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Windows 3.1 in my BIOS? It's more likely than you think
- speps 8y agoPlease use the author's page directly: https://sakamoto.pl/weblog/07-windows-3-flash-edition/ https://sakamoto.pl/weblog/07-windows-3-flash-edition/
- DowsingSpoon 8y agoWhy?
- lifthrasiir 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. (Except when the original source is not casually consumable without the context, but the original post is quite readable.)
- DowsingSpoon 8y agoThank you! I did not know.
- welly 8y agoThe page linked doesn't offer any additional information to what the actual author's page does.
- FrankSansC 8y agoAnd if, like me, you're looking for the font used on this webpage you can grab it here : https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/ https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/
- redspl 8y agoBTW, the second font is PC-9800.ttf - enjoy! :3
- TheAdamist 8y agowhich no longer loads after being overwhelmed by traffic from HN...
- TheAdamist 8y agosomeone did, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19630502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19630502 this later story got more traction.
- fimdomeio 8y agoThere's something fishy here. start button is a windows 95 thing not windows 3.1
- sciolistse 8y agoIt says he's using Calmira, to make it look like windows 95. You can see that the padding on the start button and status bar are a bit off, if you look closely. (Also of course the minimize/maximize buttons on the applications are unchanged.)
- Maxious 8y ago"Calmira (replaces the default Program Manager)" and looks like windows 95 http://www.calmira.net/ http://www.calmira.net/
- GrryDucape 8y agoMS Windows of some 3.x variety was apparently the original selected GUI for the Atari ST, intended to be running from ROM… however, MS couldn’t apparently get it to fit in less than a couple of megabytes, hex dumps of the code would show a hell of a lot of redundant x86 stuff in there, like references to hercules drivers and all manner of bloat that they couldn’t strip. They seemed to be disassembling the binaries to translate to 680×0 assembly and kludging it that way rather than from source, which was always rumoured to be a complete mess for the early windows versions. Anyhoo, apparently Trammiel got pissed at MS for lack of progress on shrinking and refining it and went with a version of GEM instead.
- wk_end 8y agoWindows 3.0 came out in 1990, whereas the Atari ST came out in 1985, so that story definitely doesn’t check out. Windows 1.0 came out in 1985 (though still much later than the ST) so maybe it was that?
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI just wanted to add that the TOS ROM chips in the Atari ST were 192KB in total which is an order of magnitude less than what Windows would require. I'm assuming GP is thinking of another machine (maybe the TT / Falcon?)
- laumars 8y agoNot the OP but I wonder if he's thinking of Windows 1.0? Wikipedia does describe Microsoft approaching Tramiel[1] but the details differ from what the OP suggested. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Operating_system
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- a1369209993 8y ago(Since this is a problem I've had also.) > I've tried changing the fifth case to 2 heads, 80 tracks and 72 sectors... But it resulted in an I/O Error. This happens because the BIOS (int 13) CHS read function encodes the sector number as a 6-bit value. (IIRC it's also 1-indexed, just to add insult to injury.) If you change the geometry to 2head/80[+]track/60sector, it works on everything I had on hand for testing half a decade ago. +: Or more; it should work with up to 1024 tracks.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoPersonally I'd have gone with DOOM but cool project nonetheless. ;) Not a fan of Calmira though, I do appreciate the original Windows 3 aesthetic.
- jacobush 8y agoReminds me of the 486 motherboard which would boot DOS with no SIMMs (RAM) in it. It had 64 kbyte cache on the motherboard...
- mtrower 8y agoThat's not cache, friend - that's main system memory =) (and 640KB by the time of the 486) (though, speaking of cache, the 486 was the first chip in the family to have L1 cache - a whole 8KB of it!)
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoParent specified a board with SIMM sockets, which would contain main memory. The 486 family supported external L2 cache, for which 64KB would be a plausible size.
- mtrower 8y agoDid SIMM RAM straight up replace the DIP chips when it was introduced? For some reason I thought they were used in parallel, with conventional RAM physically separate from the rest. I guess there's no reason that should have to be, though, as the 640K barrier was a real mode limitation, and nothing more. What they say about assumptions applies. I guess I kind of missed out on the fun here, going straight from an XT to a Pentium...
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago> For some reason I thought they were used in parallel, with conventional RAM physically separate from the rest. I don't specifically know of any boards like that, but Pre-Pentium boards were kind of a free-for-all, so I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they exist.
- fb03 8y agoWait, wow, I've never heard of this. Do you have a link of this phenomena?
- Wyndtroy2012 8y agoRemember the Mac OS and MacWrite fit on a single LOW-density 3.5″ floppy in 1984.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoThat's not too surprising. Early MacOS didn't provide much more than MS-DOS under the hood (non-hierarchical file system, manual multitasking), and the graphics were all 1bpp.
- Theodores 8y agoI didn't realise it didn't have a proper file system. Games were more glorified as far as user interface was concerned, e.g. the 2000 planet system with 3D graphics of the BBC Micro's Elite, running on an 8 bit 6502 machine with 32K usable RAM. You can see the Mac OS as an expensive 'game' with the objective to write a letter, running on dedicated hardware.
- TheAdamist 8y ago>"Windows 3.1 in my BIOS? It's more likely than you think". That is a pretty misleading title to me, it sounds like they discovered many bios's have embedded windows 3.1 to run the user interface. Instead its about someone purposefully loading windows 3.1 onto their bios flash chip, and how they made it functional. "How i embedded windows 3.1 into my bios" or something would be a more descriptive title. edit: Or even "Windows 3.1 Flash edition", as the original page & hn post have, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19630502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19630502
- avian 8y agoI seem to remember that Compaq business PCs in the late 1990s/early 00s had BIOS/NVRAM setup that looked suspiciously like a customized build of Windows 3.1. You held ESC or something during boot and you got a mouse-driven interface to set various hardware settings. I remember it being quite the contrast to the more common text-mode menu based BIOS setups. I never looked into it whether it was actually in ROM/Flash or whether it booted off a special disk partition. Here are some screenshots I found that kind of match what I remember: https://www.flickr.com/photos/55026075@N00/4140236576/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/55026075@N00/4140236576/in/pho... https://www.flickr.com/photos/55026075@N00/4139477409/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/55026075@N00/4139477409/in/pho...
- mtrower 8y agoSadly, I can't view your images on my device, but I have a '96 Presario that's fairly close in vintage; it has what I presume you are describing. The program resides on a hidden DOS partition on the HDD. While novel, it's a bit unfortunate, as there's no configuration program in ROM, so without that partition (or the multi-disk floppy set) you can't configure the CMOS settings.
- Crinus 8y agoThis is just made to look like Windows 3.1 at a glance but there are many small details that are different from real Windows 3.1 (or even 3.0). For example Windows 3.x do not have a 3D shaded button at the top left corner of windows, instead they have a flat button/square with a thin "-"-like rectangle that has a black outline, white filling and single pixel shadow, like a three pixel tall popup menu (which is intentional since in Win3.x this was supposed to be the icon for applications to use if they wanted to have a dedicated control/widget for showing a popup menu). Similarly, the mouse cursor's triangular part is smaller, the window corners are missing the "connecting" corner lines, the font is different (in Win3.1 all fonts are bold and the space is narrower), the button shadow color is too dark (this was the case for EGA in Win3.x but this is VGA and in VGA the palette was modified to have a less contrasting shade for the bevel colors), the dialog box (from the first image in the three, not linked in your message) uses the resizeable (but corner lines still missing) border style instead of the dialog box style (which is blue with a white inner line), etc. I'm sure i can find more differences if i spend more time on this and look at Win3.x screenshots, but these are from memory and i think you get the idea :-P.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago> This was achieved via a DOS USB driver (if the device got hotplugged, R:\WINDOWS\USB\USB.BAT is your friend) DOS has USB drivers. This is the weirdest part.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoDOS is still surprisingly usable in the modern world with a little work. That isn't super surprising though given how simple a system it is and how ubiquitous it was in the relatively recent past.
- peterwwillis 8y agoWorth mentioning that there are many DOSes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS FreeDOS was shipped with Dell and HP computers as recently as 2012.
- userbinator 8y agoRegarding the audio: I don't know about that specific model but I believe it uses standard Intel HD Audio (Azalia) --- and someone has written an HDA driver for Win3.x that goes by the name of "HDADRV9J" (complete with source code, albeit somewhat messy, in Pascal): http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?50867-Windows-3-1-drivers-for-newer-hardware&p=511252&styleid=3 http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?50867-Windows-3-1-... http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/index.htm http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/index.htm (This stuff is notoriously difficult to find. I only found out about HDADRV9J from Google a few months back, and there were quite a few sites about it, now there's almost no results...)
- peterwwillis 8y agoI get the retro chic of an old Windows OS, but you could also package a window manager, web browser, text editor, and more in a floppy disk into the late 2000s using Linux. Compared to the multiple gigs of OS files needed to run Android on my smartphone, it's almost inconceivable how wasteful modern software is.
- Crinus 8y agoThat is what you get for using 4096x4096 sized alpha blended HDR bitmaps for the icons and animated emojis on your 5" QUHD phone :-P.
- bluedino 8y agoAnyone remember the DOS version of AOL that used GeoWorks for the GUI?
- deathanatos 8y agoFirst, see the screenshots / video in the original article: https://sakamoto.pl/weblog/07-windows-3-flash-edition/ https://sakamoto.pl/weblog/07-windows-3-flash-edition/ That's Windows 3.1? It has the window borders of 3.1 (the weird "—" in the upper left, the white menu bar) but we've got "My Computer" and "Recycle Bin" on the desktop — desktop icons weren't introduced until Windows 95. There were icons in 3.1, but they were minimized programs, since there was so start bar at the time. (But, his video and one screenshot also have a start bar in them?)
- muterad_murilax 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19631562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19631562
- bitwize 8y agoWindows 3.x had at least one third-party extension that gave it a bit of the Windows 9x look and feel, including task bar, start menu, and desktop icons.
- tomc1985 8y agoDidn't Windows once ship on a ROM chip? I seem to remember PCs with Windows ROMS around the 386/486 era. Pre-Win 95
- fierarul 8y agoSuch a great hack! I wonder if we can put some modern-day OS in the BIOS flash. I think the NetBSD kernel would fit, but I'm not sure how a GUI could be possible...
- squarefoot 8y agoBack in the late 90s the 1.44 MB QNX demo disk was quite a thing; it shouldn't be too hard to have it run from a BIOS flash. Found it here as I couldn't find a link on QNX site. https://winworldpc.com/product/qnx/144mb-demo https://winworldpc.com/product/qnx/144mb-demo
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoThis brings up a question. Why haven't manufacturers put a basic kernel in rom so that computers power on instantly? Does anyone know?