turned on by pixelated women.
Win3.1 did not have BSOD!
Informative????? Try incorrect!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEsK7TZhomE
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
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?
What if we tell everybody that Obama use *nix, McCain is a kernel hacker and Sara Palin is CowboyNeal real mom? W00T!
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
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.
I prefer Bush Vista
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.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Instead he is opening a chocolate shop in Belgium, together with his wife.
Watch your language!
I am officially gone from
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.
Instead he is opening a chocolate shop in Belgium, together with his wife.
Watch your language!
Oh yeah? Well, Belgium you too! ;-)
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.
so it takes 18 years to stop selling Windows 3.X but only 8 years to stop selling XP???? what gives?
love the taste, hate the texture
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?)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.