6 ms·

I was able to confirm in the Windows NT4 source code that he originally wrote some of the code for the format dialog on 2-13-95. That much is true. (late 1994,

I was able to confirm in the Windows NT4 source code that he originally wrote some of the code for the format dialog on 2-13-95. That much is true. (late 1994, early 1995, close enough) >"I also had to decide how much 'cluster slack' would be too much, and that wound up constraining the format size of a FAT volume to 32GB." NT4 didn't support FAT32, and NT4 actually was actually able to be 4GB rather than 2GB for a FAT volume because NT4 allowed 64K clusters, so actually exceeded what most systems were able to do at the time. Formatting as FAT in NT4 had no cluster check or option. The cluster size used was decided based on the size of the volume. Furthermore, the The 32GB limitation for FAT32 volumes was originally in the internal format functions, not the dialog itself. On Windows 2000 (Which does support FAT32) you can try to format a drive bigger than 32GB as FAT32, but the formatting will fail, as it is hard-coded at the end of the format to fail trying to format FAT32 volumes larger than 32GB. The dialog itself isn't what presents this limitation and it is shared by the command line format.com which uses the same functions. Not sure why he seems to always exaggerate his own involvement. He's got people believing that he wrote the Zip folder code that Microsoft literally licensed from Info-Zip because he had to touch it to get it integrated. I guess exaggeration is what "influencers" do, and that's what he is at least trying to be now.

wannacboatmovie 3y ago
I thought that sounded dubious. The 32GB limit is also enforced in diskpart.exe (for the Windows-uninitiated, a console tool for disk manipulation) which would mean it's decoupled from any UI code. In other words, the UI is not what is enforcing the limit OS-wide.
Maxious 3y ago
"vzip150.zip" credited to plummer@visualzip.com doesn't mention anything about info-zip https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=7&l=V https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=7&l=V Where did the covette come from then? https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-the-little-red-corvette-that-designing-windows-zip-folders-bought-shares-details https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-...
- Lammy 3y ago
  It used InnerMedia DynaZIP. Source: Extracted VZIP150's InstallShield `data.z`, saw `DZIP32.DLL`, and `DUNZIP32.DLL`, and confirmed with `strings` on `Vzip.dll`. http://dynazip.com/ http://dynazip.com/ confirms “DynaZip technology is used by Microsoft Corp. and for many years it has been directly incorporated into the Desktop and Server versions of the Windows Operating Systems. DynaZip technology implements the compression engine behind the Windows Zip Folder user interface which allows users to view, extract-from and create ZIP files that are managed as compressed folders.” https://web.archive.org/web/19961130210204/http://www.innermedia.com/dynazip.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19961130210204/http://www.innerm... Version 3 https://web.archive.org/web/20000226025901/http://www.dynazip.com/html/dynazip.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20000226025901/http://www.dynazi... Version 4
rsweeney21 3y ago
I owned zip folders for a while during the windows Vista days. I could have sworn the code was originally purchased, not written by someone at Microsoft. Honestly, it looked like it had been run through an obfuscator. I assumed that the original author had done that to ensure it was difficult for Microsoft to make changes/improvements. I still have nightmares about that code. :)
- shp0ngle 3y ago
  It was purchased.
- aargh_aargh 3y ago
  I may be misremembering, but Dave has spoken on his Dave's Garage Youtube channel about running a separate software business selling small utilities and later selling some of them to Microsoft. This might have been one of them. A quick search confirms that he also claims that here: https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kfpjhg/i_am_dave_plummer_author_of_windows_task_manager/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kfpjhg/i_am_dave_plum...
  - lgunsch 3y ago
    He talks about it in one of his videos. The zip directory was a product of a side hustle of his, which Microsoft then bought out. In the video he comments how much easier it was to integrate when he had access to more internal apis.
  - xnx 3y ago
    Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587379 21 days ago | 121 comments
Solvency 3y ago
Dude this guy is desperately trying to avoid fading into oblivion and is clinging to a little ancient format window to remain relevant in public eye. Have some mercy and let him have his 32gb moment.
- exe34 3y ago
  Memory is an interesting thing. I once claimed to somebody I was seeing that I had done/said something humorous, fully believing that it was my own experience. It was only when he mentioned hearing that joke from a famous standup comedian that it really hit me - I think what really happened was that I watched a clip a long time ago, and thought hey that's the kind of thing I'd have done - and then proceeded to record the memory as mine, even going as far as attaching it to a specific shop from the same chain in the story.
  - m_sahaf 3y ago
    Once famous incident of this effect is reported by Oliver Sacks, where he confidently narrated a story that presumably happened to him during the war until his brother corrected him: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/fully-immersive-mind-oliver-sacks/ https://www.wired.com/2015/08/fully-immersive-mind-oliver-sa...
  - naikrovek 3y ago
    i remember reading a study that showed conclusively that verbalizing your memories changes them permanently, every time. at some point, if you talk about a memory enough, you wind up remembering the words you've used to describe the memory far more than you remember the memory itself. depending on the words you choose to describe the memory, and how much you talk about it, you can dramatically change what you think you saw or heard or experienced, to the point where you're telling something that is based on memory, but is now effectively 100% fiction. human memory is very, very flawed.
    - exe34 3y ago
      Ian Banks wrote something about how if you live long enough and reminisce enough, your worst memory becomes indistinguishable from your best memory.
Dalewyn 3y ago
It would be nice if you can cite credentials, if possible; not everyone has/had access to Windows NT source code and Dave for his part provided his credentials. Not that I am discounting your claim, but from a cursory glance through your comment history you're practically a nobody with a seeming vendetta against someone who credibly had a part in much of Windows NT's innards.
- ikari_pl 3y ago
  I do remember there was a leak of Windows 2000 source code years ago. I downloaded it only to search for swear words. The most offensive thing I've ever found was things like "workaround because some idiots call <API name> <description of a wrong way to do it>"
- mappu 3y ago
  NT 4 and Windows 2000 source code were leaked on Feb 12 2004. The second google result is a copy that Microsoft are hosting on their own website: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0 https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    In that case, parent commenter or someone sufficiently motivated should cite file and line number to corroborate the claim. (I'm not going to do it because I'm drunk and I probably have better things to do than illicitly look through Microsoft source code.)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - atombender 3y ago
      Someone else already posted a comment with the exact file.
- bc_programming 3y ago
  Fair enough. As others have noted the source code was leaked; I've got NT4, NT5, XP, XPSP1 and Server 2003 codebases to review from that, which I downloaded a good while ago. I've been a software developer primarily targeting Windows for 20 years, 10 of those professionally. I was a Microsoft MVP for half of those (2012-2016 inclusive). The reference to the date is found in the header of nt4\private\windows\shell\shelldll\unicode\format.c The 32GB limit for FAT32 doesn't appear to be handled by the shell code or the dialog, so when I said it was handled internally to the formatting code, I couldn't actually find that. It's just somewhere loweer than the UI. What I did do howeever was boot up Windows 2000, the first version that did have FAT32, and there's no limitation in the format dialog itself. It goes through the entire process and then gives a "Volume too big" error after it has gone through the process, an error shared by not just the format dialog, but diskpart, disk management, and format, which certainly suggests that that is happening at some lower level. The dialog in question does just call into other functions to perform the actual format, but I wasn't able to find the actual source files for it. >Dave for his part provided his credentials. Now he understandably does leave out a bit of info about his history which you could arguably say is part of my "vendetta" that you observed. The reason for the proportion of comments is less a vendetta and more that I get kind of worked up every time stuff of his is posted and people applaud how great he is. He's no Dave Cutler but he certainly talks like he was. Now, as to the tidbit. Dave Plummer ran a scam company that was sued by Washington State in 2006, "SoftwareOnline.com, Inc. ". He actually left Microsoft specifically to run this company. Court documents can be seen here: https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s-office-sues-settles-washington-based-softwareonlinecom https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s... You can find David W. Plummer listed in the court complaint. The short of it is that it was an online software scam company that tricked people into downloading fake Anti-virus and security software using online ads, and then the software delivered additional adware and nagware onto users machines. That is why it may appear I have a vendetta. I don't trust a word he says and especially when what he says directly contradicts other sources. Mistakes in memory are one thing, but some of them are rather beyond the sort of thing I think is reasonable. Paired with his history, I'm convinced he's actually lying intentionally because he's trying to build a "following" and "Dave's Garage" is just his latest scam. That's why he keeps "coming forward" in posts and his youtube as writing this or doing that. What bothers me is that it's working, because most people don't seem to even question it, even where there are rather severe contradictions.
EMIRELADERO 3y ago
For reference: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db67583b0db94b617d5378e788/private/windows/shell/shelldll/unicode/format.c https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db6758...
- josephcsible 3y ago
  Warning: don't look if you ever want to contribute to Wine or ReactOS
  - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
    That's just a myth. ReactOS routinely uses IDA to inspect actual Windows binary logic.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      I know that Microsoft employees have accused them of such things, but is there any real evidence of such, or even anyone unaffiliated with Microsoft who can corroborate?
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Disassembling a binary is "clean room" reverse engineering but looking at leaked source is not. Or, at least, that was what it was in the 80s.
chungy 3y ago
Memory is a fickle thing, but the format dialog enforcing a FAT32 limit is probably Dave's biggest failing when it comes to telling old stories. I don't know if FAT32 was in development in late 1994, it's possible, but it sure didn't ship in Windows NT 4, nor the original Windows 95. Even when it did land in Windows 95 OSR2, the format command happily accepted partitions up to 128GiB; but okay, Windows 95 isn't NT. Windows 2000's internal formatting functions appear to be the real reason FAT32 is limited to 32GiB on new formats. The GUI, format command, and diskpart are all equally incapable of creating a >32GiB file system. Why? Who knows, it's not like drives of that size or larger didn't already exist at the time. If you use, say, mkdosfs on Linux, the VFAT driver in Windows 2000+ will take volumes up to 2TiB, you can even install Windows 2000 on such large volumes.
- chungy 3y ago
  As an aside, and connected to the failing memory thing, Raymond Chen has repeated multiple times that Space Cadet Pinball couldn't get working on a 64-bit build and never shipped with any version of Windows, and that's why it was gone in Vista. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition has a working 64-bit native build of Pinball. Well, it was a game from 1995 and wouldn't fit in with Vista's style revamp. Even the old Minesweeper and Solitaire games became Direct3D accelerated in Vista. Maybe the effort to do the same overhaul to Pinball was discarded, but the idea that a 64-bit native build couldn't get working is absurd when the previous Windows version included the very thing.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    There were issues with Pinball on "Windows XP 64-bit Edition", or the Itanium version. A great video explaining this is https://youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw https://youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw
  - jborean93 3y ago
    In his defence he has clarified this was for the Alpha AXP 64bit build that had the problem https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220106-00/?p=106122 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220106-00/?p=10....
jeroenhd 3y ago
I think he's misremembering about the format part because the UI does have some arbitrary cluster sizes for NTFS: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db67583b0db94b617d5378e788/private/windows/shell/shelldll/unicode/format.c#L473 https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db6758... That code still seemed to be around in (some versions of) XP: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b7911f1df4669989611/Source/XPSP1/NT/shell/shell32/format.cpp#L462 https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b... As for the ZIP support, I can't find the source code for ZIP folders specifically. There's this excerpt from another company (Schlumberger Technology Corp.): https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b7911f1df4669989611/Source/XPSP1/NT/ds/security/csps/cryptoflex/slbzip/zip.cpp#L7 https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b... which was added in 1996 if the comments are to be believed.
Kwpolska 3y ago
[flagged]
- dmw_ng 3y ago
  I didn't read heroics in the above tweet and I'm more than a little confused about the sour grapes here. Is it too much to forgive inaccuracies in a 29 year old memory for such a low stakes issue, especially when there is a huge benefit to giving a personality to some ancient OS history? It wouldn't matter if he claimed his 5.25" drive shot lightning bolts the first time he tried to compile that dialog, the stories are still great and it's personally enough for me having grown up with these systems to hear them told (not much different from listening to a pseudo-senile grandparent exaggerate war stories for entertainment's sake)
  - justin66 3y ago
    > I'm more than a little confused about the sour grapes here The bitterness of these comments seems to be inversely proportional to the subject matter's importance. In fairness to these posters... I mean, it's the internet.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    The inaccuracies in this tweet are one thing, his YouTube videos are full of self-praise.
    - justin66 3y ago
      He got Dave Cutler to sit for a three hour interview. As far as the value of his social media stuff goes, the danger posed by his inflating the importance of the Windows format dialog and his contribution to it (seriously?) is outweighed by the serious stuff he's doing.
- westhanover 3y ago
  [dead]
- naikrovek 3y ago
0110101001 3y ago
> I was able to confirm in the Windows NT4 source code that he originally wrote some of the code for the format dialog on 2-13-95. That was a dry Monday, not a rainy Thursday. It's possible he wrote the code Thursday, but didn't get to check it in until Sunday (though Thursday was dry too), but I know I couldn't tell you the what the weather was for code I wrote last month.
sebazzz 3y ago
> I guess exaggeration is what "influencers" do, and that's what he is at least trying to be now. Regardless of the rest of your story, this made me chuckle a bit - since Dave went from signing off his YouTube video’s from “I’m only here for likes and subs” to “I’m mostly here for the likes and subs” and started accepting sponsored products.

wannacboatmovie 3y ago

I thought that sounded dubious. The 32GB limit is also enforced in diskpart.exe (for the Windows-uninitiated, a console tool for disk manipulation) which would mean it's decoupled from any UI code. In other words, the UI is not what is enforcing the limit OS-wide.

Maxious 3y ago

"vzip150.zip" credited to plummer@visualzip.com doesn't mention anything about info-zip https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=7&l=V https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=7&l=V Where did the covette come from then? https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-the-little-red-corvette-that-designing-windows-zip-folders-bought-shares-details https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-...

Lammy 3y ago
It used InnerMedia DynaZIP. Source: Extracted VZIP150's InstallShield `data.z`, saw `DZIP32.DLL`, and `DUNZIP32.DLL`, and confirmed with `strings` on `Vzip.dll`. http://dynazip.com/ http://dynazip.com/ confirms “DynaZip technology is used by Microsoft Corp. and for many years it has been directly incorporated into the Desktop and Server versions of the Windows Operating Systems. DynaZip technology implements the compression engine behind the Windows Zip Folder user interface which allows users to view, extract-from and create ZIP files that are managed as compressed folders.” https://web.archive.org/web/19961130210204/http://www.innermedia.com/dynazip.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19961130210204/http://www.innerm... Version 3 https://web.archive.org/web/20000226025901/http://www.dynazip.com/html/dynazip.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20000226025901/http://www.dynazi... Version 4

rsweeney21 3y ago

I owned zip folders for a while during the windows Vista days. I could have sworn the code was originally purchased, not written by someone at Microsoft. Honestly, it looked like it had been run through an obfuscator. I assumed that the original author had done that to ensure it was difficult for Microsoft to make changes/improvements. I still have nightmares about that code. :)

shp0ngle 3y ago
It was purchased.
aargh_aargh 3y ago
I may be misremembering, but Dave has spoken on his Dave's Garage Youtube channel about running a separate software business selling small utilities and later selling some of them to Microsoft. This might have been one of them. A quick search confirms that he also claims that here: https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kfpjhg/i_am_dave_plummer_author_of_windows_task_manager/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kfpjhg/i_am_dave_plum...
- lgunsch 3y ago
  He talks about it in one of his videos. The zip directory was a product of a side hustle of his, which Microsoft then bought out. In the video he comments how much easier it was to integrate when he had access to more internal apis.
- xnx 3y ago
  Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587379 21 days ago | 121 comments

Solvency 3y ago

Dude this guy is desperately trying to avoid fading into oblivion and is clinging to a little ancient format window to remain relevant in public eye. Have some mercy and let him have his 32gb moment.

exe34 3y ago
Memory is an interesting thing. I once claimed to somebody I was seeing that I had done/said something humorous, fully believing that it was my own experience. It was only when he mentioned hearing that joke from a famous standup comedian that it really hit me - I think what really happened was that I watched a clip a long time ago, and thought hey that's the kind of thing I'd have done - and then proceeded to record the memory as mine, even going as far as attaching it to a specific shop from the same chain in the story.
- m_sahaf 3y ago
  Once famous incident of this effect is reported by Oliver Sacks, where he confidently narrated a story that presumably happened to him during the war until his brother corrected him: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/fully-immersive-mind-oliver-sacks/ https://www.wired.com/2015/08/fully-immersive-mind-oliver-sa...
- naikrovek 3y ago
  i remember reading a study that showed conclusively that verbalizing your memories changes them permanently, every time. at some point, if you talk about a memory enough, you wind up remembering the words you've used to describe the memory far more than you remember the memory itself. depending on the words you choose to describe the memory, and how much you talk about it, you can dramatically change what you think you saw or heard or experienced, to the point where you're telling something that is based on memory, but is now effectively 100% fiction. human memory is very, very flawed.
  - exe34 3y ago
    Ian Banks wrote something about how if you live long enough and reminisce enough, your worst memory becomes indistinguishable from your best memory.

Dalewyn 3y ago

It would be nice if you can cite credentials, if possible; not everyone has/had access to Windows NT source code and Dave for his part provided his credentials. Not that I am discounting your claim, but from a cursory glance through your comment history you're practically a nobody with a seeming vendetta against someone who credibly had a part in much of Windows NT's innards.

ikari_pl 3y ago
I do remember there was a leak of Windows 2000 source code years ago. I downloaded it only to search for swear words. The most offensive thing I've ever found was things like "workaround because some idiots call <API name> <description of a wrong way to do it>"
mappu 3y ago
NT 4 and Windows 2000 source code were leaked on Feb 12 2004. The second google result is a copy that Microsoft are hosting on their own website: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0 https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  In that case, parent commenter or someone sufficiently motivated should cite file and line number to corroborate the claim. (I'm not going to do it because I'm drunk and I probably have better things to do than illicitly look through Microsoft source code.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - atombender 3y ago
    Someone else already posted a comment with the exact file.
bc_programming 3y ago
Fair enough. As others have noted the source code was leaked; I've got NT4, NT5, XP, XPSP1 and Server 2003 codebases to review from that, which I downloaded a good while ago. I've been a software developer primarily targeting Windows for 20 years, 10 of those professionally. I was a Microsoft MVP for half of those (2012-2016 inclusive). The reference to the date is found in the header of nt4\private\windows\shell\shelldll\unicode\format.c The 32GB limit for FAT32 doesn't appear to be handled by the shell code or the dialog, so when I said it was handled internally to the formatting code, I couldn't actually find that. It's just somewhere loweer than the UI. What I did do howeever was boot up Windows 2000, the first version that did have FAT32, and there's no limitation in the format dialog itself. It goes through the entire process and then gives a "Volume too big" error after it has gone through the process, an error shared by not just the format dialog, but diskpart, disk management, and format, which certainly suggests that that is happening at some lower level. The dialog in question does just call into other functions to perform the actual format, but I wasn't able to find the actual source files for it. >Dave for his part provided his credentials. Now he understandably does leave out a bit of info about his history which you could arguably say is part of my "vendetta" that you observed. The reason for the proportion of comments is less a vendetta and more that I get kind of worked up every time stuff of his is posted and people applaud how great he is. He's no Dave Cutler but he certainly talks like he was. Now, as to the tidbit. Dave Plummer ran a scam company that was sued by Washington State in 2006, "SoftwareOnline.com, Inc. ". He actually left Microsoft specifically to run this company. Court documents can be seen here: https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s-office-sues-settles-washington-based-softwareonlinecom https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s... You can find David W. Plummer listed in the court complaint. The short of it is that it was an online software scam company that tricked people into downloading fake Anti-virus and security software using online ads, and then the software delivered additional adware and nagware onto users machines. That is why it may appear I have a vendetta. I don't trust a word he says and especially when what he says directly contradicts other sources. Mistakes in memory are one thing, but some of them are rather beyond the sort of thing I think is reasonable. Paired with his history, I'm convinced he's actually lying intentionally because he's trying to build a "following" and "Dave's Garage" is just his latest scam. That's why he keeps "coming forward" in posts and his youtube as writing this or doing that. What bothers me is that it's working, because most people don't seem to even question it, even where there are rather severe contradictions.

EMIRELADERO 3y ago

For reference: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db67583b0db94b617d5378e788/private/windows/shell/shelldll/unicode/format.c https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db6758...

josephcsible 3y ago
Warning: don't look if you ever want to contribute to Wine or ReactOS
- EMIRELADERO 3y ago
  That's just a myth. ReactOS routinely uses IDA to inspect actual Windows binary logic.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    I know that Microsoft employees have accused them of such things, but is there any real evidence of such, or even anyone unaffiliated with Microsoft who can corroborate?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Disassembling a binary is "clean room" reverse engineering but looking at leaked source is not. Or, at least, that was what it was in the 80s.

chungy 3y ago

Memory is a fickle thing, but the format dialog enforcing a FAT32 limit is probably Dave's biggest failing when it comes to telling old stories. I don't know if FAT32 was in development in late 1994, it's possible, but it sure didn't ship in Windows NT 4, nor the original Windows 95. Even when it did land in Windows 95 OSR2, the format command happily accepted partitions up to 128GiB; but okay, Windows 95 isn't NT. Windows 2000's internal formatting functions appear to be the real reason FAT32 is limited to 32GiB on new formats. The GUI, format command, and diskpart are all equally incapable of creating a >32GiB file system. Why? Who knows, it's not like drives of that size or larger didn't already exist at the time. If you use, say, mkdosfs on Linux, the VFAT driver in Windows 2000+ will take volumes up to 2TiB, you can even install Windows 2000 on such large volumes.

chungy 3y ago
As an aside, and connected to the failing memory thing, Raymond Chen has repeated multiple times that Space Cadet Pinball couldn't get working on a 64-bit build and never shipped with any version of Windows, and that's why it was gone in Vista. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition has a working 64-bit native build of Pinball. Well, it was a game from 1995 and wouldn't fit in with Vista's style revamp. Even the old Minesweeper and Solitaire games became Direct3D accelerated in Vista. Maybe the effort to do the same overhaul to Pinball was discarded, but the idea that a 64-bit native build couldn't get working is absurd when the previous Windows version included the very thing.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  There were issues with Pinball on "Windows XP 64-bit Edition", or the Itanium version. A great video explaining this is https://youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw https://youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw
- jborean93 3y ago
  In his defence he has clarified this was for the Alpha AXP 64bit build that had the problem https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220106-00/?p=106122 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220106-00/?p=10....

jeroenhd 3y ago

I think he's misremembering about the format part because the UI does have some arbitrary cluster sizes for NTFS: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db67583b0db94b617d5378e788/private/windows/shell/shelldll/unicode/format.c#L473 https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0/blob/b4a8d373d8a082db6758... That code still seemed to be around in (some versions of) XP: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b7911f1df4669989611/Source/XPSP1/NT/shell/shell32/format.cpp#L462 https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b... As for the ZIP support, I can't find the source code for ZIP folders specifically. There's this excerpt from another company (Schlumberger Technology Corp.): https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b7911f1df4669989611/Source/XPSP1/NT/ds/security/csps/cryptoflex/slbzip/zip.cpp#L7 https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b... which was added in 1996 if the comments are to be believed.

Kwpolska 3y ago

[flagged]

dmw_ng 3y ago
I didn't read heroics in the above tweet and I'm more than a little confused about the sour grapes here. Is it too much to forgive inaccuracies in a 29 year old memory for such a low stakes issue, especially when there is a huge benefit to giving a personality to some ancient OS history? It wouldn't matter if he claimed his 5.25" drive shot lightning bolts the first time he tried to compile that dialog, the stories are still great and it's personally enough for me having grown up with these systems to hear them told (not much different from listening to a pseudo-senile grandparent exaggerate war stories for entertainment's sake)
- justin66 3y ago
  > I'm more than a little confused about the sour grapes here The bitterness of these comments seems to be inversely proportional to the subject matter's importance. In fairness to these posters... I mean, it's the internet.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  The inaccuracies in this tweet are one thing, his YouTube videos are full of self-praise.
  - justin66 3y ago
    He got Dave Cutler to sit for a three hour interview. As far as the value of his social media stuff goes, the danger posed by his inflating the importance of the Windows format dialog and his contribution to it (seriously?) is outweighed by the serious stuff he's doing.
westhanover 3y ago
[dead]
naikrovek 3y ago

0110101001 3y ago

> I was able to confirm in the Windows NT4 source code that he originally wrote some of the code for the format dialog on 2-13-95. That was a dry Monday, not a rainy Thursday. It's possible he wrote the code Thursday, but didn't get to check it in until Sunday (though Thursday was dry too), but I know I couldn't tell you the what the weather was for code I wrote last month.

sebazzz 3y ago

> I guess exaggeration is what "influencers" do, and that's what he is at least trying to be now. Regardless of the rest of your story, this made me chuckle a bit - since Dave went from signing off his YouTube video’s from “I’m only here for likes and subs” to “I’m mostly here for the likes and subs” and started accepting sponsored products.