Microsoft Windows 3.0 Is 20 Years Today

siliconbits writes "Some say that the Windows 3.0 GUI (remember, it needed MS-DOS or DR-DOS to work) was the single most important version, as it allowed Microsoft to get its day. The first truly successful Windows operating system is 20 years old today; Windows 3.0 was launched on 22 May 1990 and was the successor to Windows 2.1x."

Comments

Bing is following Google's lead

[Anonymous Coward]

If you visit Bing you can run a Windows 3.0 emulator written in Javascript. Even has sound.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[daveime]

And if you'd formatted your link correctly, even other people could have visited it.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[gyrogeerloose]

If you visit Bing you can run a Windows 3.0 emulator written in Javascript. Even has sound.

And if you go here, you can run their Hell simulator, but who would want to? Same deal with a Windows 3.0 emulator.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[mrsteveman1]

Actually OPs link is quite apt, in that it doesn't work :)

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[WrongSizeGlass]

So you're saying that we went from PacMan to WIndows 3.0 in only 9 years, 364 days? Wow, that seemed to fly past.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[Anonymous Coward]

If you visit Bing [slashdot.org] you can run a Windows 3.0 emulator written in Javascript. Even has sound.

Is that the one where a yellow MS employee gobbles up silver dollars out of every PC sale and is chased by Open Source advocates unless it swallows a Patent Power-Up?

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[commodore64_love]

I think everyone should give those Windows 3.x emulators a try. They are great demonstrations for why many of us chose to buy Atari STs, Commodore Amigas, or Apple Macintoshes instead.

I hated using Windows 3.x.

Multitasking was an exercise in masochism (and also sadism when you pounded your keyboard). On Mac it was as easy as clicking Apple in the top corner, which would produce a dropdown of all running programs. On Amiga it was even easier. The Amiga-M and Amiga-N keys rapidly flipped through the running programs. I typically ran JRterm, a file manager, WordPerfect, C compiler, and the Workbench all at once.

Windows 3.x multitasking was like stepping 10 years back in time. It felt as if I was using a slow C64 again. I avoided using that OS as much as possible. Not until Windows 95 did they finally get a decent interface, which was basically just a clone of the Mac desktop (trashcan, shutdown procedure, finder, et cetera).

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[Daengbo]

I'd argue that Windows 3.0 wasn't nearly as important as 3.11.

I like to remind remind the "Linux desktop sucks!" folks that Windows 3.0 is 20 year old, NextStep 2.0 (That's OS X to you) is the same age, but the 1.0 releases of GNOME and KDE were but 11 and 12 years ago, respectively. Although Linux (the kernel) is almost 20 years old, the Free desktop isn't even a teenager yet.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[hedwards]

In honor of this occasion, I might have to pull out my old install disks and run it in dosbox. Perhaps even on my phone. But, I won't because I doubt that either Google or HTC will pay for the warranty repairs should my phone burst into flames.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Linux (the kernel) is almost 20 years old, the Free desktop isn't even a teenager yet.

Just don't look at the source code unless you want to end up in jail.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[HermMunster]

I don't see that as enough justification for visiting Bing.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[HermMunster]

Win 3.x and Mac OS both had cooperative multitasking. Win95 brought true preemptive multitasking. The Mac didn't have that till OSX.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[vanderbosch]

Guess my minesweeper time is going to be wiped as soon as that page, the shame.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[commodore64_love]

About a month ago my employer gave me an old laptop with Windows 3.1 --- trust me, you're not missing anything. Although I'm impressed that the OS and software fit inside just 0.008 gigabytes of RAM, I'm not impressed when I compare it to the other OSes of the day like MacOS 7, Amiga OS, or Atari ST-OS, all of which were superior. Even GEOS on the lowly C64 was better (imho).

Windows95 and NT 4 were Microsoft's first truly good OSes.... prior to that MS is best avoided.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[sgage]

"Dollars are votes. We the People hold power to bankrupt corporations out of existence. No such power exists over Gov't."

No, dollars are not votes. We the People have no power to bankrupt corporations, and you are delusional if you think that.

However, we do have real power over Gov't - it's called actual votes.

Of course, the real problem is the power that the corporations have over Gov't.

The idea of dollars as votes is extremely un-democratic.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[TheRaven64]

3.0 was a big improvement over 2.x. Visually, it defined the look - the beveled buttons were first introduced with Windows 3.0 (although Microsoft was not the first company to use that visual clue). It was also the first version to support multimedia.

Most importantly, however, 3.0 was the first version to support protected mode properly. Windows 2.x supported protected mode a bit, but only for using the VM86 mode to isolate running DOS applications. With Windows 3.0, you could use a full 32-bit address space on a 386. You also got swap - programs on previous versions of Windows (and Windows 3.0 on older CPUs) typically hacked around low memory by manually writing as much as possible to .tmp files in low memory conditions, and reading it back when in the foreground.

Windows 3.0 was also the very last version to support the 8086. I ran it for several years because of this. Wikipedia claims that most Windows 3.0 programs required a 286 (standard mode) or above, but I never came across any - programs either required Windows 3.1, or worked on an 8086.

In some ways, Windows 3.0 was a more impressive accomplishment than 3.1 due to its far more limited system requirements. I ran 3.0 on a machine with an 8MHz, 16-bit CPU, a crappy addressing system that required 'far' pointers if you wanted to access data more than 64KB away from some arbitrary point (the value in an offset register), an EGA display, and 640KB of RAM, and no MMU. In contrast, the first machine that I owned that ran Windows 3.1 had a 16MHz CPU, 5MB of RAM (not a typo - 1MB on the board, and a matched set of four 1MB SIMMs) and a VGA display. The most important difference is that the 386, and even 286, in spite of numerous idiosyncrasies, has all of the features of a modern microprocessor. They had an MMU, separate privilege levels, and everything required to run a modern operating system. In contrast, the 8086 makes a $1 microcontroller look advanced in comparison.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[TheRaven64]

Although I'm impressed that the OS and software fit inside just 0.008 gigabytes of RAM,

8MB? You're off by quite a bit. More than 4MB of RAM was quite rare for Windows 3.1, and a few machines shipped with 2MB (although that was very cramped). The machine I had that ran 3.0 only had 640KB of RAM.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[smittyoneeach]

Why do you hate PacMan? That code base was far more reliable than Win3.0.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[deniable]

And don't strip the binaries.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[deniable]

Yep, there was a shortage of 30 pin RAM around here because everyone needed 4MB to upgrade to Windows 95.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[Bing Tsher E]

Windows 95 only had cooperative multitasking as well. You had to upgrade to Windows NT 3.x to get preemptive multitasking. (and then downgrade to NT 4.0 which was a big step backwards.)
The 95/98/me series was just a bunch of stuff piled on top of old DOS- not really an OS at all, just a wad of runtime stuff running on top of DOS.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[fishexe]

If you visit Bing you can run a Windows 3.0 emulator written in Javascript. Even has sound.

Yay! Between the two of them, my two favorite games!

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[shutdown -p now]

Windows 95 only had cooperative multitasking as well.

You're completely wrong. Win9x had proper preemptive multitasking. You could CreateThread() two different threads, and they'd just run on their own, with no need for either one to yield. Whereas, Win 3.x didn't have CreateThread at all, and "process" switches happened during message pumping.

However, due to the lack of any notion of process boundaries or memory safety in 9x, any programs could break this extremely easily.

The 95/98/me series was just a bunch of stuff piled on top of old DOS- not really an OS at all, just a wad of runtime stuff running on top of DOS.

Well, 9x had its own kernel containing a thread and process scheduler, a virtual memory managemer, and a driver API - I'd say that qualifies as an OS. DOS was used as a bootloader for the kernel, effectively. Parts of it were also used when you ran DOS apps in Windows (which was a source of many problems, actually), but so long as you stuck to Win32 apps, DOS wasn't engaged.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[perryizgr8]

About a month ago my employer gave me an old laptop with Windows 3.1 --- trust me, you're not missing anything. Although I'm impressed that the OS and software fit inside just 0.008 gigabytes of RAM, I'm not impressed when I compare it to the other OSes of the day like MacOS 7, Amiga OS, or Atari ST-OS, all of which were superior. Even GEOS on the lowly C64 was better (imho).

Windows95 and NT 4 were Microsoft's first truly good OSes.... prior to that MS is best avoided.

is this for real?

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[daveime]

Had I KNOWN the correct link, I would have posted it, unfortunately my psychic powers were playing up earlier.

Posting a link to the homepage of Microsoft's Search Abomination^HEngine is about as useful as posting a link to Goatse.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[commodore64_love]

>>>With Windows 3.0, you could use a full 32-bit address space on a 386

Again: This was no big deal to Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, or Commodore Amiga owners who were already running 32-bit software as early as 1984. In 1987 the 68020 variants could address 4000 megabytes (real or virtual RAM). So basically Windows 3.0 was just playing catch-up with what its competition had done half-a-decade earlier.
.

>>>Wikipedia claims that most Windows 3.0 programs required a 286

You ought to edit and correct it.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[commodore64_love]

(shrug). My laptop came with 8 megabytes. I was merely commenting on my OWN experience. I don't know how it would work on 4 MB, but given how it works on 8 (slow), I bet it would be a real dog... like trying to run WinXP on less than 128 MB.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[commodore64_love]

>>>You're completely wrong. Win9x had proper preemptive multitasking.

No you're both wrong. Win95 does do preemptive multitasking on newer 32 bit applications, but the common 16 bit applications of 1995 only ran cooperatively (and therefore a single crashed app could freeze the OS). Ditto NT 3.1 (but less crashprone). It wasn't until Win98 that Microsoft fixed that flaw and made everything preemptive, regardless of bitness.

So prior to 1998, the only home computer that did "true" preemptive tasking was the Commodore Amiga (1985).

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[f0dder]

Novell, Sun, SGI and other failed tech giants says you're wrong.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[mjwx]

The idea of dollars as votes is extremely un-democratic.

Indeed, I too do not understand the delusion that somehow we can force corporate policy change on our wallets alone, especially since the top 20% control 80% of the wealth, it would be impossible for the collective "us" to vote with dollars as we have nowhere near the number of dollars that they have.

Re:Bing is following Google's lead

[KlausBreuer]

>However, we do have real power over Gov't - it's called actual votes.

No, you don't. The USA shows this particularly clearly, as you only have two parties, and they're *both* worthless morons.
In other places (like here in Germany) you can find more parties, but they are *also* all morons, with no exceptions.

So - no, you don't have power over your government; unless you're a large company who simply buys them all.

More importantly...

[The Living Fractal]

My teenage angst had to be fueled by something. Windows 3.0 was useful for that, but not as much as this, which incidentally occurred on the same exact day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEXKOR5Oepo

Re:More importantly...

[commodore64_love]

That's odd. My teenage angst was fueled by 4000 color nudie pics downloaded on my Amiga. (My IBM PC friends were still stuck with only 256 or 16 colors... not lifelike at all.) I never got off on windows.

Re:More importantly...

[The Living Fractal]

Haha. Too True.

Re:More importantly...

[dotancohen]

Holy shit thanks for that!

I remember....

[jolyonr]

I remember going to a big computer show in early 1990 up in Birmingham. This was just before the Windows 3.0 announcement, so the Microsoft booth had a secret area inside it where they were showing the product to invited guests. As a dedicated Amiga fanatic at the time, I wasn't entirely impressed with it - however I did go back and recommend to my employer at the time (BP - no I don't work for them any more) that they should start looking into Windows again (we'd discounted Windows 2.x for widespread deployment).

Commodore used the same show to preview the Amiga 3000 computer, which was far more exciting to me, and I put my order in a couple of days after!

Jolyon

Re:I remember....

[sammyF70]

So an overtly advertised secret booth? Sounds like MS alright ;)

Re:I remember....

[commodore64_love]

>>>I did go back and recommend to my employer at the time that they should start looking into Windows

Traitor. ;-) You should have recommended the Amiga. If you and other had done that, maybe Amiga would not have disappeared three years later due to lack of sales. ------ And yeah I was similarly unimpressed with Windows 3.0. It was a crappy, shitty OS. To quote someone else: "Using 3.0 and 3.1 largely consisted of opening random program groups, trying to find where your programs were hidden."

Also it was extremely difficult to multitask. If you were running both Word and Excel for example, you had to first minimize the Word window, then locate the icon representing Excel, followed by clicking it. Then if you wanted to switch back, minimize Excel, find the Word icon, and click it. Royal pain in the ass.

- On Mac it was as easy as clicking Apple, which would produce a dropdown of all running programs.
- On Amiga it was even easier. The Amiga-M and Amiga-N keys rapidly flipped through the running programs.

I hated using Windows 3.x. It felt like I was stepping 10 years back in time. It felt like I was using a slow non-multitasking Commodore=64 again. Not until Windows 95 did they finally get a decent interface (still used today). Of course the reason Win95 was so easy is because it was just a clone of the Mac desktop (trashcan, shutdown procedure, finder, et cetera).

Re:I remember....

[jolyonr]

Traitor. ;-) You should have recommended the Amiga.

I did try, every chance I got. But purchasing had to be done through their official channels, if it wasn't on the official supply list, we weren't allowed to get it. I did however create the graphs used in the photos on their annual report one year using Deluxe Paint III on my Amiga 2000 at home. And I was far too junior to be involved in changing decisions made much higher up.

Also it was extremely difficult to multitask.

Don't forget multitasking, at the time, was seen as a "power user" option only. We'd experimented with all sorts of crap such as dos-based task switchers (remember Desqview 386?) but it was regarded that most people didn't want or need multitasking. They wrote a letter in Wordstar 4, then they loaded Lotus 1-2-3 to do their spreadsheets. Do both at the same time? that was far too confusing for "normal" people. I know it sounds silly now, but that was genuinely what IT management thought back in those days. The only reason we looked at Windows at all was to see if the mouse/gui system could improve productivity and reduce training costs associated with application use.

Jolyon

Re:I remember....

[iJusten]

Also it was extremely difficult to multitask. If you were running both Word and Excel for example, you had to first minimize the Word window, then locate the icon representing Excel, followed by clicking it. Then if you wanted to switch back, minimize Excel, find the Word icon, and click it. Royal pain in the ass.

Didn't Windows 3.x have Alt+Tab? I distinctly remember using it. Worked like charm, and even today the best way to move between two programs, no matter what OS you prefer to use.

Re:I remember....

[Daengbo]

Don't forget multitasking, at the time, was seen as a "power user" option only.

Funny how the phone business is repeating history.

Re:I remember....

[blind biker]

Me, like many other amigans of the time, were enjoying all kinds of amiga GUI goodness, and wanted to check out this expensive IBM PC stuff that was starting to be all the rage. When I saw DOS and the MS Word that was running on it, well, I just thought I'd puke - what the FUCK is this lame ASCII graphic clusterfuck (we didn't use the term "clusterfuck" at the time, but it's very appropriate)? But as we all know, Amiga died and Microsoft and the PC became kings. And this wasn't the last time that the lesser technology won, in IT, either: NetWare vs. Windows NT, NDS vs. Active Directory, BeOS vs. all the other OSes.

Re:I remember....

[InfoJunkie777]

Absolutely correct.

Re:I remember....

[Third Position]

Didn't Windows 3.x have Alt+Tab? I distinctly remember using it. Worked like charm, and even today the best way to move between two programs, no matter what OS you prefer to use.

Indeed it did, and it is. And that probably remains the one useful innovation Microsoft has contributed to the world of computing.

Re:I remember....

[Longjmp]

Actually it was Norton Commander to make Win 3.x work like a charm... ;-)

Re:I remember....

[dwinks616]

Don't forget multitasking, at the time, was seen as a "power user" option only. We'd experimented with all sorts of crap such as dos-based task switchers (remember Desqview 386?) but it was regarded that most people didn't want or need multitasking. They wrote a letter in Wordstar 4, then they loaded Lotus 1-2-3 to do their spreadsheets. Do both at the same time? that was far too confusing for "normal" people. I know it sounds silly now, but that was genuinely what IT management thought back in those days.

Obviously you don't work in IT, as I can confirm that even to this day, the average computer "user" gets confused with simple things such as multitasking.

Re:I remember....

[jolyonr]

> Obviously you don't work in IT

Not any more, I got a real job! :)

Re:I remember....

[fishexe]

Also it was extremely difficult to multitask. If you were running both Word and Excel for example, you had to first minimize the Word window, then locate the icon representing Excel, followed by clicking it. Then if you wanted to switch back, minimize Excel, find the Word icon, and click it. Royal pain in the ass.

...or you could hit Alt-Esc or Alt-Tab. Granted, I didn't know about either of these until after Win95 came out, but they were supported in 3.0-3.11. You and I both should have RTFM sooner.

Re:I remember....

[commodore64_love]

It does, but when you walk into a computer lab they don't hand you a manual. It's just a screen with Windows on it, and I didn't know anything about ALT-TAB, and even if I did, the MacOS and Amiga approaches were simply better (i.e. user-friendly). For example Amiga has ALT-M and ALT-N to flip through screens -or- you could use the mouse button to do it with a dropdown menu.

Yet another way Amigas/Macs were a decade ahead of Microsoft - why nobody at MS thought to create a menu to change applications is a mystery.

Re:I remember....

[JasonStevens]

ALT+TAB.... it was super easy to switch between stuff. good grief.

Re:I remember....

[JasonStevens]

I hate to say it, but look around the office, and how many people will have 50 copies of word running, and with 50 versions of the same document because every time they reply to an email, they keep opening the same document over & over... Companies refuse to train their users as time has gone by, and of course the users aren't going to learn on their own. I'm just happy I haven't done end user support in years.

Re:I remember....

[JasonStevens]

install oracle on Netware 4 & SQL on NT 3.1 then come back to me on which is 'inferior'. Sorry but Netware languished in that 1980's feeling of the more insane the install & configuration the better.

There is a reason that NT took over all that server space that was occupied by Netware & OS/2.

Win

[clinko]

The only time where you type Win to lose.

I thought of that joke when I was 11. Damn you misconfigured autoexec.bat! You led me down this path to the cubical I now live in!

Re:Win

[Bitmanhome]

On my computer, you typed "lose" to Win.

Re:Win

[Kjella]

You led me down this path to the cubical I now live in!

Well, I suppose cubicle is derived from cubical but I don't think you can live in an adjective.

Re:Win

[mqduck]

The only time where you type Win to lose.

"In Soviet Redmond..."?

Much better article on the subject

[lseltzer]

by me in PCMag....

Re:Much better article on the subject

[commodore64_love]

Is this a mistake? "This was a cooperative or 'non-preemptive' multitasking"..... "Windows 3.0 could run multiple DOS sessions preemptively". I think you meant cooperatively in the last sentence?

When people ask me the difference, I tell them that in cooperative multitasking, if your Email Program crashes, it takes down the whole system because it never releases control of the CPU. That happened a lot on my old Quadra Mac, making it freeze. In contract in preemptive multitasking, like an Amiga, the OS forces programs to give-up control so even if one of them crashes, it won't freeze the other programs.

Of course that's a simplified explanation.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Blakey Rat]

It's impossible for DOS apps to run preemptively, since they don't yield time to the OS.

The article is correct, the multitasking for DOS sessions was preemptive.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[ChipMonk]

Almost, but not quite. Native Windows 3.x programs were cooperatively scheduled, and that included the DOS compatibility layer (a.k.a. the DOS box). From the DOS program's perspective, everything appeared to be a normal DOS environment, but the interrupts were hooked by the DOS box. When a DOS program wanted to do I/O to a disk file, or the "display," or the printer, or the modem, or the keyboard, the x86 INT call would be sent to the DOS box, which would yield to the Windows scheduler.

The catch is, if a DOS program went into a long calculation loop, and never made any x86 INT calls, it could effectively block other Windows programs, by never calling the scheduler. I tried this in WfW 3.11, and even the mouse stopped moving.

So, from the DOS program's perspective, the scheduling could appear to be preemptive, but the actual Windows scheduling behind it was still cooperative.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Bungie]

Under pre-emptive multi tasking the scheduler interrupts the application's execution and suspends it's state registers to memory. It doesn't matter if the application yields or not becuase it's execution will be interupted by the timer and the scheduler will run.

Cooperative tasking requires the application return control to the OS by some means (like the DoIdle function on the MacOS). There are also schemes that allow indirect control to return to the OS, like when the program calls a system function the OS performs any background processing before servicing the request and returning control to the application.

Preemptive multitasking would be the only efficient way to multitask DOS since DOS programs would never be written to with a function to return control to the OS. But it may be that just the DOS executive used preemptive scheduling but still needed to receive initial control from the cooperative Windows applications.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Hadley]

Windows 3 did pre-emptive multitasking for DOS programs, and co-operative multitasking for windows programs.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[siride]

No, the DOS boxes were actually pre-emptively multitasked. They had to be; that's how Virtual 8086 mode worked. All the Windows programs were cooperatively multitasked in a single 16-bit VM. The manager for all this was vmm386.exe, which ran in 32-bit protected mode and even used paging for memory management.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Blakey Rat]

"You're wrong. It's not preemptive because [describes preemptive scheduling scheme]"

I hate to break it to you, but since those DOS programs don't control when time slices come and go, it's preemptive. Like I freakin' said in the first place.

In fact, I have absolutely no idea why you even wrote that, except maybe you wanted to demonstrate that you don't really know what "preemptive multitasking" means?

Re:Much better article on the subject

[spitzak]

He did not describe preemtive multitasking. By "interrupt" he really meant the equivalent of a DOS call to the kernel, which was done with the "int21" instruction, not an async interrupt from a hardware device such as a clock.

I find it hard to believe they made the DOS box preemptive but made Windows programs (where they had a lot more control over what the program was capable of doing) cooperative. Therefore I strongly believe you are wrong and the grandparent is correct.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Blakey Rat]

He did not describe preemtive multitasking.

Yes, he did.

By "interrupt" he really meant the equivalent of a DOS call to the kernel, which was done with the "int21" instruction, not an async interrupt from a hardware device such as a clock.

Ok? And that makes it not preemptive... how?

You didn't get around to actually explaining how it isn't preemptive. It doesn't matter whether it gets preempted from a timer, or from a interrupt handler. Either way, the program is preempted, yes?

Look, DOS programs are barely aware of the OS, they don't have any API or instruction designed to yield time to other processes, there is literally *no way* to run two DOS programs without preemptive multitasking. It can not be done.

I find it hard to believe they made the DOS box preemptive but made Windows programs (where they had a lot more control over what the program was capable of doing) cooperative. Therefore I strongly believe you are wrong and the grandparent is correct.

You're welcome to believe whatever you like.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[ChipMonk]

The DOS boxes had their DOS and BIOS service software interrupts hooked by the Windows infrastructure. If a program never invoked int 21h (or int 10h, or int 15h... you get the idea) while in an infinite loop, it would hang Windows 3. No mouse control, no keyboard, because without a call to a standard DOS/BIOS interrupt, there was no yield to the scheduler, and no Windows mouse or keyboard handler would get called.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[ChipMonk]

By "interrupt" he really meant the equivalent of a DOS call to the kernel, which was done with the "int21" instruction, not an async interrupt from a hardware device such as a clock.

Ok? And that makes it not preemptive... how?

Because calling that interrupt (or any interrupt so hooked by the Windows DOS box) is something that happens under software control, not hardware. For example, a QBASIC "print" statement, or a C call "fflush(stdout);", will call int 21h, at which point the Windows infrastructure steps in and invokes the scheduler. Because calling that interrupt is a choice exercised by the programmer, not the hardware, it is cooperative, not preemptive multitasking.

If the DOS program goes into an infinite loop, calling no software interrupts for DOS or BIOS services, it will hang Windows 3. The only way out of that is the power button or the reset button. Not even the three-finger salute will rescue the system at that point, because the Windows keyboard handler isn't being invoked, because the DOS box hasn't yielded to the scheduler.

The same thing happens when loading a poorly-designed TSR in a DOS box. When the TSR assumes it can unilaterally hook an interrupt, without taking into account that the DOS box has already hooked it, very Bad Things Happen, usually a BSOD.

In an earlier comment, you referred to "time slices". There was no such thing in Windows 3 for DOS, not in the Windows programs, and not for the DOS programs running in DOS boxes. The scheduler yield points were defined by the Windows "kernel" for Windows programs (but the programmer could yield arbitrarily as well), and the DOS box defined the yield points via the standard software interrupts (that were called under DOS program control, not hardware timer).

And you are welcome to believe whatever you like, but you are merely asserting what you want to believe. I am explaining how it works.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[siride]

But in enhanced mode, Windows did use Virtual 8086 mode, and those instances could be pre-empted. That's the only way multitasked DOS boxes can work correctly anyway.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2010/05/17/10013609.aspx

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Blakey Rat]

And you are welcome to believe whatever you like, but you are merely asserting what you want to believe. I am explaining how it works.

I'm not arguing that's not how it works, I'm saying that's still a preemptive multitasking system.

Now, you might disagree that the scheme outlined above is, in fact, preemptive-- fine! We disagree on terminology. (Although I'd like to know exactly what you call it if not "preemptive"-- don't seem to have presented any alternate term.)

But don't just keep explaining it over and over and over and expect the debate to change somehow.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Anonymous Coward]

Preemptive multitasking:

1- A periodical hardware interrupt occurs()
2- Running process is *pre-empted* and an interrupt handler is called, regardless of what the program was doing.
3- Handler saves the state of the running process and restores another process' state before returning from the interrupt.

Cooperative multitasking:

1- Program voluntarily calls yield
2- Yield() saves the state and restores

Calling int whatever when int whatever contains Yield is a book example of cooperative multitasking. Even if the programs weren't written with cooperation in mind. If you want it is the DOS emulator cooperating, but it is still a case of cooperative multitasking.

You could do preemptive multitasking without hardware interrupts by dynamically modifying the programs' code but this DOS box multitasking is not preemptive however you look at it.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[lseltzer]

It did both. Windows apps were cooperatively multitasked within the Win16 process (not VM). The DOS boxes were in v86 processes. All these processes were preemptively multitasked.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Blakey Rat]

As another reply said, I'm going by Raymond Chen's opinion on the matter. Also from the horse's mouth, and he is somehow of the opinion that the DOS multitasking was preemptive.

The real meat and potatos to me, being someone who wrote applications for Mac Classic (OMG I'M A DEVELOPER!? AND AN OLD-SCHOOL DEVELOPER FROM WHEN THIS WAS STILL RELEVANT?!), is that since the DOS applications have:
1) No knowledge of when they're yielding time
2) No control over when time is yielded
3) The ability to run in configurations where they are in sole control of the machine (a true cooperative program would not be able to do this)
that those DOS applications are *not* cooperating with the OS. In fact, they're refusing to cooperate in a quite stubborn way.

There's no cooperation there, so it can't be cooperative. The application is preempted, so it must be preemptive. This is miles away from the cooperative Mac Classic "hey, why don't you give some time to other apps and get back to me in a few ticks?" system.

I'd actually much rather trust Raymond Chen's opinion on the matter, since he was so close to the developers and is an expert in all things Windows OS related. You are welcome to disagree with me/us.

But you're not welcome to be a condescending asshole: if your CS program taught you about preemptive vs. cooperative (and mine did not cover that material) (OMG I'VE BEEN IN A CS PROGRAM?!), they've just taught you with a position contrary to mine. That does not make me wrong, or you right. Hell, CS programs teach a lot of wrong things... mine was mostly useless by the time I hit the job market.

Oh, and FYI: Pointing out you're being a condescending asshole doesn't make you less of one. It just means you're a jerk as well, since now you're being a condescending asshole on purpose instead of on accident.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[commodore64_love]

>>>The article is correct, the multitasking for DOS sessions was preemptive.

According to microsoft.com 16 bit applications, which includes DOS, only run cooperatively..... meaning that the OS can not "preempt" them and hand control to some other program. The OS has to sit and wait to be released by whichever app is currently in charge to release control voluntarily (cooperatively),

Re:Much better article on the subject

[commodore64_love]

To me the word "preemptive" applies to the noun "Executive" or "OS". It means the OS Executive has the ability to freeze (preempt) a program's execution, and hand CPU control over to another program. The Commodore AmigaOS has this ability. The Classic MacOS did not. Neither did Windows 1, 2, 3.

In cooperative tasking, the program is in charge, and only releases the CPU whenever it feels like releasing the CPU. If the program never releases the CPU, then all other programs sit idle forever. That's why a crash of one program can freeze the entire OS.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Blakey Rat]

This is the disagreement.

DOS applications don't "release the CPU". They have no concept of "releasing the CPU". There's no WaitNextEvent() API call in DOS (like there is in Mac Classic.) What happens is that the OS gloms on to interrupt handlers and forcibly takes the CPU from it. There's no cooperation involved, the DOS app isn't even aware that such cooperation could exist.

Me, I call that preemptive.

Anyway, congratulations, you've caught up to the debate. :)

Re:Much better article on the subject

[JasonStevens]

Windows/386 could preempt MS-DOS sessions, remember it's the VMM infrastructure from Windows/386 that made Windows 3.0's VXD's work.

You can fit Windows/386 & MS-DOS 3.3 on a floppy and boot it up on any modern pc and you can see for yourself on real iron, or any decent emulator can run it...

All the preemption isn't on by default, but you just configure it via a pif file... It's not that hard.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[JasonStevens]

At least you got the OS/2 stuff in there! Many people forget that Windows 3.0 was microsoft's plan B for the whole OS/2 disaster. Another factor in the whole thing was as Balmer likes to put it was DEVELOPERS.

IBM had decided that the SDK's should be a revenue source, and they charged a fortune for them! Meanwhile Microsoft was happily giving away Windows SDK's and would allow 3rd party compilers to include the SDK components for free!

The real deciding factor for a lot of people getting started was Microsoft QuickC for windows 3.0. It was $199 new and $89 if you were 'upgrading' from something else. This is significantly cheaper then the OS/2 tools that run upwards of $3000!

The DOS Extender market was also heating up, and for the 286 crowd you couldn't beat the 'runtime' charge of Windows 3.0 vs what people like Rational were charging for their dos extenders.

At the time for the $150 for Windows 3.0 & $199 for QuickC for Windows made this the cheapest way to write programs that could run in protected mode.

Another thing is that most people forget that Windows NT started it's life in 1988 as NT/OS2 the RISC portable version of OS/2. It wasn't until Windows 3.0 was clearly a hit, did they dump the primary 32bit OS/2 2.0 'cruiser' API for an expanded 32bit Windows API based on the WLO (Windows Libraries on OS/2). The great book showstopper goes into great detail about the rise of Windows NT.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[JasonStevens]

Open up pif editor, and click the "Background" execution button, then hit the advanced button, here you can set the priority levels of background & foreground MS-DOS sessions (set them both to the same number, like 50), and click to allow Windows 3.0 to detect idle time.

Save that PIF, and launch it with some command.com's and run them in a window and watch how they all execute at the same time.

It's been this way since Windows/386, that was it's big thing was that back in 1988 Microsoft could do multiple MS-DOS sessions in a preemptive manner while OS/2 could only do one.

this is why Microsoft wanted to abandon the 286, but IBM held them to this goal...

Re:Much better article on the subject

[Falconhell]

Ah, token ring, was there anything more amusing than telling the staff during an outage they had lost the token somewhere in their office and should start looking for it.

At least it kept them busy, and not hassling me whilst I fixed the network.

(:

Re:Much better article on the subject

[spitzak]

Sorry but you have the wrong definition of "cooperative multitasking". You seem to think it means "the program is aware of the multitasking".

What it means is that a call FROM the program is the only point where task switching can happen. As several have pointed out, you can make MSDOS programs cooperatively multitask by making the int21 call that they do all the time to read/write files, and the BIOS interrupt used to read from the keyboard, also do a yield() call.

Preemptive multitasking means that some OUTSIDE, and regular, interrupt causes the task to be switched, no matter what the program is doing. A timer interrupt could do this, for instance.

In fact preemptive multitasking, especially on hardware with no protection, requires the programs to be far more "aware" of it than cooperative does, in that they can never be in a state where the task switch can fail. You actually have your definition pretty much backwards.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[spitzak]

You still don't seem to get it.

The DOS application "releases the CPU" the moment it does an int21 to make a system call. The int21 causes code that IS NOT PART OF THE PROGRAM to be executed. Microsoft in fact wrote this code, and replaced whatever MSDOS did with new code that did a Windows yield() and then simulated the MSDOS result.

You are the one that is confused. "cooperative" does NOT mean "the program is aware of the multitasking", that is your definition.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[spitzak]

Once again, you are making up your own definitions.

"pre-emptive multitasking" means that at an ASYNCHRONOUS point the task may be switched.

"cooperative multitasking" means that the current task executes an instruction to indicate a yield() point.

It does not matter if that instruction is an int21 and that the author of the running program did not know it would do a yield(). It is still cooperative multitasking.

Please try to understand, you are driving people here crazy with your mistake!

Please don't post any more inane reponses until you CLEARLY UNDERSTAND THIS. Read the "It does not matter" paragraph above until you understand what it is saying. Or read any of the hundred other responses trying to explain this to you.

Re:Much better article on the subject

[spitzak]

You might want to read some literature not produced by Microsoft. Here is another definition: if a program goes into a loop and does not call the "yield" function, it is cooperative multitasking. If no loop can prevent task switching then it is pre-emptive multitasking.

It has NOTHING to do with "what the programmer thought the call is doing". I certainly DO want to "make the argument that every system that offers system functions is a cooperatively multitasking system" (if you limit it to systems where the system functions actually do task switching).

If somebody from Microsoft said in an article that the DOS was "pre-emtively multitasked" when in fact a loop locks up the computer, they were WRONG. Sorry to break it to you, but the people at Microsoft are not infallable gods. Boo hoo.

NO NO NO NO NO

[skyggen]

Windows 3.0 is NOT 20. Microsoft "END OF LIFE"d that product. It died. You can says its been 20 years since it was released. If you kill a product it does not get another birthday.

Re:NO NO NO NO NO

[gyrogeerloose]

If you kill a product it does not get another birthday.

Tell that to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King.

Re:NO NO NO NO NO

[Golias]

If you kill a product it does not get another birthday.

Tell that to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King.

You can't. They're dead.

Also, notice that nobody announces how old George Washington is every year.

Re:NO NO NO NO NO

[jeremyp]

Nobody announces how old Windows 3.0 is every year either.

Re:NO NO NO NO NO

[rgo]

... and Baby Jesus

Re:NO NO NO NO NO

[Golias]

Except for the story we're commenting on, you mean.

Re:F*ck Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that is soo last decade. Now it's F*ck the Cloud!

dr-dos?

[Anonymous Coward]

you dont have good memory, eh?

read up about undocumented dos functions in ms-dos and what happened when you tried to run windows 3 in dr-dos...

digital research went to court about it and roughly 10 years later they won .... only that they were already moved out of os market because of microsofts behaviour (oh these memories)

Re:dr-dos?

[westlake]

read up about undocumented dos functions in ms-dos and what happened when you tried to run windows 3 in dr-dos...

Fair enough:

The AARD code was a segment of obfuscated machine code that is included in several executables, including the installer and WIN.COM, in a beta release of Microsoft Windows 3.1. The code ran several functional tests on the underlying DOS that succeeded on MS-DOS, but resulted in a technical support message on competing operating systems. The name was derived from Microsoft programmer Aaron R. Reynolds (1955-2008), who used "AARD" to sign his work. ("AARD" was found in the machine code of the installer.) Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1.

AARD code

Windows 3.1 was more significant

[ClosedSource]

because it had truetype fonts. The combination of Windows 3.1 and HP's deskjet printers made it possible to perform desktop publishing for hundreds of dollars less than using other alternatives.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[gyrogeerloose]

because it had truetype fonts. The combination of Windows 3.1 and HP's deskjet printers made it possible to perform desktop publishing for hundreds of dollars less than using other alternatives.

Of course, it didn't work as well as the other alternatives either. I worked at a service bureau at that time and we absolutely hated it when files that had been created under Windows 3.x came in because we knew it was going to cause us headaches. While Windows might have worked okay for simple documents printed to a user's own printer, it wasn't adequate for high-end graphics work.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Anpheus]

People didn't want high end work though, they wanted Good Enough(tm) and didn't want to spend a fortune to do it.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[ImNotAtWork]

A certain amusement park still used Windows 3.1 with some AMX/Panja touch screens to control it's audio for parades. This was back in 2002 but I didn't foresee them changing anything anytime soon.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[ClosedSource]

I'm sure the file produced wasn't compatible with high-end equipment, but since the rendering was done in the computer rather than in the printer, Windows was a much more trouble-free method than using a laser printer.

I never had a problem printing a page on the deskjet but encountered many pages that wouldn't print on the laser printer because they were too complex.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Shadow Wrought]

I had an Amiga A1200 in college. It would send the fonts as images, so I got deskjet quality out of my uber-cheap dot-matrix. Of course it only printed a page a minute, so I would start it printing and finish getting ready for class. By the time I was done, it was, too :-)

Good times!

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Skuld-Chan]

I remember supporting PageMaker on Mac and Windows - it was awful on both platforms (this was Pre-Quark when PageMaker was pretty much the only app to do layout with). To get really good results on the Mac you have to have an 8-10k machine, to get decentish results on a Windows PC you could get away with a $1200 Dell.

In other words - an 8 meg Mac was worthless for DTP, but an 8 meg Dell did ok at it - I think this was largely for the fact that System 7 just had that much more overhead. 8 megs was a ton of ram for Windows 3.x, but I can specifically remember my 8 meg IICX being horrible at about everything (and it was like an 8000 dollar machine with the nice screen attached) until it was upgraded to 32 (I think) - which was a ton of money at the time.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[TheBilgeRat]

Me as well! My roomie had an A500 though and consistently had to use my computer as Final Writer would Guru Meditation after two to three pages. I remember making a makeshift sound booth for the 24 pin epson I had...Had a color ribbon too-I could actually do pictures in my papers. Ah, memories!

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[InfoJunkie777]

because it had truetype fonts. The combination of Windows 3.1 and HP's deskjet printers made it possible to perform desktop publishing for hundreds of dollars less than using other alternatives.

It was okay for some things. I even used Wordstar 5.1 in DOS before that to do some DTP. But the "high-end" stuff was always Apple, because of the better output options. That used to be true, but these days many shops use Apple and MS equally.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[microbee]

No. 3.1 was more significant because of the 386 enhanced mode.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[mister_playboy]

Enhanced mode was in 3.0, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.0#Memory_modes

The change in memory modes was that Real mode was removed from 3.1

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Bungie]

System 7 wasn't bad at all. It had a minimum requirement of 1MB of RAM or something (I remember people were in a uproar over how much more it needed that system 6). I ran it on my MacSE with 2.5MB of RAM just fine.

I think the difference is the way the systems managed memory. On the Mac applications would have the initial and maximum size under the "Get Info" window. IIRC PageMaker's requirements were fairly high (and you would want to give it more memory if possible for better performance). I'm positive that Windows 3.1 had virtual memory, so it could probably swap a lot of PageMaker's memory to disk, which the Mac couldn't do back then.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[dbIII]

It wasn't "Desktop Publishing", it was just Word Processing where the printed output actually resembled what was on the screen. Word 2007 still doesn't have all the features of a twenty year old desktop publishing program, but most of the time that just doesn't matter.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[barzok]

Then why were they going to a pro service bureau if they didn't want to pay pro prices?

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[ClosedSource]

"It wasn't "Desktop Publishing", it was just Word Processing where the printed output actually resembled what was on the screen."

For many people that was the definition of desktop publishing. In any case, there were applications that ran on Windows 3.1 that were considered desktop publishing software in the strict use of the phrase that you prefer.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[dbIII]

Yes but for many people the definition of a hard drive it the beige box on the floor while the computer is the screen on your desk. The majority of people, the dictionary and anyone with a clue disagrees with them just as with the desktop publishing definition.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[fishexe]

because it had minesweeper.

There, fixed that for you. (see below)

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[ClosedSource]

Nice try. You didn't even mention the CD cup-holder.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Shadow Wrought]

The guy across the hall from in the dorm had an A500 that he was always toying with. He set me up with a copy of Deluxe Paint that he walked me through using. From then on most of my papers had a drawing on their title page, too. :-) Memories indeed!

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Billly Gates]

You could enable virtual memory by system 7 but it would screw up half the apps on it so no one used it. It was a big problem as in, since no one used virtual memory then why code your apps for it?

I was a powerpc fanboi and wanted a mac bad in those days but the ridiculous prices for macs with decent ram made it not worth it. I am glad Windows 3.x/9x and MacOS are gone. I will miss neither. Windows 7 as much as people hate it is by leaps and bounds an improvement over the old Windows/DOS.

 

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Vidar Leathershod]

How many shops did you support that used Windows when Pagemaker was the only game in town? Quark was released in 1987, about a year and a half after Pagemaker. Pagemaker on Windows was not really a "solution" until 1990, and the entire world was already entrenched in the Mac platform for years after that. Also, in 1990, Quark put out Xpress 3 and basically ate Aldus' lunch.

Now, in the late 80's I can't think of a PC you could have used that was more capable with Pagemaker in Quark than a IIci, and in 1990 the IIfx, which was really freaking fast. Heck, I had customers loving the IIfx in 1994, though many had moved to Quadras by then. A IIcx with 8mb was totally capable of running Pagemaker with aplomb.

Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant

[Vidar Leathershod]

Um, System 7 had virtual memory. I used to use it, before getting RamDoubler by Connectix. Great program on the Mac, horrible program on the PC (very buggy). Speaking of, the other great part of RamDoubler was the CopyDoubler, which sped up copy and empty trash functions by a huge margin. Once I got used to that, any workstation that didn't have it seemed like a sluggard.

Never encountered too many problems with RamDoubler, and maybe a couple of applications had trouble with Virtual Memory on System 7. The only real problems I had with System 7 is that on my home machine Beyond Dark Castle couldn't run, and neither could Dungeons of Doom (rogue-like with graphics).

birthday??

[zcold]

You don't celebrate birthdays for things that are no longer alive...

Re:birthday??

[Fett101]

Except Christians believe that the dead thing was temporary and he is alive.

Re:birthday??

[daveime]

Believer : Jesus died for our sins.

Non-believer: Jesus lied for our sins ... three days later he was up and about again.

Ah yes

[msgmonkey]

The version of Windows that made you wish your 286 was a 386 and 640KB of ram certainly was n't more than you would ever need. Fond memories of wondering where 150K of memory had disappeared to only to realise that lovely desktop background image you set sucked 15% of your free memory. I also remember if you typed fast enough MS Write could n't keep up and you would fill the input buffer, let alone running MS Word. I can n't say I'ill miss those days.

Re:Ah yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed-that-for-you-dept: The version of Windows that made you wish your 286 was a 386 because now there was more you could do with your computer. ...just like any state-of-the-art game we've bought since.

Yeah, yeah, sure -- I completely understand the load of that clumsy GUI got in the way Productive Applications we'd run happily in DOS. I was there. I even remember debate over CRT versus paper scroll output. The history of software release is littered with cries of "OMG Pony! Want!" followed by a cloud of griping that the requisite stable did not materialize for free.

There are so many valid complaints to be made about Win3, but to complain that it required hardware that could handle the extra load of a fully utilized GUI? C'mon. You're not _really_ remembering yet. You're still blocking out the anguish. Lean back in your chair, close your eyes. It's 1990. Your desk is covered with expensive 3.5" floppy disks. Your coffee has gone cold, and your coke, flat. You can hear the fan of the computer. You are beginning to realize that your friends with Amigas and Macs are still going to be laughing at you tomorrow...

Re:Ah yes

[nurb432]

I loved those days.. That's when OS/2 was around and it showed the world what a PC OS should be like.

Re:Ah yes

[EricX2]

I think you are still typing so fast you are filling the input buffer, or you have always typed bad and blamed it on the OS.

Re:Ah yes

[dotancohen]

Have you never heard the saying about giving a thousand monkeys a thousand keyboards and a thousand milligrams of MSG?

(hint: look at his username)

Does it work with...

[goombah99]

I don't want to start a flame war, but can someone tell me when windows is going to support a one button mouse?

Re:Does it work with...

[InfoJunkie777]

I don't want to start a flame war, but can someone tell me when windows is going to support a one button mouse?

Please explain, why is this important. I believe, from my experience, that THREE buttons are better, or at least, two buttons and a wheel. I use the wheel all the time to scroll my pages, and use the left hand button for "context sensitive" commands (basically shortcuts).

Re:Does it work with...

[ToasterMonkey]

Do you prefer mouse driven context menus, or pervasive keyboard shortcuts + modifier keys for nearly every menu option? I guess I like both, but Windows nor OS X seem to grasp both of them equally well. Both have their ups and downs, but it's amusing when the one button mouse comes up without mentioning the difference in keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Does it work with...

[TheRaven64]

Please explain, why is this important

Try using Windows on a touchscreen. Until the last couple of years, when multitouch started to become mainstream, this was amazingly painful. Then try the same screen connected to a Mac. On the Mac, you'll find that all of the apps are easily usable, but when you plug in a multi-button mouse some things become faster. With the Windows machine, you need a floating window that contains a button that you press to mean 'interpret the next touch as a right click.'

Remember, the question was not whether a one button mouse is better (you'll find few people who think it is - even Jef Raskin changed his mind), but whether supporting a one-button mouse is important. If you support a one button mouse, you will work with pretty much any pointing device, including touchscreens, electronic whiteboards, tablets, light pens, and so on.

Re:Does it work with...

[InfoJunkie777]

Well, in my DOS days I used keyboard shortcuts a great deal. Even now I still use common ones, like CTRL C for copy and CTRL V for Paste. Sometimes in Photoshop I use CTRL O for open. I am not aware of different keyboard shortcuts for Apple. My experience in Apple was one week in 1984.

Re:Does it work with...

[InfoJunkie777]

Apparently I have riled the Apple fanboys. So Sorry. I have no experience worth mentioning with Apple. I have never bought an apple machine because it is super proprietary, too expensive, and until the apps store, strictly controlled all software. As for touch screen, I know nothing about it. I don't much like the idea. Like the mouse, whether one button or 2 or 3 or having a wheel.

Re:Does it work with...

[toddestan]

I don't want to start a flame war, but can someone tell me when windows is going to support a one button mouse?

Since 1995, when Microsoft added the "Application key" to the keyboard which functions just like the right mouse button.

Re:Does it work with...

[0ld_d0g]

Relax ! He was just pointing out because OSX came with hardware that only supported one button, app developers had to write apps designed for that purpose making it easier that windows in certain scenarios (e.g. touchscreens)

Re:Does it work with...

[shutdown -p now]

On a Mac, don't you effectively "right-click" (context menus etc) by clicking with a key modifier? If so, what prevents implementing the exact same thing for Windows (can be done entirely in hardware, so that OS/apps just receive right clicks)?

Actually, come to think of it, I did try to use Windows on a touchscreen - via remote desktop from my Android phone. Guess what, they did the same thing as the rest of the phone does for context menus - tap-and-hold works as a "right-click". Works great.

Re:Does it work with...

[InfoJunkie777]

Okay. I am chillin'. Like I said, I know very little about Apple. Are you talking some kind of I/O card? I remember those before they were integrated onto the motherboard.

Re:Does it work with...

[perryizgr8]

your experience with windows+touchscreen is horribly outdated. atleast 3-5 years old.

Re:Does it work with...

[Scoth]

At least as far back as XP Tablet Edition, and with some tablety extensions to Win2k, there's been a press-and-hold right click option. If you hold down the mouse button/pen/etc, you'll get a little spinner around the cursor which acts like a right click once it makes it around. I'm sure there's third-party addons to do similar on other versions.

Maybe not completely ideal, but it works.

Overall, I've always been reasonably impressed with Windows staying nearly completely usable without a mouse at all. There's very little that can't be done completely on a keyboard.

Win 3.1 emulator

[complacence]

Try this one.

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[Anonymous Coward]

3.11 - 3.1 doesn't work in his calculator. It isn't Windows 3, then.

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[complacence]

True. It's more a look & feel simulation than a true emulator.

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[yuhong]

No, it was the same on the real 3.x calculator, making it targets of jokes:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/141253.aspx

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[$RANDOMLUSER]

It's more a demonstration that HTML/Javascript-based application delivery is still more messy than that of a 20 year old native GUI.

Obviously you never knew the joys of writing C (not C++) for the Real Mode API.

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[DoctorPepper]

That was awesome, thanks for the link!

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[dotancohen]

Yeah, but does it run on...
YYEESS!!
It runs in Firefox on Ubuntu! Wine be damned!

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[dotancohen]

There's one for Windows XP too:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/66550

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[dotancohen]

Replying to self:

If you open the Control Panel and read the readme, it turns out that the "emulator" runs better in Firefox than in IE:

Michaelv.org is coded in JavaScript and strict XHTML 1.0, with AJAX functionality provided through PHP. It has been tested for compatibility in Firefox and IE. Firefox 2 or 3 is highly recommended, but the site is almost entirely functional in IE 6, 7, or 8. Media Player does not work in IE as IE lacks the ability to dynamically instantiate .

Great!

Re:Win 3.1 emulator

[FuckingNickName]

Segmented programming is a pain, but it has nothing on all the complex convolutions of today's standards. There seems to be an industry today of making things more complex than they need to be, while 20 years ago that was rarely an option.

Nevertheless, I was referring to the quirks of an HTML/Javascript app UI.

Windows 3.0 Sucked!

[lloydsmart]

The day Microsoft release a product that doesn't suck will be the day they release their first vacuum cleaner!

Re:Windows 3.0 Sucked!

[westlake]

The day Microsoft release a product that doesn't suck will be the day they release their first vacuum cleaner!

It's rather a pity the geek's jokes aren't stamped with an expiration date like a gallon of milk.

Re:Windows 3.0 Sucked!

[Bitmanhome]

That used to be a joke, but today you can run Microsoft Robotics Studio on your Roomba.

Re:Windows 3.0 Sucked!

[hardware1949]

Oh now come on. They did give us Windows Vista. I have two laptops that came with Vista. Vista is a high quality vacuum cleaner. I sprayed both of them with a can of Microsoft be gone and revived them with Torvalds rejuvenating cream. Worked like a charm.

Re:Windows 3.0 Sucked!

[fishexe]

The day Microsoft release a product that doesn't suck will be the day they release their first vacuum cleaner!

It's rather a pity the geek's jokes aren't stamped with an expiration date like a gallon of milk.

Hey, it's a nostalgic thread, so expired-joke nostalgia is fair game here.

Are You Ready, Google?

[Nom du Keyboard]

Okay, Google. I want to see a running Win3.0 logo on your home page by Sunday. If you can do that great Pacman/Ms. Pacman, I know I can see File Manager running there next.

Re:Are You Ready, Google?

[zoney_ie]

Or File Mangler as we called it in our days of innocence before the advent of Windows Exploder.

I guess this means...

[Erinnys Tisiphone]

I guess this means its time for me to throw out that copy of 2.1x I kept in the original box, eh? Then again, its my only means to prove Ventura Publisher existed.

Re:I guess this means...

[InfoJunkie777]

I guess this means its time for me to throw out that copy of 2.1x I kept in the original box, eh? Then again, its my only means to prove Ventura Publisher existed.

I remember I had a copy of Windows 2.1 bundled with a "shareware" copy of Word (what version, I don't remember). I had a 286 at the time. It took like 8 minutes for Windows to boot up, and typing was arduous. I decided WIndows was not ready for prime time. DOS 3.3 was working quite well for me. Liked that version. Fast! Later, when Windows 3.11 came out (business edition) I started using it.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[TheBilgeRat]

Some of us weirdos still use amiga hardware and/or OS...

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[TheBilgeRat]

http://www.morphos-team.net/ http://aros.sourceforge.net/ http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/ Some light reading. Of course I am not suggesting that they are leading the pack anymore, but they are not dead. I'm also not going to beat the drum of monopolistic business practice that was the true hallmark of MS success, as we all know this to be the case.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[DMUTPeregrine]

"Windows" is a Microsoft product. Windowing OSes aren't. The Win 3.0 line was the first widespread success MS had in the "Windows" OS, before that MS-DOS was more common.

Re:leading the GUI

[Game_Ender]

What about the Mac in 1984, with its mouse driven GUI? Even Windows 7 borrows quite a bit from Mac OS X.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[TheBilgeRat]

Read my previous post.

Reading comprehension FAIL!

[the_humeister]

AmigaOS was the first truly successful multi-windows system.

Before that there was the Apple Lisa.

Sorry, OP, and sorry Slashdot editors who were sleeping on the job. Windows 3.0 was a joke, is a joke, and will always be a joke.

"First [lol] truly successful [LOL] windows [ROTFLMAO!!!]"

E
Amiga. Lisa. X-11. And someone thinks winblows3.0 is "the first truly successful" oh god I'm laughing so hard.

FTFS:

The first truly successful Windows operating system is...

This is in the context of MS Windows. Yes, there were windowing environments before MS Windows. But MS Windows 3.0 was the first truly successful version of Windows.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[ClosedSource]

If by "successful" you mean widely adopted, I would say the Mac was first. If you mean "practical", I'd claim it was the Xerox Alto.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[Draek]

Yeah, too bad neither the Amiga nor the Lisa were ever relevant outside the US. Macs only began to be noticeable on a global scale in the System 7 era, which was posterior to Win3.x, and the Amiga, Commodore and other smaller players never became worthy of mention until the day they died.

X11 is kinda sorta more arguable, as SCO (the old one, not the jackass) did a fairly good job of selling its version of Unix to enterprises but I don't recall ever seeing one running X11, probably because it was sold as a separate add-on according to Wikipedia.

Re:leading the GUI

[uglyduckling]

OS X didn't borrow any GUI from FreeBSD. You're confusing the UI and the underlying OS services. The UI came from NextSTEP. And, by the way, Apple invented some of the key features of modern GUIs: overlapping windows, pull-down (non-modal) menus, dialog boxes all were invented for the Mac and/or Lisa.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[Skuld-Chan]

Still it must be said - it sold 3 million copies in its first year (according to the book Accidental Empires, and the subsequent documentary Triumph of the Nerds) which was like 10x more than all the Mac's Apple ever sold up to that point.

Boy did I read that wrong!

[cliffiecee]

I read the title as "Microsoft Windows 8.0 Is 20 Years Away"

(and I wasn't even very surprised...)

Google logo

[lurker412]

To celebrate, Google will change their logo to one which crashes your machine when you click on it.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[Richard_at_work]

The Amiga was large in the UK home user market, and I think Germany as well - most of my friends had an Amiga, while only a select few had PCs and I cannot think of one that had a Mac (and only a single one had an Atari).

Re:leading the GUI

[blau]

Lolwut? Are you a MS employee or just really confused?

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[Daengbo]

Maybe he was trying to make a point that "Windows" is a general word and not able to be trademarked, whereas "Microsoft Windows" is trademarked. Either that or he needs better reading comprehension. Not really sure.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that "everyone" who had a computer had an Amiga in Sweden at the time. Many friends had one and I've had a few. And if people didn't have an Amiga, they had an Atari.

The article is still fail

[Arker]

Windows 3.0 wasnt succesful at all. A lot of boxes may have gone out, but after a week of playing with it, they sat on the shelf and we all went back to getting work done without it. It was atrocious.

Now was it a "Windows operating system" however you parse it. It was at best a windowing environment. The Operating System was still DOS, and remained DOS until NT/XP.

Windows 3.1 was the first MS Windows environment to be useable enough that people actually ran it for more than just a 'look at this' phase. It was still a huge step down from other multi-tasking DOS shells, and it took years for it to be forced down the throats of the more clueful users, by the expedient of discontinuing support and development of all the applications in favour of new, inferior versions which would only run within the Windows environment.

Re:The article is still fail

[siride]

No, it didn't actually run on top of DOS. It may have used some DOS features to implement certain device drivers, but Windows 3.0/3.1 (enhanced mode, at least) was actually a 32-bit protected mode OS will virtual memory and pre-emptive multitasking. Unfortunately, all of the Windows programs were 16-bit and ran inside a single 16-bit virtual address space. It was an OS, albeit a crappy one.

Re:The article is still fail

[shutdown -p now]

Now was it a "Windows operating system" however you parse it. It was at best a windowing environment.

Since when do windowing environments include memory managers?

Win 3.1 was not quite an OS, for sure, but it was already somewhat beyond a DE.

The Operating System was still DOS, and remained DOS until NT/XP.

Windows 95 was an operating system. It required DOS to launch it, sure, so it didn't come with its own bootloader, but it's not a requirement for an OS.

Re:The article is still fail

[Arker]

Since when do windowing environments include memory managers?

That was normal (practically speaking, it was required) when they ran on top of DOS.

Windows 95 was an operating system.

No it wasnt. Neither was 98 or ME. They were all shells that ran on top of and relied on DOS. They just hid that fact more thoroughly with each release.

Re:The article is still fail

[shutdown -p now]

That was normal (practically speaking, it was required) when they ran on top of DOS.

A custom memory pool is not the same as a memory manager.

And what about thread & process scheduling, hm?

No it wasnt.

We can argue it back and forth all day, depending on one's definition of OS. Though it should be noted that the article you link doesn't argue that Win95 is "not an OS". It argues that it has strong ties with DOS, and won't function without it - which is true. That doesn't preclude it from being an OS.

Let me put it this way. If you take a running Win95 system, and look at the sheer amount of low-level code therein, DOS would be a tiny, tiny thing. After all, it doesn't really do much - it's by and large a disk operating system, so it offers an FS driver and an API for that, and a simplistic memory allocator. And that's it! All the stuff that we consider an OS job today - proper memory management, scheduling, IPC, synchronization - was done by code belonging to Win95.

So. Arguing that Win95 "alone" was an OS doesn't make sense if only because DOS was an integral part of Win95. However, Win95 "alone" was much more of an OS than DOS (or Win 3.11).

Re:The article is still fail

[Arker]

A custom memory pool is not the same as a memory manager.

I know. And what I wrote was correct. DVX, for example, came with a memory manager. Better one than windows had in fact. Much better multitasking as well - and with a much smaller hit on system resources.

Let me put it this way. If you take a running Win95 system, and look at the sheer amount of low-level code therein, DOS would be a tiny, tiny thing.

Let me put it this way. If you are running a linux system, and look at the sheer amount of low-level code therein, Linux would be a tiny, tiny thing. It's still a linux system though.

Some linux systems today boot straight on up into X+DE of choice, without pause. And yes, GNOME or KDE do lots of behind the scenes work that a GUI programmer might think of as 'part of the OS' because they dont have to think about it. A system like that is pretty precisely analogous to Win95. One that also rigs things so you cannot get the damn GUI to unload and give you a primary bash shell instead would be analogous to ME. X+*DE can run on FreeBSD and other kernels instead of Linux, of course. Windows could also run on DR/Novelle DOS, although it deliberately obfuscated that fact. So the analogies match up quite precisely. Yet we dont call X+DE an independent OS. It isnt.

However, Win95 "alone" was much more of an OS than DOS

Win95 'alone' was nothing but a useless pile of binary chunks. Completely and utterly useless - you wouldnt have been able to do anything with it.

Your argument appears to come down to the old prejudice that DOS was too minimal to be called an OS to begin with. Stated baldly, it's so obviously wrong it doesnt even need refuting. It was a pretty minimal OS, certainly by todays standards but even by those of its time, but so what? It did what it was designed to do, and because it was so minimal it left a lot of freedom to build anything you wanted on top of it. Even a bit ugly performance-killing GUI like windows.

Re:The article is still fail

[the_humeister]

Actually, Windows, since 2.x, had pre-emptive multitasking, but only for programs running in DOS terminals.

Re:The article is still fail

[Retron]

Windows 95 was the first windows what replaced some OS functions from the MS-DOS

Nope. 32-bit file access made it into Windows for Workgroups 3.11 - there was a checkbox lurking deep inside the control panel which, when turned on, stopped Windows using DOS routines to access the hard drive. Interestingly though, Wiki claims it was backported from Chicago. Seeing how similar the networking dialogs were in WfW 3.11 compared to Windows 95, I suspect other stuff was backported too!

PC magazines in the UK were hailing that little checkbox as a major advance in performance. Indeed, they said that for the average user that was the single best part of WfW, which was nicknamed "Windows for Warehouses" by PC Plus at least.

Re:The article is still fail

[Scoth]

There's an interesting discussion at http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/12/24/6849530.aspx about the role DOS played in Win9x. It's sort of an interesting mix of bits.

Re:The article is still fail

[Arker]

It is an interesting article, though quite propagandistic. Basically he starts with a conclusion (obviously has to do with who paid his wages and what their marketing department had determined must be their official line) and then tries to make the fact sound like they support it (even when he's talking about facts that dont.)

The load of IFSMGR.SYS in Config.sys is really a dead giveaway. If Win95 had "just used DOS as a bootloader" it wouldnt have been necessary. Instead, windows needed a hook loaded at the device driver stage of the boot process to leverage the control to do stuff like, for example, 32-bit disk access. This was completely normal DOS programming and architecture.

Note also that those state variables were per-VM. (I.e., each MS-DOS "box" you opened got its own copy of those state variables.) After all, each MS-DOS box had its idea of what the current directory was, what was in the file tables, that sort of thing. This was all an act, however, because the real list of open files was kept in by the 32-bit file system manager. It had to be, because disk caches had to be kept coherent, and file sharing need to be enforced globally. If one MS-DOS box opened a file for exclusive access, then an attempt by a program running in another MS-DOS box to open the file should fail with a sharing violation.

And this was no different using when running multiple secondary shells on a pure DOS system without Windows.

It was a bit of a nostalgia kick though. DOS programming was fun. Trying to decipher documentation written in microsoft mode - attempting to be "true enough" without conflicting with the fantasy-world their marketing department demanded, was sometimes not. Thanks for the link.

Windows 3

[philofaqs]

Like it or not Windows 3.1 was a ground breaker in business, as a techie at the time it was a challenge to get enough conventional memory at times, but Microsoft's marketing dept and indeed their programmers produced Office 4.2. The entire Office suite for the price of the competitor's single product and it worked under windows rather than DOS based. Wordstar for example under Windows just emulated a DOS screen. Businesses jumped enmass. And as they did so their suppliers and competitors went with it. MS at the time were really really lucky to be the chosen one, but they were and it's no surprise that the "monopoly" ensued in the business world. At the time the entire home market had a share of the market that linux would be ashamed of.

Re:Windows 3

[TheBilgeRat]

That's true-I've never cared much for Windows in general but MS Office is the productivity suite.

Is there a point?

[Blakey Rat]

Is there a point to this story, other than "hur hur let's make fun of Microsoft! hur hur hur!"

Now if you found someone still using it today, that might be newsworthy.

Re:Is there a point?

[Kjella]

Why is any such celebration noteworthy? Is it anything different if something is 19,99 years or 20,01 years? No, but it's an excuse to look back and either reminisce to talk about how long/short/whatever we've come in the last 20 years. Or maybe just get the feeling you're getting old... I can't say 3.0 was a very memorable release for me but 3.11 was, just makes me realize how much of the stone age of the home computer I caught - granted, I was in diapers when the PC was invented but the first PCs were priced beyond fooling around at home. "C:\>", what a friendly way to greet your users DOS was. For all the flaws, Windows 3 was still a huge game changer in computers.

Re:Is there a point?

[bazorg]

I don't know about people actually using it today, only that I would love to see this GUI (or a skin) on the OS used for machines with 1024x600 screens.

Re:Is there a point?

[TheBilgeRat]

Why? If they were functioning properly then I would say that was very astute of them not to waste money upgrading. They most certainly got their money's worth out of 3.11.

Re:Is there a point?

[shutdown -p now]

A Win95 skin would be more pragmatical, actually, as widgets used less screen estate in that - largely because default font (MS Sans Serif) was smaller than Win3's "System". It also generally had less unused whitespace.

And that look and feel you can get even in Win7 if you switch to classic. Or, in Linux, "Redmond" Gtk+ theme, and there was a stock one for Qt as well.

Re:Is there a point?

[Carlos Matesanz]

My parents happily write math exams on a 486 running windows 3.11. They learned how to use wordperfect's "formula editor" and they've never feel the need to change their workflow. They have a notebook with win XP/linux that they use to browse the web and do some other stuff.

Mod Parent Up

[fyoder]

Damn you misconfigured autoexec.bat! You led me down this path to the cubical I now live in!

Insightful. Woefully, tragically, OMG what have I done with my life, insightful.

I guess it sucked to be you

[dreamchaser]

You're whining because you didn't have enough RAM? On a 386 with plenty of RAM Win 3.0 did a pretty good job for it's time. I preferred OS/2 in those days but I used Windows (often WinOS2, sometimes via dual boot) plenty as well and it was good for what it was. Then again I had 4 Meg of RAM, not the 640k you're whining about.

As for the overhead in DOS, it was very easy to boot all sorts of DOS configurations with memory managers to free up a LOT of space. Towards the end of the DOS era many games almost required you to do so in order to run as they hit the brick wall.

It wasn't an Operating System as the article intro states though. It was a shell that sat on top of DOS and allowed cooperative multitasking and (on 386+CPU's) the use of Virtual 8086 mode to even multitask many DOS programs.

So What

[slick7]

BFD, I have Windows 1.0, in the box. All that is needed is Bill's autograph. As for 3.0, it sucked. 3.11 Windows for Workgroups wasn't any better. I preferred 5.0, but that got tossed like every other version when MS wanted to shove the next version down our throats.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[pandrijeczko]

I accept the Apple Lisa was not popular outside the US but the Amiga had a much higher percentage of users in Europe than in the US.

20 years ago

[rossdee]

I was using Amiga Workbench 2.04 back then

Apps that are now part of the Windows experience?

[R.Mo_Robert]

From the article:

It also introduced the world to applications that are now part of the Windows experience; File Manager, Write, Paint Brush, Print manager and Program manager.

Windows Explorer essentially replaced File Manager in Windows 95, and they were actually included as separate programs for quite some time (altough File Manager only as the executabe if you knew where to look). I suppose you could argue that Explorer was derived from File Mananger, although they are actually quite different (especially after the Active Desktop update in Windows 95 and all future versions). Program Manager faced a similar fate: the Start menu (and desktop that could do something besides display running applications) substatially replaced it in Windows 95, although you could technically change your shell back to Program Manager instead if you really wanted. It didn't work as nicely, however, due to some changes to minimized window behavior, and I wouldn't be surprised if some app installers didn't play well with it in terms of creating icons.

Ignoring the comment about Write (which more or less morphed into Wordpad...), I just don't think it's accurate to say that File Manager and Program Manager are "now part of the Windows Experience" when many people haven't even used them in 15 years and some people have never used them at all.

I think Windows 95 is more significant.

[MtViewGuy]

While Windows 3.0 was important in its day, the more important version is Windows 95, which came out on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 took full advantage of 32-bit memory addressing, and the interface standards pioneered by Windows 95 are still with us in 2010, where even Windows 7 still has the taskbar on the bottom of the screen with the Start button on the lower left corner of the screen.

Re:I think Windows 95 is more significant.

[pandrijeczko]

That's one thing I am very pleased with Microsoft about - that certainly up to and including Windows XP (I've not used Vista or 7 yet), you can set the default interface to be the "Classic" one as in Windows 2000 and 95. Yes, the interface has it's limitations but I'm used to them and can work round them now - plus as a mainly Gnome and Linux user, it's an interface that can be closely replicated in Gnome to keep some kind of commonality between the two.

I have NEVER EVER understood the popularity of the default desktop setup in Windows XP, it is unusable.

Re:I think Windows 95 is more significant.

[spitzak]

Are you sure that Windows 95 was the first one to really fully use the 32-bit addressing?

I agree that 95 had some major GUI improvements, and one of the few real innovations from Microsoft: they realized that the "icon" (ie the task bar entry) could stay on the screen even when the window was not "iconized" (minimized in their wording). This really was an innovation, everbody else including Mac, all X11 window managers, SGI and NeXT seemed to think the window icon disappeared when the window was not iconized.

Microsoft also removed the divider line between the resize borders and the window contents, which I also consider a major graphical innovation. I was doing that in my hacking on NeXT (bypassing NeXTstep to do so) and was very pleased to see my idea used in a major product (I doubt they copied me...).

Re:I think Windows 95 is more significant.

[shutdown -p now]

Are you sure that Windows 95 was the first one to really fully use the 32-bit addressing?

Nah, it was Windows NT 3.1. And the second one was Win32s on top of Windows 3.1.

Re:I think Windows 95 is more significant.

[TheRaven64]

Windows NT 3.1, released in 1993, was the first version of Windows to fully support protected memory and multitasking. Windows 3.0 on a 386 could use the full 32-bit address space, but not very cleanly. You'll find more that was introduced with Windows 3.x in a modern version of Windows than the few things that were introduced in '95. The taskbar is the only big counter example that I can think of. The kernel in Windows 7 is a linear descendent of Windows NT 3.1, and a great many of the win32 APIs still in use date back to this system.

Enhanced mode

[mister_playboy]

Is this a mistake? "This was a cooperative or 'non-preemptive' multitasking"..... "Windows 3.0 could run multiple DOS sessions preemptively". I think you meant cooperatively in the last sentence?

No, DOS program were actually ran in separate virtual machines when Windows 3.0 was running in 386 Enhanced mode. Preemptive is correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.0#Memory_modes

Re:Enhanced mode

[Bing Tsher E]

And those virtual machines were defined in the hardware of the 80386 processor, not in anything 'special' that Microsoft did. The os software from Microsoft lagged far behind te capabilities of the silicon from Intel. The 80286 processor, for instance was used by some more advanced vendors for proprietary UNIX boxes and used it's protected mode well, at the same time that most people were just using it to run Microsoft's os, which crippled the processor,using it merely as a really-fast-8088 chip.

Re:Enhanced mode

[lseltzer]

They're not really VMs, they're just processes. And all the Win16 apps ran within a single Win16 process. All these processes were preemptively multitasked by the 386 kernel of Win 3.0.

Re:Enhanced mode

[commodore64_love]

>>>Preemptive is correct.

Those VMs held complete control of the CPU. The OS had no way to interrupt (preempt) their execution, so it was NOT preemptive tasking. It also meant the if the VM or one of its internal programs crashed, the entire OS froze, because the CPU would never be released.

Windows 386

[NicknamesAreStupid]

3.0 sold a lot, but Windows 386 convinced Microsoft to give up on OS/2 and live the "Windows! Windows! Windows!" mantra. The key was its support for all those DOS applications using the DOS-box VM with the i80386 EMS in hardware, something the 80286 OS/2 could not do without special hardware. If IBM had not been so fixated on the 80286 architecture (e.g., segmented addressing verses the linear address space of the 80386), OS/2 may have succeeded.

Near.... Far!

[decora]

Near... Far! Near.... Far! In the old days you could learn programming from sesame street.

Re:It required DR-DOS to NOT work

[mister_playboy]

If you wonder where the anti-Microsoft FUD comes from, it comes from people like me who still remember this stuff.

You don't remember as well as you think you do... read the article you linked to. That code was not present in the production release.

Re:It required DR-DOS to NOT work

[yuhong]

Windows 3.0 did not have AARD.

Re:It required DR-DOS to NOT work

[Trixter]

The code was present but disabled.

Yes, I know it was 3.1 and the article is 3.0. I was making a different point.

Re:Apps that are now part of the Windows experienc

[Bungie]

Write did morph into WordPad, and PaintBrush into MSPaint. In fact, if you type "Write" or "Pbrush" into the run box there is an App Paths mapping that redirects them to their newer equivellents.

File Manager was atill used for a long time under Windows NT. At one time it was the only tool that could work with some of the Services for Macintosh. It may even be included with Server 2003, but I haven't had to use it in so long I don't even know. There is also a version of winfile for Vista.

Program Manager was garbage and the only contribution to the "Windows experience" is the program to convert progman groups into start menu folders (grpconv.exe) which still ships with current Windows versions...probably for compatability with apps like you described.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[Daengbo]

I didn't say that it was a good point.

Re:leading the GUI

[thoughtsatthemoment]

You may be pure but I hope you are not typical. MS does a mediocre job about everything and if you admire that, you are, well, definitely "below average".

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[commodore64_love]

>>>Yeah, too bad neither the Amiga nor the Lisa were ever relevant outside the US

Completely and totally wrong. I can't speak to Macs, but Amigas were HUGE in Europe, and even today most of the Amiga community resides in the EU.

Re:Apps that are now part of the Windows experienc

[mister_playboy]

There is also a version of winfile for Vista.

Interesting link... thanks. :)

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[siride]

That hardly counters his point...

calc.exe is the man

[anton_kg]

I asked to copy it to me after calc demonstration. And I got disappointed to know that it would take few floppies.

Not just win.com.

[antdude]

I remember making multiple-config config.sys and autoexec.bat, using EMM386/QEMM386, Stacker (just its software), IBM DOS 4 (ugh -- horrible conventional memory!), DOS Shell, Norton Utilities v8.0, etc.

Nice.

[antdude]

That's pretty good, but missing other stuff. Even its cmd.exe was missing stuff. That Web browser doesn't look right. Wasn't it like Mosiac back then? Where's Trumpet WinSock and dial-up? :P

Re:leading the GUI

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Now I see where you came from. I am mostly a user land developer so I don't really get exactly why the NT kernel is total crap.

But I do know some fundamentals about windowing systems. And I was not comparing Windows GUI with Linux GUI, which is even worse. I was thinking about that Windows GUI could have been. It has to be better that OSX GUI and also still works with all the popular applications. By that standard, it has to be mediocre.

Ah, Windows...freedom from the "glass house"...

[ibsteve2u]

...Those were the days...Windows, some programming capability, and a grasp of the problem at hand allowed you to just SOLVE it, instead of going through reams of paperwork back and forth with "the glass house", only to finally receive a reply that whatever you proposed was "not feasible" because of expense/complexity/the denizens of "the glass house" didn't like you/whatever...

Those were heady, surging, innovative...daring...days - but the MBAs didn't like "geeks"; they didn't like the fact that they could not comprehend programming and operating systems...they didn't like the fact that "the geeks" made things JMP when the MBAs preferred to be paid to NOP.

So we got outsourcing...then offshoring...and now, "the cloud": "The glass house", resurrected - and writ large. Back, again, to the stifling of change. At the behest of the MBAs, we - America - meekly surrendered...nay, intentionally transferred - our technological domination of the world.

lollll...now, Microsoft itself is trying to kill the desktop - the independent - paradigm; their "Azure", too, is "the glass house". We force America back into the 1960s...back to when change could not be driven from any and all directions; back to when change could only come from the top down, no matter what problems are faced and could be resolved at other levels; no matter what brilliance may lie untapped below the e-suite.

Innovation? Dot...dot...dot...dead.

Difference between Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1

[fishexe]

Windows 3.0 came with Solitaire and Hearts, and everybody yawned.
Windows 3.1 came with Solitaire and Minesweeper, and all of a sudden whenever somebody saw a Windows PC they went, "You have Windows? Ooh, can I play Minesweeper??" I am convinced that silly little game is what really made Windows take off.

Re:Difference between Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1

[shutdown -p now]

Are you implying that the only thing holding off Linux On The Desktop is Tuxracer?

Re:Difference between Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1

[fishexe]

Are you implying that the only thing holding off Linux On The Desktop is Tuxracer?

Yes. Yes I am.

Win 3 on an XT

[Retron]

I was given an old IBM XT back in 1992 (thrown out by a company that was upgrading) and it was my introduction to PCs. It came with MS-DOS 5, but having used Windows 3.0 on the brand-new 486s at school, I wanted to try it at home. I acquired an 8-bit VGA card and a monitor in preparation.

The local paper had a guy who was selling his copy for ten pounds, so I bought it. I still have the massive manual, it's over 500 pages and over an inch thick. Anyway, after running it and selecting VGA, I got a nice colour title screen and then... nothing.

After dropping back to CGA (yuck), then trying EGA, I found out that VGA mono worked - but VGA colour wouldn't. (Years later it turns out the colour VGA driver uses protected mode code, which of course the 8088 couldn't handle).

Anyway, I now had a mono Win 3.0 desktop to play with. By gum, it was slow! If you brought up the font selection dialog in Write, for example, you'd see the frame appear, then a split second later the controls to select font and size, then the border around those and finally the buttons would appear. It wasn't low on RAM, merely a glacial machine. And yes, if you typed quickly into Write it'd take a while for it to catch up! Solitaire and Reversi both worked fine, thankfully.

A few months after that, in 1993, the school upgraded to Windows 3.1 and it was clearly a big jump: less crashes and the UI was more polished. (Little things like the max/min controls persisting in MDI windows without focus, in 3.0 they vanished). Alas, my XT couldn't run 3.1 and thus the saving-up started for a new 486.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[EricX2]

The comment was 'The first truly successful Windows operating system'.
Windows operating system != GUI. Windows operating system means MICROSOFT WINDOWS.

Also, Lisa was never popular anywhere... the Macintosh was, and it ran the Mac OS, not the Lisa OS.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[TheBilgeRat]

he had no point, otherwise he would have posted with his account and earned a flamebait mod point to go with the OP. There is life outside of Win7's and OS-X's shiny prison.

Yes, I remember, it sucked

[nightcats]

I was there, I remember putting it onto a Gateway 386DX with a 120MB HD and 4MB of RAM. Win 3 sucked, I mean it sucked so bad that after a month I formatted the drive and put good old DOS back.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[butlerm]

Yeah, too bad neither the Amiga nor the Lisa were ever relevant outside the US

You have that backwards. The Amiga was much more popular in Europe than in the United States, especially in Germany.

Twenty years old today?

[butlerm]

Twenty years old today? I don't think so. Windows 3.0 has been dead and buried for more than a decade.

Re:"First truly successful windows"

[91degrees]

Yeah, but you're a weirdo!

Actually I'm intrigued. What do you use it for? Is it a day to day computer or do you use it for some specific Amiga software?

Re:F*ck Microsoft.

[perryizgr8]

wrong again. now it's F*ck Steve Jobs.

VGA on an XT

[Alien1024]

VGA on an XT? Wow. Any VGA app (let alone Win 3) must have run like a slideshow.

Re:leading the GUI

[mjwx]

What about the Mac in 1984, with its mouse driven GUI? Even Windows 7 borrows quite a bit from Mac OS X.

Oh for fucks sake Steve, you lost that law suit in 1994. It's time to get over the whole "look and feel" issues.