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Windows 1.0: the Power of DOS, Plus Tiled Windows

Posted by timothy on from the end-of-time-has-arrived dept.

jbrodkin writes "I'd always wanted my own working copy of the elusive Windows 1.0, and after a few failed attempts I got one working in a virtual machine (I had to downgrade from the latest version of Windows Virtual PC to an earlier version to get it started, but that's another story). With 416K free memory, we were able to cruise through Reversi, take a look at the first version of Notepad, as well as the now-defunct Microsoft Write, and create a 'masterpiece' in Microsoft Paint. Eventually, applications started crashing, but a simple reboot got it working again. All in all, a nice tour through computing history. Anyone have a copy of the first Macintosh OS they want to send me?"

4 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Isn't It Past Time Slashdot Change the MS Icon? by softWare3ngineer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I could go for a Ballmer Zombie instead.

  2. Errors by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's amazing. The error dialogs and calculator have lasted on, virtually unchanged.

    --
    I8-D
  3. I don't think you'll find a copy... by kevinmenzel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not sure that I've ever seen a copy of Windows 1.0, and I was REALLY in to old versions of windows at a point. 1.01, yes. 1.02, yes. 1.03, yes. 1.04, definitely (had that running native on a P4 though I forget how easy or difficult that was...) - but not the original 1.0. Apparently there was some sort of major bug with 1.0, or memory leak, or something. If anybody actually finds a copy somewhere though... that would be amazing. I've seen things claiming to be 1.0 that are just resource hacks of 1.01 or 1.04, (usually 1.04) so I know you can "find it on the google" but I have yet to see a confirmed 1.0 disk image anywhere on the net....

  4. Write still present, at least as a proxy by morningstar8 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The original Write might have gone away...but there is still a proxy in its place.

    If you look in Windows 7's \system32 directory, you will find good ol' write.exe. I believe the icon is the same one it had in the Win 95 days. If you look at the property dialog for the file, and click over to the Details tab, you'll see that the "File description" is "Windows Write". Even in Windows 7, one can invoke "write hello.txt" from the command line.

    However, the executable is tiny, and it appears to simply invoke WordPad. The executable that shows up in Task Manager is "wordpad.exe".