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Windows 95 went the extra mile to ensure compatibility of SimCity, other games
- Jorengarenar 4y agoAbsolutely off-topic, but I need to get it out of myself: I just noticed Joel Spolsky's surname means "from Poland" ("z Polski")
- jvanderbot 4y agoI think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families. My last name is pretty close to "Von Der Hook" by pronunciation, which is awful close to "from the hook" (Hoek, a part of Netherlands). My friend is quite close to "From the Sluis", which is another part of Netherlands. Add to that the various spellings "Vander X, Van Der X, VanderX". I'm sure the conversation went "Surname?" "Vas?" "Where you from?" "Von Der Hook" scribbles something on intake card. "Next!"
- asveikau 4y agoNot doubting your story, but wanted to add that many European Jewish communities especially wound up with surnames that reference geography. That would have happened centuries before the US existed, representing migrations that happened in Europe. Don't have a lot of details on this history (which i heard orally) but a Google search for "Jewish surnames geography" seems to back me up.
- jvanderbot 4y agoYeah this very much might be how surnames actually happened. I wouldn't know. Or, a little of column A and column B.
- Animats 4y agoChina still struggles with that. A traditional question is "what is your village?", to get name uniqueness in a system which has too few family names. France at one time went to the other extreme - names had to be approved by a central registry at birth. Until 1993, there was an official list of allowed first names. Today, there are still some prohibited names. "Nutella" just made the list.
- tomcam 4y ago> “Nutella” just made the list My wife is French. We’re expecting our third child and the other two, Banana and Oatmeal, were devastated.
- shagie 4y agoIn #dadjokes on one of the slack channels I'm in... > On the way home I'd pick up Pizza and Coke. She wasn't happy with me. > Fur fgvyy unfa'g sbetvira zr sbe anzvat gur xvqf. https://rot13.com https://rot13.com
- lloeki 4y agoA clarification: it's not so much that there's a list of prohibited names, it's more like some people had "clever" ideas and the legal naming process has a judge involved to validate that names are not outrageous or could cause harm to a child. Once it's been ruled out, it's unlikely to have a different result on a second occurence. Examples (from the process above: keep in mind people actually tried) Titeuf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titeuf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titeuf Fraise: (strawberry) because of the expression "ramène ta faise" ("bring you ass over here") Jihad: for obvious reasons Joyeux: (happy) from the dwarf name Patriste: (notsad) an attempt to circumvent the above Babord / Tribord: (port / starboard) someone tried that for twins MJ: trying to honour of Mickael Jackson's death Griezmann Mbappé: you can guess Mégane: because the family name was Renaud (close to Renault, which has a car named Mégane) Mohamed: because the family name was Merah (Mohamed Merah being a well-known serial murderer) Fañch: a traditional Brittany name, initially rejected because the ~ diacritic, which does not exist in the French alphabet. Was later overruled and allowed. The horrible part, though, is about all those terrible names that are not rejected as the ones above were but are obviously a sort of sad, tasteless joke and very very bad for the child.
- bitwize 4y agoMy sister's ex-husband's family tacked a "-ski" onto their surname while immigrating to avoid sounding too German. They immigrated during one of the World Wars (I believe it was the second) when anti-German sentiment was high.
- int_19h 4y agoIf they're from Silesia, it might actually be a mixed German/Polish family that used both family names historically depending on the context; it was not uncommon there.
- cookie_monsta 4y agoI'm surprised there aren't more people around with the surname Vas
- jeroenhd 4y agoI don't know anything about refugees immigrating into the US so I can't refute your story in any way, but one thing worthy of note is that Dutch names often include geographical areas with "van de/van der/van" (meaning "of, from") as an insertion ("tussenvoegsel") between first and last name . "van der Sluis" would be a perfectly normal Dutch name. I also wouldn't think twice about "van der Hoek" if I heard someone introduce themselves by that name. Many people had to pick surnames when the French occupied the Netherlands, often leading to geographical names, references to occupations, or sometimes even jokes ("Naaktgeboren" being relatively common, meaning "born naked"). The forefathers of someone named "van der Sluis" could have lived near a sluice/lock, lived near a place called Sluis, or perhaps operated sluices/locks as part of their job in the barging industry. English speaking countries where last names consisting of multiple words were incredibly rare often concatenate(d) such names into one or fewer words. To many English speakers the only name with multiple words would imply nobility (if they even considered the concept at all) and I wouldn't expect nobility to arrive amidst refugees either. To this day some American websites refuse to take the space in my last name. As an added bonus, Dutch names specifically can have "tussenvoegsels" that are part of the name but need to be treated specially to be used correctly (i.e. when sorting a list of names). Depending on if the name belongs to a Belgian or a Dutchman the capitalisation rules also differ (the Flemish capitalising the "Van", the Dutch using lowercase letters). Of course other languages and cultures also have their own naming schemes with grammar rules (take German/Austrian "von" or Danish "af/de/von" for example); it's hardly a unique concept, but the details differ between countries. It's no wonder those poor American immigration workers couldn't make heads or tails out of the names these people brought into their country. As a Dutchman, the end result is often quite interesting to witness when Americans or Canadians with Dutch names appear on TV, most names containing their own special deviation from "normal" Dutch names.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago> Depending on if the name belongs to a Belgian or a Dutchman the capitalisation rules also differ (the Flemish capitalising the "Van", the Dutch using lowercase letters). Actually, a little-known grammar rule (in the Netherlands) is that lowercase is only used for a tussenvoegsel following a first name. In other cases, the first tussenvoegsel is capitalized. Example: Piet van der Sluis -> meneer Van der Sluis https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/hoofdletters-in-aanhef-brief-of-mail https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/hoofdletters-in-aanhef-brief-o...
- bazoom42 4y ago> I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families This is a myth.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoC'mon, you can't just drop that in with no corroborating data. I could, with similar authority, state that it being a myth is a myth.
- roywiggins 4y ago"Someone wanting to book passage to America, Canada, Australia, South America, etc., would have had no difficulty locating an agent. Agents quoted ticket prices to the would-be traveler, accepted payment, and then recorded each traveler’s name and other identifying information (the specific information collected varied over the years). The information taken down by the agents was sent to the home office, where it was transferred by shipping company clerks onto large blank sheets provided by the US government. Those sheets became the passenger lists which later were used by American port officials." https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6655/8939 https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6655/89...
- bazoom42 4y agoDon’t take it on my authority. Read any historical source about what happened at Ellis Island, eg. https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/ellis-island-facts-and-myths https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/ellis-island-facts-and-... Even wikipedia has it under the “Name-change myth” section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island > Records show that immigration officials often actually corrected mistakes in immigrants' names, since inspectors knew three languages on average and each worker was usually assigned to process immigrants who spoke the same languages. > Many immigrant families Americanized their surnames afterward, either immediately following the immigration process or gradually after assimilating into American culture. Because the average family changed their surname five years after immigration, the Naturalization Act of 1906 required documentation of name changes.
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- Beltalowda 4y agoNo doubt this kind of thing happened, but people also just changed their names over time because it's easier. One of my grandfather's brother migrated to Canada in the 50s, and he now goes by "Vanderloo" or "Vanderlo" (not entirely sure how he spells it) instead of "Van der Loo". Same people Dutch people named Martijn or Maarten, who will often use Martin abroad. Johan Cruijff is typically known as Cruyff abroad, etc.
- fsckboy 4y ago>I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names no, ship's manifests (prepared at the point of departure) have been a standard in the ocean-voyage game for a long long time, and those were the lists used by immigration, not handwritten lists based on what they heard. see here https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-isla...
- bazoom42 4y ago> I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families. This is not true. The Ellis Island workers recieved the names in written form from the ships passenger lists. But many immigrants changed their names after arriving in the US for convenience or to better integrate in society.
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- asveikau 4y agoI wonder if Yiddish speaking ancestors pronounced that S as SH because P follows it, which would not be in keeping with its Slavic root.
- asveikau 4y agoNow that Mr. Spolsky himself cleared up the etymology, I wish i could delete this. But he cited something with the letter ш, indicating the sh sound. So I think I was onto something.
- spolsky 4y agoA common assumption, but it is actually from Шпола, a city in the Ukraine.
- Jorengarenar 4y agoReally? I assumed it's the same genesis as the word "spruce" ("z Prus")
- switch007 4y agoIn case you missed it, that is Spolsky himself replying to you
- Jorengarenar 4y agoIndeed I did miss that, but fortunately my reply wouldn't have changed. Now I kinda hope for further details. Is the surname from adjective "Шполянський"?
- fsckboy 4y agoseems reasonable to hypothesize that the Ukranian town might have named "from Poland"
- worewood 4y agoDisclaimer: I'm a complete noob about the history of the region and the languages involved. I just figured out the best way to get an answer on the web is to post a wrong one first, so I went 5 minutes into the subject on Wikipedia and what I've concluded is that maybe it's actually the other way around. Poland is like "Land of Polans" which were the original tribe of the region. The Ш letter seems it is a prefix that comes from Hebrew, so maybe, Шпола also refers to Polans in some way. I must emphasize again that this can be completely wrong.
- int_19h 4y agoThe name "polans" derives from the word "pole", which simply means "field". There were actually several different groups of Slavs who were known as "polans", all named because of where they settled. One of them did indeed found Poland. But there were also (different) polans in what is now Ukraine - indeed, they were the dominant group, as Kyiv was their city. In any case, "pol" in the placename can simply refer to a field directly. Or even to something else; in case of Shpola, the local legend is that it was named after the guy who first settled there.
- rr808 4y agohttps://forward.com/culture/13721/how-did-jews-choose-their-last-names-02146/ https://forward.com/culture/13721/how-did-jews-choose-their-... describes reasons how and why Jewish people chose names in Europe when Joseph II enforced them. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/important-judaica-n09687/lot.149.html https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/importa...
- supertrope 4y agoWebsite compatibility issues get blamed on the browser. GPU drivers include game specific workarounds.
- yunohn 4y agoGPUs and games have a vested commercial interest in ensuring they work. On the other hand, both the website and browser are mostly provided for free. Paid websites often do put the extra effort in to make it work everywhere, eg IE/Safari compat.
- astrange 4y agoSomeone’s paying for you to use the browser, even if it’s not you - it’s not like Mozilla is hoping everyone will stop using Firefox. So browsers do have compatibility checks for websites sometimes.
- Slaminerag 4y agoThere are an awful lot of expensive apps with web front ends that only worked with IE6 for years.
- Kwpolska 4y agoEverything worked fine back on Windows 3.1. Then you upgraded to Windows 95 and now your favourite game crashes. Why would you not blame Microsoft for this?
- afterburner 4y agoYou would. Not OP but I believe they're highlighting an analogous situation in our present time.
- pontilanda 4y agoBrowsers and engines are also regularly patched to improve web compat. I remember V8 "recently" released an update to improve the performance of a very common module. The details escape me however.
- ubermonkey 4y agoAt last, a story of something Microsoft did in the 1990s that we can all support! (I mean, unless you prize productivity.... goddamn did SimCity eat whole DAYS for me back then.)
- bitwize 4y agoInteresting how SimCity relied on use-after-free working and that was the issue. Obviously the correct solution was to rewrite SimCity for Windows 3.x in Rust, thus avoiding this very common bug. /s
- jerrysievert 4y agoI've been updating some MUDs to work on "modern" OS's, and have run into so many use-after-free issues that it's almost become a hobby fixing them.
- myko 4y agoI now maintain the MUD I played as a child and have been playing whack a mole with bugs like this for years. I'm a very poor C coder so still run into issues pretty often! Interestingly the game is much more stable on my MBP that I use for development than it is on the production Ubuntu 18 server I run it on. Not too bad for a Diku. Do you hang out in the Mud Coder's Guild Slack at all? You might find it interesting: https://mudcoders.com/join-the-mud-coders-guild-6770301ddcbd/ https://mudcoders.com/join-the-mud-coders-guild-6770301ddcbd...
- jerrysievert 4y ago> Do you hang out in the Mud Coder's Guild Slack at all? You might find it interesting I don't, but I was named by name in "Playing MUDs on the Internet" :) I have copies of Epic, SillyMUD, Phoenix, and now Kaos.
- 1f60c 4y agoMUD?
- nemacol 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
- DonHopkins 4y ago
- Randor 4y agoI don't know why SimCity and just a few titles are getting media attention on this. There perhaps a dozen more games and quite a few applications that were being patched at runtime. At Microsoft this eventually became a feature: Application Compatibility Database https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/devnotes/application-compatibility-database https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/devnotes/app...
- ninth_ant 4y agoLikely because SimCity was a memorable game that can be associated strongly with that era in our nostalgia. But also, not something "serious" such as tools designed for work or productivity. Having MS design Win95 with specific hacks for SimCity means that MS thought that SimCity was special and important, which reminds people in that era that they also thought SimCity was special and important -- and it's mildly or moderately interesting enough for these people to find "behind the scenes" work which validates their nostalgic memories.
- asveikau 4y agoSimCity was also quite huge and novel in the 90s. I think it's easy to underestimate that now.
- koheripbal 4y agoOur grade school teacher gave extra credit for students that built cities on the class PC. This was around 1991ish.
- flomo 4y agoSimCity games had long shelf-lives and were on the sales charts for years. It could be it wasn't individually special and it was just "make sure the top 20 windows games work".
- skylanh 4y agoI see you aren't familiar with Raymond Chen. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/author/oldnewthing https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/author/oldnewthin... Microsoft had a program internally within it's development teams for Windows 95 that you could get any software for free. You just had to agree that you'd ensure it was compatible with Windows 95 and take ownership of its quirks to get it to run on Windows 95.
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- PreInternet01 4y agoBackwards-compatibility between new Windows OS releases and previously available apps has always been great. Recently, things have regressed a little bit, but even on Windows 11, you can still run anything available for Windows 8 (released over a decade ago) just fine by simply ticking a checkbox. And for apps where the out-of-the-box mitigations don't work, the inscrutably-named Assessment and Deployment Kit (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-start...) will most likely help you out. Sure, some truly ancient apps (mostly DOS and OG-WinAPI) really won't work anymore, but those are better relegated to a VM anyway, if only for security reasons. If you want to understand why Windows still occupies a lot of IT mindset even in Y2K22, understanding the traditional Microsoft approach to backwards compatibility (as much demonstrated deficiencies as it has...) is a necessary first step.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoYou can even run stuff from Windows 98-2000 if you're lucky.
- Joeri 4y agoEcco Pro was last built in 1997 and still has an active user community on windows 10.
- int_19h 4y agoIf you mean running apps made for those platforms, I wouldn't say that you have to be particularly lucky to do so. Even apps that try to write into shared registry or their own installation folder mostly work (because Windows emulates it by transparently creating writable copies).
- 29athrowaway 4y agoThere are videos on YouTube upgrading from Windows 1.0 all the way to the most recent versions.
- PreInternet01 4y ago
- lastdong 4y agoI recall buying a magazine that focused on the Win95 launch. The highlight was the ability to play Prince of Persia in the included DOS. Backwards compatibility was effectively a major selling point.
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- ecef9-8c0f-4374 4y agoJust an generalization. It seems like wine and steam/proton embodies the early Microsoft philosophy of (backward) compatibility as selling point, while the overall Linux mindset seems to be: "fuck you, you should have provided the source code if you wanted your software to work after the next dist-upgrade" Just to be clear. I wrote this on my linux mint laptop. I'm thankful for all the hard work people put into Debian, Ubuntu and Free Software in general. This is just an generalization.
- msla 4y agoAnd these days, Windows is more about chasing the shiny than ensuring old applications run. I've had more luck with old Linux binaries running, myself.
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoI disagree. Couldn't get Deadly premonition working. Windows recommended XP compatibility mode and it worked! All the 25 years of code is still in Windows 11 they just hide it with a lick of paint. If you want to play old games Microsoft is still your best bet.
- msla 4y ago> Couldn't get Deadly premonition working. Windows recommended XP compatibility mode and it worked! This just tells me Windows is on a level with Linux + Wine, with the compatibility mode. > All the 25 years of code is still in Windows 11 they just hide it with a lick of paint. That's not true. Windows had a big, discontinuous shift when they abandoned the DOS-centric Windows codebase in the move to XP.
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoWhich is why you need a Dos Box to play DOS games.
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- ecef9-8c0f-4374 4y agoI own the games Myst 1993 for Windows 95 and I own the point and click adventure Ankh 2005 on Linux ported by RuneSoft. Only one of the 2 games I am able to run on modern hardware on a modern Linux without going the extra mile of compiling stuff. It's a shame but older Windows software runs better under wine then old Linux software does under Linux. Maybe we need a line?!
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- nraynaud 4y agoI am always torn about the agressivity of MS on the marketplace at the time and their displayed technical insecurity visible in trying to ensure compatibility with existing apps (vs telling external developers to fix things).
- moomin 4y agoMaybe for once someone should tell the story of how Windows 3.1 went the extra mile to ensure incompatibility to the extent of getting an antitrust settlement enforced.
- CSMastermind 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code ^ For those unfamiliar with what this poster is talking about. tl;dr: In a _beta_ release of windows 3.1 Microsoft included code to detect if the user was running authenticate DOS or a third-party clone and errored out if it wasn't the real thing. The code was disabled on for the actual release of 3.1 that went out to customers. Internal memos about the code came to light during the government's antitrust prosecution of Microsoft. When this happened the new owner of the clone DOS system sued Microsoft and they settled to make the case go away and get the anti-trust headlines out of the news.
- acdha 4y agoClone isn’t quite the right term since Digital Research made the original CPM which Seattle Computing used as the basis for their 86-DOS which they sold to Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS
- bmalicoat 4y agoWhen I worked at Xbox I was amazed to see the 360 game boot code had multiple title ID checks in it. For some titles it would report things differently, for others it would sleep a bit. When new features like cloud saves were introduced, those code paths for checking storage devices had per title ID branches too. It seems like whether you design your APIs perfectly or poorly, someone will use them in a way just outside of your intention.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI’m curious, do you mean consoles had code paths specific to current gen games for that console, or was this when they were implementing forms of emulation support for previous gen games? Both impress me but the former is deeply fascinating to me. Though I think graphics drivers do this all the time?
- bmalicoat 4y agoI meant when you used a 360 game on 360 hardware. But you're right, back compat teams did a number of per title fixes.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAhh my mistake. Thanks!
- bombcar 4y agoOne advantage of a console is they know all the official software that shipped so they can test it all. The PC they had to test everything that they knew about.
- overgard 4y agoAs amazing as this was, I do think subscription software and near-universal internet access has changed the equation now. Apple breaks backwards compatibility and old software all the time, and there's essentially no consequence.
- dahdum 4y agoThe consequence is enterprise sales, Apple used to compete but mostly exited that market years ago.
- overgard 4y agoI'm not sure that's true -- almost everywhere I've worked, our developer machines have been macbooks (both in large and small corporations). Right now I'm working on a Thinkpad, but that's because the company I'm at primarily makes windows software.
- kenjackson 4y agoDev machines aren’t typically considered enterprise. That said, I think most dev machines are still windows — especially outside of SV.
- yakattak 4y ago> On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. 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. This would be pretty hacky by todays standards but looking at it now it just seems like an engineer was doing what was easiest to get the job done. Not condoning it of course but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
- Arainach 4y agoThere's nothing easy about appcompat shims - diagnosing them, implementing them, or testing them. It involves preserving and testing all sorts of parallel code paths. It was about doing the only thing possible - software developers were often out of business, never interested in fixing the bugs themselves, and never capable of distributing the fixed versions to customers before the days where you could assume constant internet access (and still not entirely then)
- Sakos 4y agoRaymond Chen's blog addresses this a lot. The reason why they did this was because even if it wasn't their fault, people would blame Microsoft for breaking things. Since they can't force third-party developers to fix their broken code or to stop using weird hacks, they chose the best option available to them. Fix it themselves. I don't see how they did anything wrong or why it wouldn't still be one of the best solutions today. And honestly, it often still is the best or even the only solution today. There's only so much we have control over, no matter who we are.
- eternityforest 4y agoI still think it's a wonderful solution. If your code CAN make something work, then you do, because nobody else will, and people will be happy their old stuff still works.
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- kalleboo 4y agoEven Apple, the company that is usually seen as not caring about backwards compatibility, is known to do this in macOS! https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/ https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/
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- hericium 4y agoRecent discussion with 17 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33157215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33157215
- bernardv 4y agoVery cool. I was an MS Windows Tech Support during the Win31/1 to Win95 transition. Looking back, it went pretty smoothly. Most of our calls were HW driver related or usability related if I remember well.
- mysterydip 4y agoThat must have been a wild time, between brand new interfaces and a changing hardware landscape. Did you have many BSOD calls, or was that what you meant with HW driver related?
- bernardv 4y agoPlenty of BSOD calls for sure. Also some very memorable calls from a bunch of Linux guys who would think-up of a monster Windows machine loaded with all sorts of crazy hardware peripherals and call support to mess with us.
- derefr 4y agoAre you sure it was truly just to mess with you? If I were a Linux kernel maintainer back then, and there was some hardware I wanted to fix support for but didn't personally have the money to buy, I think "trick Microsoft into divulging how their own driver for it works" would be what I'd see as a "clever hack"!
- bernardv 4y agoPerhaps. But I think some of them were actually more senior techs calling in and messing with the new guy.
- nikanj 4y agoAbout as wild as any given day in Node.js land
- bcrescimanno 4y agoI'll share my own story of the Windows 3.1 -> 95 migration and MS Tech support. At the time, I was using my grandfather's old PC that had originally been a 486sx 33mhz processor with 4mb of RAM and a 200mb HDD. We upgraded the machine using an Intel "Overdrive" processor to a 486dx/2 66mhz processor with 8mb of RAM and added a Soundblaster 16 sound card and triple-speed CD ROM drive. I received a copy of Windows 95 for Christmas 1995 and proceeded to install it on the system. It worked pretty well and, a few months later, I decided I wanted to add the "MS Plus!" pack. I was 14 years old and knew very little about PCs at the time; though, I was learning. What I definitely didn't know at the time was that the HDD in the machine that I was told was nearly 500MB was actually a 200mb drive that had been compressed with an older version of DriveSpace. The addition of Plus! upgraded the compression to DriveSpace 3 which corrupted something on the drive that caused the system to hardlock as soon as the Windows 95 UI appeared no matter what I did. After spending 4-5 hours on the phone with a very patient tech support specialist at MS, he eventually concluded that I would need to format the drive as nothing we did in those hours worked at all. Definitely a major learning experience for me doing my first full system format and OS reinstall. By the end of 1996, I'd be doing my first Linux installation on a slightly newer PC that I saved money from a summer job to buy. If it hadn't been for DriveSpace 3 and an MS tech support specialist who educated the hell out of me for a few hours, who knows when (or even if) I would have gone down the rabbit hole that led to my career.
- squarefoot 4y agoDOS compatibility however wasn't that great. I recall using OS/2 (2.1 first, then Warp 3) DOS terminals to build and test Clipper programs. It was much a better experience, also for being able to emulate two networked DOS machines, which had some limitations and stability problems when using Windows 95 terminals.
- TillE 4y agoI forget exactly how it worked, but you could just reboot into MS-DOS on your Windows 95 computer. Crucial for running games.
- organsnyder 4y agoI just looked it up to refresh my memory. There was a "Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode" option in the shutdown menu.
- justsomehnguy 4y agoJust reboot and press F8, or add BOOTGUI=1 to MSDOS.SYS
- rblatz 4y agoHow would that work? From my recollection the computer booted up in DOS ran through your config.sys and autoexec.bat. The final line typically in the autoexec.bat was win. Which would start up windows 95. Also when you shutdown windows 95 it would leave you at a DOS prompt. So no restart was actually needed.
- fredoralive 4y agoWindows 95 didn’t have “win” in the autoexec.bat, it autoloaded it. The behaviour was controlled in msdos.sys, which on 9x had various startup options including BootGUI (DOS was entirely in io.sys). IIRC “MS DOS mode” could either just exit Windows, or reboot the entire system depending on config (presumably if you wanted custom config.sys / autoexec.bat)? But I might be wrong, it’s been years since I used 9x.