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Windows 3.1 tiled background .bmp archive
- thombles 7mo agoIf you want your nostalgia in multimedia - https://canyonmid.com/ https://canyonmid.com/
- vunderba 7mo agoNice. Kind of wish they'd used a shader to approximate the barrel distortion in the curvature of the Tandy monitor.
- Terr_ 7mo ago34 years of nostalgia there. Well, not continuously, but y'know.
- thereticent 7mo agoLove that. As an aside, that keyboard in particular had the best click I've ever experienced.
- dotancohen 7mo agoBetter than the Model M?
- Ancapistani 7mo agoPretty sure that is a Model M, just whitelabeled.
- thereticent 7mo agoI've own both, and this one had a nice sticky/tacky sound without a tacky feel. The Model M felt and sounded like loading a releasing a spring! I saw that another commenter suggested this one may have been a repackaged Model M. If it was, it must have had different switches that I preferred.
- OCTAGRAM 7mo agoWhen I could run Windows 3.1, I had no multimedia thing. I have found PC Speaker driver somewhere, and it could play event sounds like start-up, but could not play in ordinary player. Same WAV in player won't play because it is not "event sound". And no MIDI of course. Windows 3.1 was somewhere around, but it was nothing to do there. Graphics on EGA was slow. Windows 3.1 was telling us: if you want your programs to work fast, write them for bare metal, and we were using bare metal programs in DOS and writing bare metal programs for DOS. First time I heard MIDI was Windows 98 already. Graphics of Windows was still slow compared to DOS, but Windows 98 offered more experience. Other developers were raising questions why do they write slow programs for Windows when they could write fast programs for DOS. From times of sound card arrival I recall that there was a bridge between CD-ROM and soundcard, and DOS Navigator could control playback of CD tracks, and that was they way we had music for ordinary activity. Most memories about MIDI are related to custom Duke Nukem 3D maps. Custom maps sometimes included custom graphics in ART files and custom music in MIDI format. Duke Nukem 3D is the most recognized MIDI player. In Windows I could download Macromedia Flash file, observe the slide show, think "guys, when will you learn to program?" Exit Windows, run Duke Nukem 3D, wonder why can some programmers deliver real time 3D graphics, and other programmers cannot even draw 2D. Oh, and MIDI plays in the background because Duke Nukem 3D music is MIDI.
- user3939382 7mo agoComputers were wondrous and amazing then. Every feature and capability was exciting and full of promise. Now I see node modules, IAM, surveillance, adtech. It’s more like repulsion. Very sad.
- sph 7mo agoLook info perma/retrocomputing. Write your own text editor. Where we’re going, 640 kB of memory ought to be enough.
- daniel_iversen 7mo agoRemember this video? https://www.reddit.com/r/Lostwave/comments/1169ku2/unknown_pop_song_from_a_sample_video_file_named/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Lostwave/comments/1169ku2/unknown_p...
- perilunar 7mo agoI'm curious about how much bigger the video is than the actual canyon.mid file.
- czemuja 7mo agothanks bro <3
- spacebuffer 7mo agothe leaves one is really nice.
- dwd 7mo agoIt was actually. Tried it as my background for a bit as it looks good tiled, but mainly used the two tartans or just a solid blue.
- soopypoos 7mo agoLast night I dreamed of flying toasters
- _fw 7mo agoWhat tickles me is that Andreas put these on GitHub 13 years ago. That’s long enough in tech to be considered retro in and of itself… let alone the age of these tiled backgrounds!
- bombcar 7mo agoSomeone who bought Windows 3.1 could easily be a grandparent by now, even if their first kid was born on release day. And the kid could be born when this upload was done, and now be downloading!
- wiremine 7mo agoOh, man, does that bring back the memories! Thanks for sharing. :-)
- montroser 7mo agoGosh, my brain just got all fuzzy going through those one after the next. Transitioning from the previous era of CGA to 16 colors was so very exciting at the time.
- peder 7mo agoI feel an ocular migraine coming on looking at these. On CRT displays, did these not cause visual problems in the same way? I remember having no trouble looking at these years ago.
- patrickscoleman 7mo agowe have a crt tv with built in vhs in our office and have a bunch of old tapes one is “Mastering Windows 3.1” it’s fun to run in the background while working for your enjoyment, here’s a similar 3.1 tutorial video from that era uploaded to YouTube https://youtu.be/KRi5mjMgORk?si=OFH7UhOQif5EUCtg https://youtu.be/KRi5mjMgORk?si=OFH7UhOQif5EUCtg
- layer8 7mo agoBackground knowledge is invaluable.
- jerbearito 7mo agoThat's a great idea. It would be neat if you could also cast media to it somehow.
- toast0 7mo agoEarly Rokus had rca out (sometimes through a 1/8" jack)
- mikestorrent 7mo agothe 256color.bmp looks wrong, it's supposed to look more 3d, because it actually does use the 256 color pallette
- gfody 7mo agoyep that ones quantized to the system palette with no dithering, better version here: https://peakd.com/pixelart/@zelet/pixel-art-series-3-homage-to-windows-wallpapers-1990-1995 https://peakd.com/pixelart/@zelet/pixel-art-series-3-homage-...
- mikestorrent 7mo agoYou are a king, thank you
- pixelpoet 7mo agoI stared at that little image for hours, just being blown away that a computer can show so many colours. Then I became a graphics programmer...
- LetsGetTechnicl 7mo agoHere's someone's personal archive of weird miscellanea, including old Windows wallpapers which is what reminded me. I use unironically use the classic Packard Bell tile background on my computers because it reminds me of my grandmother's PC which is one of the first I ever used. https://www.dvd3000.ca/wp/extra/pb.html https://www.dvd3000.ca/wp/extra/pb.html
- g-mork 7mo agoThat etched 3 colour look to this very day remains the peak of modern aesthetic for me. Thought it was so cool and sophisticated when I was 12
- unixhero 7mo agoAgreed it is amazing
- jerbearito 7mo agoThese personal collections are always neat to see. I'd like to start my own (beyond scraps in my local Pictures folder) but I'm not sure how to structure it. I might just build a grid of tagged/categorized media, like a chaotic memory palace.
- markus_zhang 7mo agoI checked the website and he/she did a lot of really cool stuffs.
- userbinator 7mo agoPackard Bell is one of those logos that really perplexes me as to what exactly it's supposed to represent. A very stylised "P B" somehow? An ear with an earphone stuck in it? An abstract vacuum tube? A crushed air-cooled engine block?
- exidy 7mo agoIt's a face, specifically the "face of technology". [0] [0] https://1000logos.net/packard-bell-logo/ https://1000logos.net/packard-bell-logo/
- tmtvl 7mo agoIt's weird that those give me nostalgia when I clearly remember our PC having a monochrome monitor. I wonder if my brain is retrofitting stuff or whether if any of those survived to Windows 98.
- monday2 7mo agoDelightful! Glad someone posted this
- stevage 7mo agoExactly as I remember - very few of them actually usable as backgrounds because they're so garish.
- silversmith 7mo agoBut pleasant enough when viewed on a monochrome display.
- gerdesj 7mo agoSigh ... boots C64 with a rather odd coax to SCART to HDMI daisy-chain video interface. I also have a QSII joystick that I didn't quite manage to ruin playing Daley Thompson decathalon.
- BobMcBob 7mo agoI know this isnt related to the post, but does anyone remember the artist or website that had a bunch of cool textures and colorful tiled wallpaper for the early days of linux? think mid-90s. I've been scratching my head for years and my searches have never found it, but there has to be some white beards here that can recall it. I remember there were some really cool options available, I believe in a square format for better tiling. If anyone can remember and post a link or archive I would very much appreciate it.
- mrbuttons454 7mo agoIf it's what I'm thinking of, it was the "Propaganda" wallpapers. I remember using them in Red Hat 6 in the late 90s! https://github.com/BenjaminHCCarr/PropagandaTiles https://github.com/BenjaminHCCarr/PropagandaTiles Seems to match what's in the desktop-backgrounds RPM on this ISO (CD 1) https://archive.org/details/red-hat-linux-6.1 https://archive.org/details/red-hat-linux-6.1
- BobMcBob 7mo agoYes! This is it, thank you! I've been trying to find these for a long while. I even remember co-opting some for a Geocities page back in the day when those were kinda cool lol!
- naikrovek 7mo agok10k.com maybe
- incanus77 7mo agoWas it tigert? Or maybe Garrett LeSage?
- teddyh 7mo agoThis may also be relevant: <https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/logos/!INDEX.html https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/logos/!INDEX.html>
- lloydatkinson 7mo agoIt's funny that these all look more modern than you typically see on desktops.
- wkjagt 7mo agoFunny coincidence. I was just (as in just now) looking for a graphics driver for my old Pentium laptop to get Windows 3.1 to work at the full 800x600 resolution.
- anthk 7mo agoInstall Windows 3.11 and Calmira Desktop, it will give you a Win95 like taskbar and maybe a better explorer. It's libre software. With Win 3.11 you can even set networking and read HN at gopher://hngopher.com Also, with an IRC client and the public servers from https:/bitlbee.org you can connect most modern protocols such as Jabber/Mastodon/Discord and the like and still be communicated. Usenet it's usenet, still works with http://www.eternal-september.org http://www.eternal-september.org, there are still good newsgroups out there, from computers to misc.news.internet.discuss .
- thowme923874 7mo agoLove this. Do it again, but for the whole package history of propaganda-debian. Edit: I guess the package still exists, even though many desktop refuse to tile jpg. :/
- gary_cli 7mo agovery good
- dkga 7mo agoBoy how I love them all, especially Egypt, which looks like the shekel symbol, and the arches.
- Induane 7mo agoIt seems to be missing that tiled red brick.
- t1234s 7mo agoback in the 3.11/95 era when doing troubleshooting of slow PC's I would always change the bitmap wallpaper to a solid color. nothing more painful then watching a slow machine waste resources trying to render a desktop background.
- vardump 7mo agoLater on... "Why did Windows 7, for a few months, log on slower if you have a solid color background?" https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250428-00/?p=111121 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250428-00/?p=11...
- canyp 7mo agoPeak Windows. Everything went downhill from there.
- sph 7mo agoIt was the start of the rise towards the peak, which was reached with Windows 2000.
- ajxs 7mo agoSomewhat related: https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/backgroundsindex https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/b...
- genthree 7mo agoI sort of miss when my way of using GUI desktops involved the wallpaper sometimes being visible. These days It’s all quarter/half/full windows that rarely close, and certainly are never minimized.
- thewebguyd 7mo agomacOS is still somewhat like this, if you avoid the "full screen" maximize just double clicking the titlebar will only grow the window to fit the content rather than have the window to fill the screen. Its a lot like papers on a desk, and I know tons of folks here don't care for that model but I quite like it, especially in conjunction with stage manager.
- genthree 7mo agoI’m on macOS, it’s where I started working this way… uh… 12ish years ago. Still using Spectacle for window management, despite its being long-discontinued. Still works, never a problem or glitch at all.
- OCTAGRAM 7mo agoAlso, windows are not multiple. Each draw.io wants to be big rectangle because it is web garbage. Each chat program, unlike what Psi and QIP were
- angled 7mo agoWe had a lot more TUIs and transparent terms / libs with transparency. Things like Xchat, etc.
- genthree 7mo agoOh, I was there for a good deal of it. Win 3.1 was my first GUI OS. Remember wacky compositor add-ons to x-window to get the wobbly windows and the really good transparency that doesn’t wait for you to stop moving the window to update, on Linux. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
- 7mo ago
- pieterhg 7mo agoAnd if you want your nostalgia interactive - https://pieter.com https://pieter.com
- malux85 7mo agoOne of my hobbies is to install older versions of windows and play around with them a bit - at the moment I have 86Box emulating an old machine with windows 3.11 installed and Visual C++, and I'm writing a little implementaiton of DFT so I can simulate a water molecule. Mostly because I want to go back to the days of when I had a 486 in my bedroom, I finally got a graphical desktop working, and the feeling of joy with the old wallpapers, the clock running, a coding IDE, I spent hours in there learning about memory allocations, functions, OpenGL, such good memories that turned into a lifelong career.
- techhiker41 7mo ago[dead]
- OCTAGRAM 7mo agoTiles were comparably slow to draw. Windows 3.1 and maybe more recent Windows had a background option called "patterns". These are 8x8 patterns of black-over-something. Second color is customizable. It could be white, but also something else. EGA/VGA hardware specific is that 8 pixel wide repeating stuff can be drawn relatively quickly. Patterns were not inside files. They are probably inside registry? Or ini files? Whatever. The end result is that patterns are forgotten and omitted from retro background collections.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Vexs 7mo agoSome time ago I wanted the original MS solitaire playing card files. Wasn't too hard to find a copy of the binary, but the interesting thing to me is it appeared the files were handwritten- a couple possible typos in color and not a single byte longer than they needed to be.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- shellwizard 7mo agoFor more nostalgia: https://images.ira.abramov.org/Propaganda/ https://images.ira.abramov.org/Propaganda/
- Levitating 7mo agoCool! Tiled wallpapers are underrated. They will always work, regardless of resolution and attached monitors.