5 ms·

Windows 95 had dedicated code to run Sim City

43 points by wunderbaba 4y ago

57FkMytWjyFu 4y ago
Now they tear out features to break Sim City. https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-SimCity-Games/SimCity-4-Windows-10/m-p/6254524/highlight/true#M1125 https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-SimCity-Games/SimCity-4-Wind...
- smilekzs 4y ago
  This is more like eliminating outdated unsafe DRM. As a commenter over there suggested, you could always use "a modified executable from the Internet".
  - alvarezbjm-hn 4y ago
    The purpose of DRM is not security although it can be sold like that.
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    Sounds more like they wanted more redudent digital PC game purchases for older titles.
  - 57FkMytWjyFu 4y ago
    I'm struggling to see what is safer about a modded exe. I'm similarly struggling to see the value in breaking old games because new versions exist.
Macha 4y ago
It's interesting that the games media has treated this as some totally unknown fact on an obscure blog, when it feels like it even qualifies as common knowledge among HN (and obviously painting joel as some random ex-microsoft developer who just happens to have a blog is similar)
- gipp 4y ago
  I've been a daily user of HN for near a decade and this is news to me
  - stavros 4y ago
    Oh man, I wish I had links to some article about how much effort some MS engineer went to to get old versions of things like Quicken working. It was a good read, you'd like it, if someone else knows the one and can link.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - rendx 4y ago
      Most of these stories came in the form of blog posts by Raymond Chen in his blog The Old New Thing. It used to be even more fun to read in its old form and layout, and I am fairly sure not all his posts survived the move to the modern "devblogs" platform. But many of his posts were published as a book by the same name. Highly recommended, and a great gift! https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout/dp/0321440307 https://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout/... Fairly widely read also by Joel on this topic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... (not the article cited on Twitter; links to Chen's posts sadly broken)
gigel82 4y ago
> Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95. Impressive; now, if only we could trick them into considering "privacy" a core feature and add "backward compatibility" for it in newest Windows releases, we'd be golden.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Why is this “impressive”. Microsoft made money by selling Windows. If Windows got the reputation for being incompatible with popular software, people wouldn’t have bought Windows
  - arthurcolle 4y ago
    It's cool when people make an effort and help the community of users. Doesn't matter if they are Microsoft PMs that got this prioritized or nerdy gamers that originally surfaced this issue, or sympathetic programmers that created the "fix" in this form (hey lets just change the default behavior of the memory allocator/de-allocator/whatever) I'm sure this straight up would not happen at Apple, today, for example. Challenge for the audience to surface counterexamples!
    - scarface74 4y ago
      They aren’t doing it altruistically, they are doing it to help their bottom line. But Microsoft worshipping at the alter of backwards compatibility has caused them to move at a glacial pace compared to Apple. Apple not worshipping at the same alter allowed it to remove 32 bit support from the OS and actual processor which meant: - duplicate versions of shared libraries weren’t taking up RAM or storage which were both at a premium on mobile devices that have operating systems that don’t support swap - allowed then to have faster, smaller, more energy efficient processors that allowed them to ship phones where their cheapest phones are still two years ahead in terms of performance than competitors most expensive phones - the same thing above means that MacBooks can have 20 hours of battery life, don’t sound like a 747 when you open 4 Chrome tabs and don’t run hot. Microsoft completely missed mobile and their ARM laptops are so crappy that it’s faster to run x86 Windows apps running the ARM version of Windows in a VM on a Mac than running on one of the few ARM Windows computers. All engineering choices have trade offs. Because of backwards compatibility, there are almost a dozen ways to represent a string in C depending on which API you call https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-between-various-string-types?view=msvc-170 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-be... This by itself has caused security issues over the years.
rasz 4y ago
>"Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x Ross wrote Sim City 2000 https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7014/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7... The story is indeed about Sim City 2000. Funnily enough this bug is also present in DOS version of the game. Dude who hacked together "DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB" https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=83065 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=83065 rediscovered this independently. It also manifests when trying to run Sim City 2000 using DOS32A instead of DOS/4GW https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=24929 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=24929

43 points by wunderbaba 4y ago

Now they tear out features to break Sim City. https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-SimCity-Games/SimCity-4-Windows-10/m-p/6254524/highlight/true#M1125 https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-SimCity-Games/SimCity-4-Wind...

smilekzs 4y ago
This is more like eliminating outdated unsafe DRM. As a commenter over there suggested, you could always use "a modified executable from the Internet".
- alvarezbjm-hn 4y ago
  The purpose of DRM is not security although it can be sold like that.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  Sounds more like they wanted more redudent digital PC game purchases for older titles.
- 57FkMytWjyFu 4y ago
  I'm struggling to see what is safer about a modded exe. I'm similarly struggling to see the value in breaking old games because new versions exist.

Macha 4y ago

It's interesting that the games media has treated this as some totally unknown fact on an obscure blog, when it feels like it even qualifies as common knowledge among HN (and obviously painting joel as some random ex-microsoft developer who just happens to have a blog is similar)

gipp 4y ago
I've been a daily user of HN for near a decade and this is news to me
- stavros 4y ago
  Oh man, I wish I had links to some article about how much effort some MS engineer went to to get old versions of things like Quicken working. It was a good read, you'd like it, if someone else knows the one and can link.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rendx 4y ago
    Most of these stories came in the form of blog posts by Raymond Chen in his blog The Old New Thing. It used to be even more fun to read in its old form and layout, and I am fairly sure not all his posts survived the move to the modern "devblogs" platform. But many of his posts were published as a book by the same name. Highly recommended, and a great gift! https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout/dp/0321440307 https://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout/... Fairly widely read also by Joel on this topic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... (not the article cited on Twitter; links to Chen's posts sadly broken)

gigel82 4y ago

> Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95. Impressive; now, if only we could trick them into considering "privacy" a core feature and add "backward compatibility" for it in newest Windows releases, we'd be golden.

scarface74 4y ago
Why is this “impressive”. Microsoft made money by selling Windows. If Windows got the reputation for being incompatible with popular software, people wouldn’t have bought Windows
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  It's cool when people make an effort and help the community of users. Doesn't matter if they are Microsoft PMs that got this prioritized or nerdy gamers that originally surfaced this issue, or sympathetic programmers that created the "fix" in this form (hey lets just change the default behavior of the memory allocator/de-allocator/whatever) I'm sure this straight up would not happen at Apple, today, for example. Challenge for the audience to surface counterexamples!
  - scarface74 4y ago
    They aren’t doing it altruistically, they are doing it to help their bottom line. But Microsoft worshipping at the alter of backwards compatibility has caused them to move at a glacial pace compared to Apple. Apple not worshipping at the same alter allowed it to remove 32 bit support from the OS and actual processor which meant: - duplicate versions of shared libraries weren’t taking up RAM or storage which were both at a premium on mobile devices that have operating systems that don’t support swap - allowed then to have faster, smaller, more energy efficient processors that allowed them to ship phones where their cheapest phones are still two years ahead in terms of performance than competitors most expensive phones - the same thing above means that MacBooks can have 20 hours of battery life, don’t sound like a 747 when you open 4 Chrome tabs and don’t run hot. Microsoft completely missed mobile and their ARM laptops are so crappy that it’s faster to run x86 Windows apps running the ARM version of Windows in a VM on a Mac than running on one of the few ARM Windows computers. All engineering choices have trade offs. Because of backwards compatibility, there are almost a dozen ways to represent a string in C depending on which API you call https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-between-various-string-types?view=msvc-170 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-be... This by itself has caused security issues over the years.

rasz 4y ago

>"Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x Ross wrote Sim City 2000 https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7014/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7... The story is indeed about Sim City 2000. Funnily enough this bug is also present in DOS version of the game. Dude who hacked together "DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB" https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=83065 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=83065 rediscovered this independently. It also manifests when trying to run Sim City 2000 using DOS32A instead of DOS/4GW https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=24929 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=24929