Does anyone else have an unhealthy obsession with legacy software?
Recently, I discovered a website that runs Windows 95 through an emscripten'd DOSbox webpage (just google for "windows 95 browser emulator). It didn't run very fast, but spurred me on to download a Windows 95 image onto a VM (i was still memeing at this point).
Took a while to get set up, but once I did I poked about online for cool software, and discovered that on a website called winworldpc.com, one can download Visual Studio Enterprise 97. I immediately downloaded it, installed it, and started writing software (pic related was a quickndirty BMP loader).
I can't even begin to describe how INSANELY fucking KINO the entire setup is. I reached levels of comfyness that shouldn't even be possible. For the record, I wasn't old enough at the time to us W95. Now I know what I missed out on... I'm currently aggressively browsing ebay for a nice win95 machine, so that I can do proper development, with real hardware. I have a bit of an EE background, so I asked my library to get a book on Windows 95 system development, VxD driver development, and PCI bus structure (thinking of doing some FPGA PCI board for dicking about purposes). These are obviously hard to obtain these days, but they found them and I had a flick through. Pretty sweet stuff.
Does anyone else have this tendency? Am I just crazy? I used to think "eh, maybe if i was born 10 years earlier, I'd get to have the same kind of wild-west down to the metal development that today's senior developers went through", but now i'm convinced that I was destined to write gnarly C code for ancient 386 and pentium I boxes.
Why did i have to be born in the era of fucking javascript?
You're lucky to be living now and not then. Computers are cheap and powerful, and you can buy a CPU that will still be reasonably powerful in 5 years.
Also, Win95 is liquid ass in terms of programming. The Win32 API itself is fine if verbose, but the OS makes debugging a pain in the ass. Consider for example that kernel memory is mapped writable into every process's address space, writable. Read from a null pointer? You get nonsense data, not an exception. Write to a null pointer? You've just corrupted kernel data structures and will probably be seeing a blue screen soon.
Easton Myers
I actually have one. I'd like a full-tower if possible, though. Need those expantion slots.
I like the fact that there isn't much in the system, it's a refreshing break from the infinite layers of complexity in modern software stacks.
Eli Miller
I have a Pentium 2. Expansion slots are nice, but you mostly fill them with things you now expect to be built in. >GPU >MPEG2 decode card >ethernet >wifi >sound card >USB 2 controller And welp, that's all available slots filled.
Jack Carter
>Write to a null pointer? You've just corrupted kernel data structures man i wish windows still had this feature
Jose Gomez
No, you don't. Segmentation fault and break to debugger is far more useful. Your debugger can't catch the invalid write if it silently succeeds.
Anthony Hughes
>le wrong generation You couldn't pay me to go back to the '90s or earlier, it's never been a better time to be into legacy shit while it's so cheap and the internet makes getting software and help for it so easy. That's the point of expansion slots, man. But why the hell would you run Wi-Fi on a desktop? MPEG decoder sounds kind of silly on a PII too, pretty sure those were capable enough for 360p playback if you even want to use a system like that for such purposes.
Brody Robinson
i just want to fuck with people by deploying simple user-level programs via GPO
Jose Johnson
I personally probably wont use wifi or mpeg decode for video, so that leaves >GPU >ethernet >sound card >usb controller
so there should be atleast 1 slot left for tinkering, + ISA slots, although those aren't really very interesting (too slow).
Tyler Smith
I agree it's comfy, but Win95 is already a bit too late for writing programs in C. By then the focus was already shifting to MFC and VB. I think the most interesting Windows is Windows/286. The 2.x API is still pretty tightly focused around GDI and the core "Presentation Manager" functionality. Absolutely no garbage in there from later versions like multimedia, TrueType fonts. Not even file I/O (you can just use DOS or a thin wrapper around stdio for that). More importantly though, Windows/286 is cool because it can use EMS 4.0 hardware to make a 286 do multitasking like it was never meant to do. Of course the programming experience on 2.x is garbage since half the tools run on DOS still. But you can use Windows 3.x and its SDK to build 2.x programs. That way you also get message crackers and proper typedefs for forward compatibility to Win32 as well.
Samuel Peterson
yes, I installed debian 9. That shit is crazy old
Cameron Bennett
Could probably easily get a nice high-end OEM machine that at least integrates sound and USB on the board if we're talking PII or higher. But if you're more interested in development, do you really need them? Pick up a proper operating system like NT over 95 and you can just SMB share everything from your main Windows host.
Andrew Torres
I used Windows 98 until 2009 because my parents were too cheap to buy a new computer.
Christian Jones
Wifi on desktop because my router is in the other room and running a wire is impractical. MPEG2 card is for DVD playback. This 450 MHz P2 is barely fast enough to decode 480i in real time and only in one very optimized player that costs money and I can't find anymore. But I've taken that card out for now since I don't generally watch DVDs on my retro system. I've used the extra slot for an extra sound card. Now I have a Vortex card for general use and 3D sound, and an SB16 for FM synth because the Vortex has total crap Soundblaster emulation.
Matthew Evans
>Wifi on desktop because my router is in the other room and running a wire is impractical Same situation for me, but eventually I just ran a long cable along the ceiling. I bet it also limits your operating system choices a little bit too. >MPEG2 card is for DVD playback. This 450 MHz P2 is barely fast enough to decode 480i in real time Doesn't make sense to me, but I don't do much video playback at all on my machines so I'm just going off of what I've heard from others. Still wonder if you couldn't just pick up an MPEG decoder daughterboard for whatever card you're running.
Are you running a baby AT board too? I feel like you could probably cause yourself some less suffering with a good ATX system that at least takes care of USB and sound to free up a few extra slots.
Evan Torres
You are doing God's work. I remember playing flight simulator on my dad's old Win95 machine back in the mid 90's. Comfy times. You are achieving based levels that shouldn't even be possible.
For what it's worth, I run a Windows 7 Thinkpad t400 with my Trinitron 19" Crt. It's so fucking comfy bros, I have yet to take the Windows 95/98/2000 pill, idk if it would even work for most modern web browsing n shiet
Austin Ramirez
You have to go back.
David Richardson
The problem with legacy software is, you need legacy hardware.
the obsession with old operating systems is understandable, but that with windows is not.
lately i've been playing with klh10. it's an emulator of the pdp-10 (predecessor of the famous pdp-11), and runs the TOPS-10 or TOPS-20 operating system dating back to the mid 60s, among others.
it's equivalent to mainframes to the same era. the grandfather of so-called ancient unix. it provides the same kind of bare-bones and brutality as your windows 95, but oh so much more bare bones.
Carson Cruz
stab yourself with a used syringe
Zachary Hughes
36-bits ARE mainframes my man. And Windows 9x/NT has its own bland, professional charm as anything else.
This is the reason i use redmond theme on xubuntu. Check it out if you like win95 aesthetic.
Julian Lee
I could see your point if you were just being a contrarian Windows hater and argued in favor of something like OS/2 or even C64, but it seems like you just hate micros/PC hardware. Which I think is a bit silly, because outside of embedded, no other hardware even comes close to the amount of hacking that was done on micros and PC to bring thousands of peripherals to market. While much interesting work was certainly done on older machines, they are still just von Neumann machines, so there nothing particularly exotic about them compared to newer machines. On the other hand, the hardware is so limited that anything you could do on them, probably already has been done.
Jordan Martinez
i feel you my dude, i have a near constant urge to go back and write shit for DOS or 95/98. have you heard of reactOS?
Camden Robinson
I've personally never seen a 95-themed GNU/Linux setup that isn't an outright insult to the aesthetic. They almost universally look terrible. To take the perspective that either realm of computing is in any way less interesting is just plain ignorant, frankly. After all, micros are a bunch of Z80/6502 shit heaps with slightly different flavors of ROM BASIC from vendor to vendor, right? Nothing special.
Josiah Thomas
I wish there were a way to make or get to use actual hardware from that era. Sadly they're mostly confined to computer museums with the only 2 functioning machines in the world. >After all, micros are a bunch of Z80/6502 shit heaps with slightly different flavors of ROM BASIC from vendor to vendor, right? Nothing special. You are completely right.
Dominic Morales
I actually saw a 95 theme for TempleOS before that was more accurate than the hundreds of garbage themes Linux has.
Charles Green
vmware my man.
Grayson Murphy
I like to meet in the middle and try to go after machines using shrunken minicomputer tech, the TI-99/4 is a prime example. I wish the 99/2 actually made it to market...
Brandon Morales
I have a windows 95 virtual machine, it's really nice. Why anyone would complain about it idk.
Carter Williams
I have an unhealthy obsession with old Unix systems, and other obscure systems with interesting GUIs. Windows was and is a disgusting clusterfuck with no good features. My favorites are IRIX 6, MacOS 8, and OS/2 Warp 4.
>developing software for a dos windowmanager that's dead for over 20 years you must have a lot of spare time.
Jeremiah Williams
>I can't even begin to describe how INSANELY fucking KINO the entire setup is. I reached levels of comfyness that shouldn't even be possible. For the record, I wasn't old enough at the time to us W95. Now I know what I missed out on... You're a dumb fucking zoomer with no idea what you're talking about (but surely know how to reddit spacing). W95 was absolute garbage for stability and reliability. I had to have a disk image with clean install to restore it once every month or so. It would turn to shit this fast with regular use. I'm not memeing, it was standard practice for majority of users with any clue (and then they would do the same for friends and family with less clue). While it was revolutionary in more ways (or perhaps different ways) than people realise (3.x was nowhere near that in either paradigm shift and user adoption, earlier ones aren't even worth a mention), it was an absolute nightmare to use as a daily driver. The first sane Windows was 2000, and after that 7. 98 fixed some issues but nowhere near what would make it workable. XP was all right but also full of bullshit, it's vastly overrated by the 90's kids because it was babby's first OS. The 95 era was the height of Microsoft hate and not without reason. It did do SOME things right - comfy timeless UI, consistent graphical scheme, tutorials in form of games to teach people the new UI (what do your think was the purpose of Solitaire and Minesweeper?). The structure was fairly transparent, and lastly you could just tell it to fuck off and use it only as an optional GUI shell on top of full-fledged DOS with all your past tools and workflows. But those were really trivial and incidental to the piece of shit that was the OS' core/kernel performance. t. oldfag who first worked with DOS 5.x and went through all of them both for professional and personal use. >that must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet
Julian Brown
I have to use 95 at work every day thanks to legacy software and god damn its the worst fucking thing If you think 10 is ass try using ANY 9x as a daily driver
Austin Powell
I got a pair of Panasonic Toughbook CF-71s the other day and have been messing around with Win98. The machines are built like tanks, basically Thinkpad 600-series in full magnesium and FRP casing. Pentium III@450 MHz, 128 MB of RAM, They also have a Yamaha XG sound chip with a real OPL2 and MT32 emulation so music sounds great. Throw some cheapo Chinese IDE SSD in there and Win9x goes like a rocket, as long as you're only doing a couple things at a time. Modern OSes and architectures make multitasking so much easier.
>Why did i have to be born in the era of fucking javascript? Stop being myopic. You were also born in the age of a new golden age of hardware: there's been an explosion in development of domain-specific architectures, FPGAs, free hardware like RISC-V, a lot of research in hardware security etc. Yet all you see is muh javascript, so you instead retreat to a past that's not even yours.
Matthew Howard
Reminds me of Quake 2 mods. Need vis cpp 6.
John Lewis
I'm so sorry user. I can only imagine the kind of corporate abomination where that is a necessity, because unfucking it would mean basically rebuilding everything from scratch.
