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Is anybody still using Windows 95?
- danfritz 6y agoReminds me of George RR Martin (author of the Game of Thrones books) who uses DOS for writing books. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502
- taviso 6y agoI use WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS, not for any nostalgia or legacy reasons, just because it's a full-featured and highly configurable word processor that I can use in a terminal. I only use it for writing letters and so on, nothing too serious, but I prefer to stay in the terminal if I can. It works beautifully under dosemu2, which has a terminal mode that can translate various VGA modes into S-Lang calls (S-Lang is like ncurses, so no X11 required). I find this technically impressive and makes a lot of old DOS software indistinguishable from native linux software; stdin/stdout, parameters, host filesystem access, etc all work transparently. Here's a screenshot: https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1272670107043368960/photo/1 https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1272670107043368960/photo/... It can import TTF fonts and print to PostScript, which I just pipe into ps2pdf and then handle on the host. I'm not aware of any other full-featured modern word processor that can run in an xterm. I know about wordgrinder but it's very very basic. You could use a text editor, but it's not ideal for layout because it doesn't understand things like proportional font geometries - you need that to know how lines/glyphs will fit on the physical page when it's printed. You could write it in some form of markup, html, TeX, markdown, whatever, but if I'm just trying to format a document I prefer a word processor. (Note: dosemu2 doesn't require virtual 8086 mode, so it works fine on x86-64)
- boring_twenties 6y agoGreat idea, but how can one get their hands on this software nowadays? I can only assume it's not sold anywhere?
- taviso 6y agoYou can still purchase it, but it's a lot of hoops to jump through! http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain There is still a community (apparently mostly paralegals) who actively use it and answer questions, e.g. http://wpdos.org http://wpdos.org and https://www.wpuniverse.com/ https://www.wpuniverse.com/
- coronadisaster 6y ago> http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain Looks like they deleted the file ... now 404 not found...
- banana_giraffe 6y agoOdd, it works for me. It's also an odd little page. It includes directions to buy it, if you already have a copy. If you don't have a copy, it includes some details on how to use eBay.
- coronadisaster 6y agohttps://i.imgur.com/hQvs1X3.png https://i.imgur.com/hQvs1X3.png
- brewmarche 6y agohttp not https
- coronadisaster 6y agooops, thanks...had the 'encrypt all sites' setting to ON in https everywhere.
- jtchang 6y agoWho is Carol Reese? And how is she related to Corel and WordPerfect?!
- jhoechtl 6y agoWP6.2, fond memories. How is this mode called where you can see and edit every control sequence you entered like bold and italics formatting?
- williamjackson 6y agoReveal Codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Reveal_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Reveal_codes
- Beldin 6y agoWhile I've seen its real name now, for me this will always be the Under Water Screen.
- toast0 6y ago> I'm not aware of any other full-featured modern word processor that can run in an xterm Word Perfect was available for UNIX as well. The SCO binaries might run with iBCS. I don't know if that would provide a significantly different experience than running the DOS version in dosemu though.
- kjs3 6y agoI tried running WP for SCO under iBCS 10-15 years ago. I couldn't get it to work. Don't remember all the details but it seemed they cheated with some of the video routines and I mostly got a corrupted screen. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, though, and I very well might have just not hit on the right incantations.
- lqet 6y agoWould you be so kind to post an example Postscript file generated by WordPerfect?
- taviso 6y agoSure, I normally have this in my .dosemurc: $_lpt1 = "dosprint" Which just pipes the printer port output into a bash script that runs ps2pdf, but I changed it to save to a file instead. https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wppostscript.ps.txt https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wppostscript.ps.txt
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoOh, nicely formatted and readable PostScript. I wish the Windows drivers could do that.
- badsectoracula 6y agoThere is Wordgrinder[0] and can export to LaTeX for printing. In classic Unix tradition, it looks way more plain than the screenshots of WordPerfect you posted :-P. [0] http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/screenshots.html http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/screenshots.html
- anthk 6y ago>nto S-Lang calls So like SLRN and Jed? Amazing. I used DOSEmu back in the day for Redneck Rampage under an AMD Athlon (Dear DOSBox users, DOSEmu was zillions times faster than DOSBox, I ran it at native speeds). This is impressive.
- anthk 6y agoAlso I'd use WP 6.1 for DOS in Spanish if it wasn't a "little" inconvenience: we don't use Pesetas as a currency anymore, but I think there's an Euro patch somewere. EDIT: On graphics, that's a solved problem. Everyone uses framebuffer today, even on obsolete chipsets it's doable. Just map VGA calls to FB and everything would be fast enough, I think.
- simonblack 6y agoI use WordStar when programming in CP/M. I use 'jstar' (one of the 'joe' alter-egos) which uses the same commands when programming in Linux.
- anthk 6y agoYou'll love Wordtsar then.
- AndrewBissell 6y agoI believe George R. R. Martin has said he uses some kind of ancient word processing software to write the GoT novels.
- fastball 6y agoMight want to use the past tense of "to write", otherwise you're giving GRRM the benefit of the doubt when you say he is writing GoT novels...
- superhuzza 6y agoDOS machine, disconnected from the internet, running WordStar 4.0 https://www.cnet.com/news/george-r-r-martin-writes-with-a-dos-word-processor/ https://www.cnet.com/news/george-r-r-martin-writes-with-a-do...
- cafard 6y agoI have known lawyers and legal secretaries who just would not give up on WordPerfect, I think because of the footnotes. The two that I most recently had dealings with have since retired, but I'd be anything but surprised to learn that their are recent .wpd (is it?) files on the General Counsel's Office's shared drive. I liked WordPerfect well enough from 4.2 through 5.1. Version 6 on Windows was not good. Even a slow typist (me) could get ahead of the cursor. But at some point my employer switched to Word and I haven't been back.
- gameswithgo 6y agocan confirm, i worked for a company producing an online version of their legal books, we could export pages to word and... word perfect!
- dpvan 6y agoDuring the 4.X and 5.X era at WP, the company paid very close attention to the needs of the legal market and WP could do things with a couple of keystrokes that would take 10 minutes with MS Word. WP also had a potent macro capability and a good macro editor as well. I was practicing law at this time and had created 80-99 WP macros that made legal docs appear like magic. There was no e-filing and court clerks and judges could be more than a little picky about the formatting of the paper documents they received. If a doc wasn’t formatted in the proper manner, some clerks would refuse to file it and return the doc to the lawyer’s office for a re-do.
- dpvan 6y agoThe acquisition of WP by Novell was a disaster. Way different corporate cultures and leadership styles. Ashton and Bastian had been generous with stock grants to key people, particularly on the technical side. Most of the key people below the two founders had enough money that they didn’t have to put up with the sharp elbows and confrontational styles that predominated at Novell. Combine a brain drain with a Microsoft push for Windows and built-in integration with the first passable version of Word and you had a recipe for disaster. Some of the WP people who remained claimed that MS had mislead them about Windows vs DOS roadmap and been slow in providing Windows info necessary for WP engineers to build a decent first release of WP for the new release of Windows, but I could never determine if this was what had really happened or just sour grapes because WP stumbled badly after the ownership change.
- Crontab 6y agoI really don't want a word processor, per se, so much as I want really robust (realtime) text wrapping/unwrapping as I edit paragraphs. I've tried to get Vim and Emacs to do reflows but both were very flakey compared to something like WordPerfect for DOS.
- Bud 6y agoBBEdit might be just right for you.
- Crontab 6y agoMy apologies, I was specifically referring to text-based/console-based applications. All the GUI text editors seem to wrap and unwrap just fine.
- jaclaz 6y agoNot exactly a word processor but it seems to me like you could try (if you can find it) the TSE or QEdit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor what Qedit (often renamed simply to Q.exe) was capable of doing in the (good) old times was incredible.
- genuinebyte 6y agoI think I know what you mean. I try to wrap at 80 col. and I often need to go back and edit a paragraph, which breaks all my wrapping.
- lbruder 6y agoHave you tried soft line wrapping in GNU nano (M-S)? As long as you're running nano in an 80 column wide window, that should work fine.
- immigrantsheep 6y agoThere is a modern-ish clone of Wordstar around as well called WordTsar http://wordtsar.ca http://wordtsar.ca
- djsumdog 6y agoDoesn't RR Martin use the original Wordstar? I remember reading about him using an old school physical word processor and USB-floppy drive when he needs to backup/transfer his work.
- Bad_CRC 6y agoCame here just for the GRRM comment :) But for I can see, he is NOT really using it...
- pier25 6y agoWoah. Apparently the guy who made it also uses it to write his novels. http://geraldbrandt.com/ http://geraldbrandt.com/
- sys_64738 6y agoWhat about Protext from Arnor? Another text only word processor now available for free for the Atari ST, Amiga, and PC. https://web.archive.org/web/20140825104412/http://www.tigerteam.co.uk/protext/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140825104412/http://www.tigert...
- throw0101a 6y ago> […] just because it's a full-featured and highly configurable word processor that I can use in a terminal. The 'reveal codes' functionality is something that I always liked with WP, and that no other word processors seems to have implemented.
- hackyhacky 6y agoNota Bene is another text-based word processor from that era. It defaults to showing embedded formatting commands. The primary means of operation is via an integrated DOS-like command prompt.
- tssva 6y agoNota Bene although no longer text based still exists and is actively developed. Nota Bene used the XyWrite word processor engine. XyWrite was very popular in news rooms back in the day.
- JdeBP 6y agoThat's a description that also matches Arnor's Protext. The command window was the bottom half of the screen, and one embedded rulers and suchlike into the document text with ">" lines.
- oska 6y agoThis is testing my memory but I think WordStar from the early to mid 80s had something similar. Codes all started with a ^ (again from memory) and their visibility could be toggled on and off.
- JohnBooty 6y agoI have very fond memories of WP5.1.... I still have some Model-M keyboards, so I could really recreate the "glory days" if I wanted. I could print out the little F-key cheat sheet for the keyboard as well. But... What about Unicode? Lack of Unicode seems like a dealbreaker for a lot of use cases. Even if you're not using Unicode, seems like you'd eventually want to work with Unicode text. As an engineer, a lot of the "word processing" I do involves cutting and pasting text from other sources (citations, code samples, names, etc) that tend to be chock full of non-ASCII characters. Or has this been solved somehow? I see that there are various hacks involved in getting support for the Euro symbol. What about a general purposes solution? I know that WP5.1 had support for international character sets. Perhaps somebody's cooked up an emulation layer that translates Unicode into whatever it is that WP needs.
- sickcodebruh 6y agoMy parents got their first computer in the 90s so my mom could do freelance work editing medical texts on nights and weekends after her day job. She used Word Perfect and she taught me to type with it, I still remember the exact shade of blue and the white text. She’d use Reveal Codes and I thought all the special characters were so cool. I can still picture her sitting at the desk working on it while I’d play video games. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. They’re vivid memories that are kind of meaningful that I haven’t thought about in decades, tied directly to that application. Weird how that works.
- rconti 6y agoSomehow WordPerfect/MultiMate with reveal codes is still a more intuitive text formatting tool than anything I've used since. Or maybe it's just nostalgia. There's nothing I hate more these days than trying to format text in WYSIWYG editors, in-browser confluence and jira, notepads, markdown, etc.
- drpixie 6y agoBrilliant - I've long observed that almost everything we are doing with our GHz computers, we were doing previously with old MHz systems. We have more pixels (but use them for the same result), more memory (but everything has grown to fill it), more bandwidth (but websites packed with junk bytes). The only "new" thing enabled by our bigger systems is "big data", which is largely a process of finding patterns that will fool the user/purchaser/customer.
- abraxas 6y agoWell that and high quality video. One and only one tangible benefit of this new web is better quality video. Everything else sucks as much or worse than in the days of Altavista and punch the monkey ads.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nl 6y agoAnd browsers that don't crash all the time.
- narwally 6y agoAnd search is good now. But apart from the HD video, the search, the aqueducts, the roads, the education, the browsers that don't crash all the time, and the wine... what have the Romans ever done for us?
- nl 6y agoOh, and XMLHttpRequest and Websockets, so we don't have to rely on META REFRESH in hidden frames...
- 1_player 6y ago> And search is good now. I disagree. Searching for keywords is practically impossible nowadays, with all smart AI-powered™ search engines that unhelpfully return results that are not relevant to your query. And SEO spam, which has killed the niche high signal-to-noise handcrafted websites for content aggregators.
- slvrspoon 6y agomicrosoft word today - with "onedrive" and "server-connected DRM" sucks so bad when you are offline just trying use YOUR @#$23 PC it is a travesty. just wait til the exact same UX comes to your automobile. and after that...
- BostonEnginerd 6y agoI had Office decide that checking the license at the start of an Internet-free 6hr flight was a good idea. At least I had brought a good book with me.
- dh303 6y agoIt would be great if one of the "classic" word processors (WP, MS Word, WordStar) would get open sourced, so it could be updated and made useful in the 21st century.
- djsumdog 6y agoI had that version of WordPerfect on my 286! I remember how you could install the Trident video drivers and get some pretty high console resolutions. F11/Reveal Codes was super helpful too. I wish modern word processors had something similar. It basically shows you the equivalent of formatting tags. I have the Win3.1 version of WP from that era in a DosBox. I've been meaning to compare it's grammar check to modern word processors. It was way ahead of its time. I know Corel bough it, but it looks like it spun off again. I wonder if the current release still has any of the old source code, or if it was just rewritten and has the name for the brand: https://www.wordperfect.com/en/ https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
- WorldMaker 6y agoStill owned by Corel (they have a weird "Corel Advantage" logo at the bottom of that marketing site and the Contact Us link goes to a bunch of Corel info). The Corel of 2020 seems a fascinating Enterprise Licensing zombie. They appear to make all their revenue from (very) legacy Enterprise Licenses and government contracts and all of the software seems stuck in a time warp stasis with only the bare minimum of maintenance (presumably just enough to keep the Enterprise Licenses alive and well). It's almost sad to see how many classic computing brands they own and let languish in this state.
- wly_cdgr 6y ago...Cool?
- dfboyd 6y agoI use troff (groff) under Linux. The really freaky thing is that you already have groff on your Mac -- it's installed by default.
- massysett 6y agoWhat macros do you use? I have some simple programs that generate documents to print out, and I use LaTeX and a bunch of packages. It takes hundreds of megabytes of software with all the packages. I've long toyed with using the MOM macros but can't get motivated to rewrite my programs and learn troff. It used to bother me that groff doesn't support Unicode (as far as I can tell) but then realized that all I write is English so why am I fetishizing Unicode? groff will get me any accented character that I would realistically need.
- dfboyd 6y agoJust the plain .ms macros. Plus "pic", I like that a lot.
- smartmic 6y agoYou can have UTF-8 with groff using the preconv [1] tool, just pass the "-k" or "-Kutf8" paramater. It will preprocess your source and replace Unicode symbols with its groff special character form. Of course, the built-in standard fonts do not support many glyphs but it is no big thing to use a more Unicode friendly font like DejaVu Sans or Noto, check [2]. So this is my setup using MOM macros for nice typesetting. But I fully agree on your last point, in the end I seldom need the Unicode universe for most of my documents. [1] https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/preconv.1.html https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/preconv.1.html [2] http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#fonts http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#fonts
- anthk 6y agohttps://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html
- 6y ago
- lsllc 6y agoI was a huge fan of Wordstar 6! Wrote so much with that thing ... way better than Word, Pages etc. even still. It's no wonder I prefer Markdown for writing / documents etc. I should try to see if I can get Wordstar running under dosemu2 (I probably have a 3.5" floppy somewhere with it on, but I don't think I have the disk drive to read it).
- apricot 6y agoI had no idea dosemu2 could translate VGA to S-Lang. That's very nice, and I will look into it. WordPerfect was a great word processor, I remember using version 5.1 for years because it was wicked fast, rock stable, and most importantly, it was predictable. By contrast, MS Word -- even today -- seems to have a mind of its own. You move an image, and suddenly all your numbered bullet points appear in a different font except for the last one, and nothing short of retyping the whole thing in another document seems to fix it.
- D13Fd 6y agoHave you actually used the GUI version of WordPerfect? I was forced to use it heavily for a year of pure writing for a previous job. It's incredibly unpredictable. It's like whack-a-mole. You make text in one place bold, and all the sudden some of your footnote text on a different page becomes bold. The people at that job who were really good knew all of the tricks, digging into the codes that WordPerfect inserts to address various issues. But even then, it was an extra step, and I never became as productive in WordPerfect as I had been in Word. Plus WordPerfect has been on maintenance mode with Corel for decades at this point, catching lots of bugs and half-implemented features.
- apricot 6y agoThe only version of WordPerfect I ever used was 5.1 for MS-DOS, and my comments apply to that one only. I heard the GUI version left a lot to be desired, so I never upgraded.
- tambourine_man 6y ago5.1 was the magic version of word processors. Word 5.1 on the Mac was amazing. Fast, powerful, probably everything one would need even today, aside from track changes.
- asveikau 6y agoI am having flashbacks to late 90s Linux. One of the distros back then was Caldera OpenLinux. It had a Linux port of WordPerfect. It got a lot of criticism at the time for being nonfree.
- femto113 6y agoVersion 4 got me through the first couple years of college. My freshman year I actually had a steady stream of people coming into my dorm room to use it on my PS/2. Eventually I switched from English to Math and moved on to vi and the various roff markup tools and then LaTeX, but I think what ultimately killed the magic of that generation of WordPerfect was the change in keyboard layouts that moved the function keys from the left side to the top. Before that when combined with Ctrl, Alt, and Shift there were 40 commands available just a pinky reach away, and it came with a cheat sheet card that fit neatly around them.
- femto113 6y agoI guess I'm not the only one who misses those keyboards, they go for around ~$300 on eBay[1] [1] https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929 https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929
- WorldMaker 6y agoIBM spun out their keyboard division decades back when they they spun out printers (into Lexmark). The current inheritor of the keyboards is Unicomp (having bought it from Lexmark/IBM): https://www.pckeyboard.com/ https://www.pckeyboard.com/ It's a bit cheaper to buy from them than to pay for an antique on eBay. Also, there's a wave of mechanical options from more recent companies like Das Keyboard or the various DIY kits with choose your Cherry switch adventures.
- tssva 6y agoVersions 4.1 and 4.2 got me through the first couple of years of college also. I briefly updated to 5.0 but quickly reverted to version 4.2. I have never been as productive in a word processor as I was using WordPerfect and a Model F XT keyboard.
- ghettoimp 6y agoIt really is a beautiful program, in its own way.
- fmakunbound 6y agoReveal codes should be part of any rich text editor. Ever sat wondering why pressing return added a new bullet to a list rather than a gap to the text preceding it? I see it all the time while watching engineers and manager using tools like Jira, Confluence etc. Reveal codes would make it plainly obvious - the cursor was after the list start but before first bullet.
- uxp100 6y agoNothing more delightful to work with than a requirements management tool whose wysiwyg editor changed the text of the bullet points when the indentation level changed. Never figured out what was going on, but there was somehow two different texts occupying the same line, and if you pressed tab to make the line deeper in the hierarchy it would display the other text. You start wondering how bad DOORS really is if this is how the "modern" web app replacement works.
- mattbillenstein 6y agoI'd almost try this, but I don't write documents enough - auto-correct in modern word processors infuriates me. It almost never does what you want.
- trts 6y agoAmazing. I used WP6.2 to write papers in high school and remember not only the tables and line drawings but you could also place images and annotate them. It's hard to remember how that worked but in those days it seemed those things were only possible on Macs. As I recall there was a big reference binder that documented the features.
- tootie 6y agoWow. I think Wordperfect may be the last time I enjoyed using a word processor. It was also maybe the first time I realized how important good design is. I couldn't you tell a specific reason it was better than Word, just that it always did what I expected.
- tregoning 6y agoSurprised nobody has mentioned the main advantages of web-based apps: * Collaboration (including real-time collaboration) * Ease (or more like lack of it) installation process * Always up to date
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoIf you look at what happened to Word Perfect when it shifted to Windows then you might consider always being up to date a disadvantage.
- anthk 6y ago>* Collaboration (including real-time collaboration) Abiword did that >* Ease (or more like lack of it) installation process You need an ISP. And an Internet connection. >* Always up to date It can be worse for your specs.
- brylie 6y agoI wish there was a mandate that companies had to register sourcecode, e.g. with the Library of Congress, so that it could be released as Public Domain after a couple of decades. We are losing quite a lot of our software heritage when companies bury projects like WordPerfect or milk older games for a few more bucks. We could have a thriving, open-source ecosystem around the sometimes excellent software that is currently locked away.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y agoWe've decided 20 years is long enough for drug patents, and in my opinion, it should be good enough for almost all intellectual property, really. Create something new? Great! You're officially granted a monopoly on that thing for 2 decades - plenty of time to monetize it, and use the money to create some other new things. If you can't figure out a way to monetize it in that timeframe, then we'll allow others to compete with you and take a crack at it.
- vanderZwan 6y agoGiven that Disney made its fortune by adapting public domain stories and then abusing the copyright protection of their adaptation of these stories, I think there are more loopholes to patch than just the expiration date.
- ilnmtlbnm 6y agoTake a look at : https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/ They've made it their mission to collect and preserve source code.
- brylie 6y agoVery cool! I couldn't find a trove where I could browse by category or other metadata, although I did find the search interface. Is there a categorised trove?
- jake_morrison 6y agoI used WordPerfect in my first job as a tech writer. It was beneficial to have a separation between writing and the layout done by desktop publishing systems. As a programmer building websites, I do the same thing, writing in vim. Learning how to make your editor work for you is a great investment.
- fizzled 6y ago"was already there 15 years ago." MSOffice ca. 1992 for Win3.111 was the high watermark. Been downhill ever since because basic features have been breaking (Excel 2016 sometimes forgets how to render axis fonts vertically... its 36+ years old!)
- bni 6y agoUsing WordPerfect on the Amiga: https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101 https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101 This whole site is wonderful, btw
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 60secz 6y agoWord perfect 5 and 6 in many respects are still vastly superior to any version of word, especially when it comes to aligning text left and right, which are properly treated as line flow instead of a properties of a tab stop. Without leaving the keyboard I could easily align text on the same line to left aligned, centered and right aligned. For typing / journaling the non-wysiwyg was a feature. I honestly think wordperfect 5.1 is a big reason why sublime is so popular now.
- timmit 6y agoI am just very curious how to get a copy of the wordperfect 6.2 for DOS. Can it be downloaded from Internet Archive?
- laserdancepony 6y agohttps://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/6x-dos https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/6x-dos
- teekert 6y agoNice that you are using WP on dosemu2 on Ubuntu on Windows. I once spoke to someone active in research into keeping data (formats) and programs available for very long time (like centuries) and I always thought it was a no-brainer because one could just run X on Y on Z on A on B on C to get ancient software D working. Allthough I also have to admit that this approach didn't work for my favorite game [0] but now that I'm googling, I does seem to work! So someone got DirectX 9 or something working? [0] https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3140&letter=A https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3140&letter=A
- anthk 6y agoCryo Engine? Then SCUMMVM will implement that soon. Compile Scummvm with sh configure --enable-all-engines --prefix=/opt make sudo make install /opt/scummvm/bin/scumvmm https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Atlantis:_The_Lost_Tales https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Atlantis:_The_Lost_Tales https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/cryomni3d https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/cryom... Nightly builds (but they may not set the "--enable-all-engines" switch to configure/
- antonyh 6y agoHaving disposed of a PowerMac G3 running System 9 this week, this strikes a chord with me. I'm already regretting it. Despite the age and 'underpoweredness' of it, it was still quicker, still more responsive, and still subjectively nicer to use than anything modern.
- iuguy 6y agoThis week I built a home-made computer using an ESP32 instead of a Z80 and hodge-podge of 74xx logic chips to run CP/M and started playing with Wordstar 3 and 4. I used it many decades ago briefly on the Amiga and it was more graphical but I'm only just getting to grips with it now. Obligatory screenshot here: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/104824411022687268 https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/104824411022687268
- nix23 6y agoFormer employee had a Inventory system based on dos6 but the hardware (the pc and the barcode scanner) was getting really old. So i buy a new PC, installed FreeDOS and a new barcode scanner with Dos compatibility and it works perfect. DOS especially FreeDOS is just great.
- brohee 6y agoIs there a DOS working on an UEFI computer? If not there must be a very limited choice of hardware.
- cosarara 6y agoUEFI systems generally can boot in compatibility BIOS mode. Macs can't, but they are the only exception I know.
- devenblake 6y agoMost modern computers have legacy BIOS support.
- Theodores 6y agoI am finding that semantic HTML and CSS Grid where you style the elements works nicely for documents. This goes against what Tim Berners Lee imagined in that I am typing in the HTML tags and happy to navigate them in text. I prefer the tags as they describe my work. Visually there is no evidence that something is a 'section' or an 'aside' but I make sure my words do have document structure, so a 'section' will probably have a 'h3' at the start of it. I wish there was a 'what you see is what you mean' editor that was visual but only allowed you to add HTML semantic elements. WYSIWYG editors tend to just add local styles and 'br' elements, resulting in HTML that is useless for my style of HTML. I can do diagrams in various ways including SVG that I just write out manually. Or I can use the wonders of CSS Grid and a 'dl' list with first of type/last of type CSS selectors to style up a simple linear flow diagram. I really wish there was a super neat word processor or HTML editor that only wrote lean HTML with semantic markup for document structure. But here I am in 2020 using my IDE or Vim to write documents and even craft diagrams. I am impressed that I am not alone in spurning drag and drop wonder gadgets. As much as I would like to give Wordprerfect a go, I feel the world has moved on from documents printed out as memos and put in pigeon holes. Stuff has to look good in a browser and with stripped down HTML that uses the elements and a simple stylesheet that loads a font and puts in some CSS Grid layout I feel I have the tools I need.
- chinathrow 6y agoMy dad still uses Framework at times on an old machine. It just works and is perfect for his use case of large spreadsheets. https://framework.com/ https://framework.com/
- gauchojs 6y agoWhy did you update from 5.1?
- canadian_tired 6y agoNostalgia: Reveal Codes!
- rietta 6y agoThis reminds me that WordPerfect 6.2 for Windows 3.1 could possibly work under Wine. That could be interesting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- imroot 6y agoI remember using WordPerfect on VAX/VMS (on a decterm, no less), and I recall them having some flavor of Unix based binary, but, I can't find references to either out there anymore.
- mikorym 6y agoCould you link to an example of an output file?
- gosukiwi 6y agoThose diagrams look powerful, it might even be even better than modern text editors for that :v
- nickdothutton 6y agoMost of what I do in a word processor today, I could have done in Wordstar 3 under CP/M. Perhaps only the printing (no postscript) would have been a problem. Certainly most of what I do in Excel could be done in SuperCalc.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoWhile I support your travels with Wordperfect (I wrote many term papers on that puppy), I can support the quote by the person you responded on twitter. He just showed arrogance and silliness when he said "All that was ever really needed by an OS or Office apps was already there 15 years ago. Everything "invented" beyond that was just vanity changes with negligible long term added value, and constant moving around of UI to appear new and better. Change my mind."
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI still use Word 97 for writing. I've tried many WPs, but haven't found anything better. I run it inside a VM and it is still faster and better than LibreOffice by a long shot. When I'm done writing, I paste the text into one of my blogs with IE6, which my sites still support.
- dingdingdang 6y agoLike your style on this. I'm contemplating similar setup but going bit more oldschool with Word 6.0 Win 3.1 edition, gotta work out what the smoothest way of integration with my Linux (Mint) desktop though. Integration is key for me and have to say my prior exp with Wine have been less than comforting (working but just so, not long term functional feel).
- forgotmypw17 6y agoWine doesn,t work great with Microsoft software, because they would take advantage of undocumented APIs, but W6W31 may be old and basic enough to work... I would still take the VM route.
- jfrisby 6y agoGeorge R.R. Martin? Is that you?
- RandallBrown 6y agoKinda surprised a train would run windows 95 at all and not some sort of custom train specific OS.
- non-entity 6y agoThere have been a number of things I've found running some old version of embedded windows that I've been suprised by
- ch_123 6y agoThen you need to support the train-specific OS, and find developers who know how to write code for this train-specific OS, and IT staff who can install the train-specific updates onto the train-specific OS. As for why they would not use Linux? Leaving aside that these probably predate the wide adoption of Linux, Windows is often used in embedded devices which need graphical interfaces/displays. Again, ease of finding developers and third party tooling is a big driver.
- paleogizmo 6y agoI don't get it either. Can someone familiar with trains explain what on a train needs a desktop OS? A train is more like a car than an ATM machine, I would expect a collection of computers running either bare-metal or an RTOS like QNX/VxWorks (the pictured train is from 2000, so embedded linux hadn't taken off yet).
- dmitriid 6y agoYou'd probably have an OS with GUI for non-essential services like lights, intercoms, A/C etc. And present some additional info in nice graphics: the state of carriages, situation ahead on the line (as a complement to just flashing a green/red light on the board). The rest would run RTOSes or similar.
- ajford 6y agoWhen I was still working at Arecibo Observatory, there was definitely a couple systems running Win95 that were considered data critical. And they were still running on ~486 hardware IIRC. They hadn't been replaced as they were running some custom ISA interface boards developed by a research group in the 90s, and the community was still using the data output by the machine. And since it had been trucking along for ~20 years, convincing them they needed to develop a replacement was hard. When I left, it was still there, chugging along. And once a day, a tech would wander in with a floppy and copy some data off and wander back to the control room where a USB floppy drive was attached to a workstation specifically to read this floppy and let the tech copy the data files off to a network location.
- ColanR 6y agoSounds like their system works. If that 486 hardware lasted 20 years already, seems like there's a pretty good chance it'll outlast most of the modern stuff it would be replaced with.
- non-entity 6y agoI suppose its fine as long as its not connected to the internet.
- owenmarshall 6y agoDo you suspect there are any 0day/worms still targeting Windows 95 systems? I wonder if an unpatched Win95 box is actually safer than an unpatched modern Windows box.
- PopsiclePete 6y ago>Do you suspect there are any 0day/worms still targeting Windows 95 systems? You'd be surprised how much malware is "legacy" 32-bit and works without issue on WinXP. A lot of malware even shies away from Unicode API's and specifically calls out the *A Win32 API functions. Considering the Win32 API is backwards compatible to a fault, I don't see why modern malware couldn't absolutely wreck a Win9x box.
- fsflover 6y agoWould it be possible to replace it with ReactOS if you really need it?
- breals 6y agoProbably running some point of sale, ATM or industrial machines where it isn't cost effective to upgrade. However, they are likely running super-customized versions of it. End users are likely running it in a VM.
- Doches 6y agoHahaha. Hah. Ah. I sell a SaaS point of sale program[0] for niche retail stores, and this comment made me laugh and cry in equal measure. It's a web app, and I have dozens of users who access it through IE 5 on Windows 95. Not a VM, not a super-customized version -- just a computer they've kept on life support for twenty years and refuse to get rid of. And this isn't even close to the most antediluvian nonsense I've gone through on support calls [1]. [0] https://quailhq.com https://quailhq.com [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-a-point-of-sale-saas-business-makes-900-mo-fc20295e84 https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-a-point-of-sale-s...
- akamia 6y agoWhen I worked for Boeing there was some critical factory equipment that still ran on Windows 95 and even Windows 3.1. IIRC, the manufacturers had gone out of business so Boeing actually fabricated parts as needed to keep them running.
- iancmceachern 6y agoYes, I use it to run Mach 3 CNC with my small desktop Taig CNC milling machine. I run it on an old pentium 2 computer that was made when computers still had parallel ports (needed to interface with the CNC drive box). Ain't broke, im not fixing it.
- Gunax 6y agoDefinitely. Some lab equipment I used was handled by a computer running CPM. If it works, don't touch it.
- anonymousiam 6y agoLots of lab instruments run Windows 95. It's common on Tektronix oscilloscopes for example. I remember battling with IT when they told me that it could not be connected to any company network. (I won.)
- FooHentai 6y agoMy initial reaction was that IT were correct but actually, as long as it’s sitting behind an appropriately configured firewall on an isolated network segment, this can be done safely.
- moftz 6y agoThe new test equipment all runs Windows 10. It's weird to hop between pieces of equipment where some run still run MSDOS and others run Windows 7 or 10. They are all calibrated and still chug along doing what they need to do, just a little slower. The only annoying thing is when you can only grab data off the unit with either a GPIB interface or a floppy.
- mediaman 6y agoI have industrial machines that run the user interface on Windows 3.1. There was a fad for a while of not using PLCs, and instead using 'regular computers', at least for a portion of the system (usually a PLC still handled the most performance sensitive parts). When you have a production line that's 100 feet of steel, motors, ovens, and other equipment, and the cost of redoing all the control systems is quoted at hundreds of thousands of dollars, then why change it? It still works.
- phendrenad2 6y agoHow do you find parts?
- giantrobot 6y agoThere's literally millions of old computers sitting around in warehouses and storage closets all over the place. That's besides mounts of new old stock sitting around. If you're looking for replacement parts for old PC equipment, you don't need a million units, you just need a couple units. Finding a handful of units for replacement parts is pretty easy.
- mindfulhack 6y agoAnd it's also environmentally friendly, to keep old parts going instead of straight to the dump.
- jmt_ 6y agoI guess it would come down to a combination of the companies risk tolerance and the cost of the worst case scenario. Eventually the system is going to blow w/out possibility of repair, now you have the expenses of downtime + replacement. So one argument in favor of replacing "prematurely" is to prevent just that. Like how you might sell a car for higher towards the end of its life instead of waiting until it's EOL, since now you get less money for the car and suddenly need to buy a new one. Granted, a replacement system could be worse than the original.
- c-smile 6y agoQuite a lot actually. And even new software is designed these days to ride those dinosauri. Screenshot of one of Sciter's customers who develop software for Windows 2000, Solaris 10, HPUX 11, AIX 5, etc : https://sciter.com/necromancing-sciter-on-windows-2000/ https://sciter.com/necromancing-sciter-on-windows-2000/
- non-entity 6y agoI came across a company who provided DOS drivers for their product. Last updated 2014...
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoDOS is a true RTOS OS for the modern computers, because it not multitasking. Just block all the unnecessary interrupts, and you'll get the best response rate possible on the particaulr machine.
- tartoran 6y agoDos was my first command line environment on a 8086 with 640kb of ram and a whooping 20Mb harddrive. I had on that hd so many games and software including win 3.1, it embarrasses me to think how much bloat there is in a modern OS. I wouldn't use DOS now, I'd rather go with a barebones linux distribution.
- agumonkey 6y agoEven a slim mainstream linux distro would blush seeing your old 20mb setup.
- andrewmcwatters 6y agoSciter consistently impresses me. How neat.
- lgeorget 6y agoI recently got to witness the delicate use of an atomic force microscope from a very crude GUI on a Windows 95 computer. I was told by the person in charge of the lab that of course they could find a more recent tool but it would be too expensive and not worth it while the computer keeps working well.
- Funes- 6y agoI remember the first computer we had at home. I was five, and Windows 95 actually looked kind of beautiful in all its square and right-angle glory. The first time we interacted with it was to print some Disney character's portraits meant to be filled in with color. I also remember playing Rally Championship on that, as well as the first Tomb Raider (1996), which looked incredibly immersive; we were mesmerized by it, and frightened! Entering that ominous cave at the beginning was scary as hell. There's nothing that evokes that kind of feelings for me anymore.
- blastro 6y ago+1 for printing Disney coloring pages... Lion King for me. Hakuna matata!
- Funes- 6y agoOur first one was Mickey Mouse. I have that memory burnt into my visual cortex. So many fond memories... My brother loved the Lion King, we watched that thing so many times the VHS copy we had (still have, somewhere) was all worn out.
- tartoran 6y agoI too have some good memories about windows 95. I was stunned back then with all the goodies in there after running dos and win 3.1. Little did I know what other operating windows ripped off. I in turn had a pirated copy, I was only 12 years old and sharing was caring back then
- stuart78 6y agoFor a use case like this, I don't see the reason to upgrade. It is clearly stable and solving the need.
- vidanay 6y agoYou know all those recent posts here on HN about amateur radio and hams? A lot of those guys are still using Win95.
- thedanbob 6y agoYup, a friend of mine has a repeater he needed to reprogram but the software has been out of support since 1999. I ended up setting up a Windows 3.11 VM for him but Win 95 would have worked too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- redisman 6y agoAs long as it's not connected to a network I guess. I wonder though is someone still scanning for Win95 machines? Maybe it's safer to use it these days than it ever was during it's active period.
- ksk 6y agoI am curious to know what security holes you can exploit in a fully patched system with a firewall.
- mywittyname 6y agoDepends on what you're letting past the firewall. Even ICMP requests could (not sure if this was ever patched) be used to DoS a Win95 machine. There are several open TCP/IP bugs with Win9x, the newest one being from 2008.
- am_lu 6y agoGot a working copy of XP running in virtual machine on Linux. Gets used for backing up my phone (Nokia E72) and managing the settings on audio DSP board i use in the studio (minidsp). All aging software backed up ready to reinstall if needed again one day.
- Jaxkr 6y agoWhy do you use such an old phone? I tried a “minimalist” (obsolete) phone setup and while it was nice, I couldn’t stick with it. What are your favorite things about your Nokia?
- Funes- 6y agoWhy couldn't you stick with it? I, too, use a somewhat old Nokia phone (the 6110 Navigator, from 2007), and I absolutely love it. I really like its soap bar form factor, its sliding keyboard, and its battery--it lasts for around three or four days, although it can really take a hit with long phone calls, of which I usually make two or three every week. I don't like smartphones; I think they are the main culprit of many of the ailments of the current world.
- manquer 6y agoI would love to go back to a Nokia 1100 the biggest advantage is the battery performance, If you are travelling trekking etc, the phone battery reliably can work for a week easily, no charging worries. It is distractions free phone with just calls and SMS, It is very robust device, very light weight and sturdy, I have dropped it from a height 4 floors and into a swimming pool and it still worked perfectly fine. The b/w display is high contrast making this the phone ideal phone in construction / industrial site, the modern day equivalent is the overpriced CAT android phone.[1] I would pay good amount of money for a boxed one today. After few months( android or iOS) of usage I find the charge hardly lasts till the end of the day, and you are running around trying to find a charger, or lugging a battery pack. Yes modern phones are computing device and consumes less power for what they do, however a mobile phone is a phone first, if I can't make calls at end of the day , what good are all the apps and features [1] https://www.catphones.com/ https://www.catphones.com/
- agumonkey 6y ago15 years ago I ran into a govt agency relying on win95 to run a terminal client to access some as/400 app[0]. It was a tailored win95 under some special maintenance contract. Still surprising but alas. [0] application being the nicest job ROI I've ever had the pleasure to witness, bare terminal UI, zero learning time, zero waiting time, fully dedicated to help you do your task quick and right.
- known 6y agoI do in compaq-armada-7800-laptop
- lqet 6y agoHa, that brings back memories of trying to get Windows 95 installed on an old 386 machine with a 100 MB harddrive, 2 MB of RAM and only a floppy drive. I think this was 2001 or so, and you could already download the floppy disk set for Windows 95. If I recall correctly, there was a warning during the installation that Windows would be very slow on this machine. The warning was correct. I think it took 10-20 seconds just to open the start menu. I quickly reverted back to Windows 3.11. That machine is stored somewhere at my parent's house. Last time I checked, it still worked.
- acomjean 6y agoMy brother had the floppy disk install for windows 95 . We recently got rid of the 20+ floppy disks that it took.
- lqet 6y agoAs a kid, I didn't have that many spare floppy disks. Simple solution: write the first disk image on your father's machine you used for downloading it, start the installation on your machine, and as soon as it asks for disk 2, remove disk 1, insert it into your father's machine and write the disk 2 image to it. It took a while, but man was I proud when I saw that boot screen that looked so much cooler than that boring Windows 3.11 box.
- anthk 6y agoBy 2001 you could get a cheap 32MB SIMM with $10 and run W95 relatively well. Add a 486 which for sure where like $5-$10 (A Pentium MMX was about $20-30) and you'd be relatively well. Opera 6? still ran on 486 aceptability, and Lynx flew.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoI enjoy nostalgia as much as anyone, but there's no real need today. While attractive, this was a particularly atrocious line of OS in the reliability department. The mind boggles at using it in a mission-critical environment and speaks to how dire and ridiculous the situation was in the late 90s due to Microsoft shenanigans and competitor blunders. When folks say to forgive MS now they've changed, perhaps, but point to this post so the damage is not forgotten. Depending on budget one of these paths should be taken: - Twenty year-old hardware is basically free at this point and can run a version of NT. Security/cost continues to be an issue however. - Xubuntu or similar + (Wine || DOS/VirtualBox) would be more reliable and secure. If an unmaintained driver is a requirement, this might be the best choice. - FreeDOS exists and is pretty good, for the truly ancient. - React OS is a thing as well and there's a decent chance it can run older software. Personally, I'd pick a Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate LTS and whip up a native GUI in a robust language with plenty tests to replace such equipment.
- Funes- 6y agoI don't think Ubuntu or any of its variants--or "flavors"--are really well-suited for old machines. I find them to be very "bloated", as it were. I'd pick a bare-bones, basic installation of Arch/Artix and go upwards from there, probably using i3 as the window manager, too.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoThat may have made sense twenty years ago, but more time has passed that perhaps realized. They're quite light when no unneeded apps are installed, and time is money, as they say. Spending a lot of time fiddling is a cost that is not going to help a no-revenue maintenance project like this succeed. Perhaps a light CentOS variant would be better as they tend to have longer support windows.
- def_true_false 6y agoKDE has decent performance these days. Then again, if one goes out of their way to avoid the default DE, it stands to reason they might want to avoid the distro and its questionable choices entirely.
- _trampeltier 6y agoWe still have at least one OS/2 machine. Runs 24/7 :-)
- lmilcin 6y agoI saw building access system still running on Windows 3.11 3 or 4 years ago.
- merqurio 6y agoI help to maintain an isolated network of desktops running Windows 95. It's a complex EHR system with multiple clients. It's a family business, and the software works really well (a medical niche), so the investment to update the stack doesn't make any sense. (And there's no need to bother clinicians neither with things that don't add value) I have a VM for tweaking and working with it. I have multiple ETL scripts that extract the data to a modern ERP. I don't have access to the source code, but I have tried to reverse engineer it from multiple angles. Essentially it's a 16 Bits client written on Delphi with a database (dBase) that doesn't support multiple readers or writers, shared via a network drive. Clients read files from the shared drive and create locks to avoid multiple clients working in the same data. That's the main source of pain, but the clinicians adapt to it in a week or so. I haven't seen yet a modern system as complete as this one. There are multiple clinical centers in the area using the same software (25ish) and the 2-3 that moved into newer systems regretted greatly. The market is too small for any new developments. But the guy who built it in the 90's maintains it and earns enough to live happily.
- tenuousemphasis 6y agoHow do you deal with operating system security?
- merqurio 6y agoAn isolated LAN and no USB peripherals. There's a wireless network with internet but no device has access to both.
- gdevenyi 6y agoWhen I left my old research lab 6 years ago, we had a machine running Windows 3.1
- bitwize 6y agoYes, albeit not on the job. Many years back I picked up a Toshiba Libretto laptop with Windows 95 on it. Bought it from an old man who was selling various old computing-related knickknacks at the MIT Swap Meet. (Among them was an intact Enigma machine for $250,000!) It sat unused while I pondered what to do with it, then I started watching retrocomputing channels like LGR and the 8-Bit Guy -- and I realized I had a retro PC of my own! So out it came. I installed QBasic and a couple of other things on it. I wonder how long it'll keep going for. But it's real cool to have -- a netbook-sized, full-power PC from well before the netbook era.
- xnyan 6y agoAbout 10 years ago, one of my jobs in a pharmacology lab involved using a very specialized microscope driven by a PC running windows 95. A new license would cost an obscene sum of money, and it did exactly what it needed to do. The same setup is still in use and will likely continue to be used until it’s impossible to continue.
- nunez 6y agoSome (old) ATMs run WinNT4 still.
- jansan 6y agoThe judiciary of Berlin just migrated from Windows 95 to Windows 10. At the moment the system appears to be next to unusable, and some judges refuesed to work with the new system. Therefore they are considering migrating back to Windows 95 until problems are solved. I am not making this up: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/wieder-it-panne-an-berliner-gerichten-richter-koennen-nicht-arbeiten-performanceprobleme-an-computern/26169946.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/wieder-it-panne-an-berlin...
- sleepysysadmin 6y agoYou'd be quite surprised how many industrial machines. CNC, or similar run on win 95. Meanwhile the automotive industry basically depends on these machines.
- Snitch-Thursday 6y agoNot Windows 95, but Windows NT 4 lurks below certain theme park rides, reading the PLC diagnostic data and printing out the roller coaster's mood once a day for maintenance to file away in a write-only file cabinet. IT (us) have never in 10+ years had to help 'em. Can't say the same for the Windows XP-based successor PCs on newer rides though. Something about that 3/4/586 hardware is just solid.