MS To Finally End OEM Licensing For Windows 3.11 388
halfEvilTech writes with an excerpt from Ars Technica's story on the sputtering out of Windows for Workgroups 3.11: "Believe it or not, that headline is not a typo. John Coyne, Systems Engineer in the OEM Embedded Devices group at Microsoft, has posted a quick blog entry that broke the bad news: as of November 1, 2008, Microsoft will no longer allow OEMs to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. That's exactly 15 years after it shipped in November 1993! Poor OEMs have so much to put up with these days; first Windows XP, and now this!"
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
Lockout chip (Score:3, Informative)
Build it on a computer, burn to cd/dvd, done?
The Wii SDK with which retail games are built is not public. Nor is Nintendo's digital signing key for executables that run on retail Wii consoles.
Re:Does anyone know who's using it in embedded? (Score:2, Informative)
In SEMI fabs there is a lot of DOS/Win3.11/OS2 running critical process control equipment. Machines running WfW3.11 are making todays quad CPU chips.
Re:Ahh the memories (Score:5, Informative)
nobody used networks to make a multinode bbs you god damned liar
Since you're an AC, it's not worth responding to YOU, but maybe as a lesson to those who don't recall the wonderful BBS days, here's a recap:
I ran two multinode BBSes concurrently as I tested various applications. Up until the age of 17, I made fairly decent money with my multinode BBS (primary) which ran a hacked version of Telegard called Renegade. Renegade ran multinodes either under DESQview or via a wired network. At the same time, I purchased the ultra-expensive but amazing multi-threaded BBS application called MajorBBS, which ran as a compiled solution (doors and other add-ons were either compiled into the runtime EXE, or eventually were DLLs that were called by the runtime EXE). MajorBBS did NOT need a network or DESQview for multinodes, but supported them internally in its wicked-fast C coding.
The problem with MajorBBS was the need for expensive multicomm cards. I believe I paid well over $2000 at the time for a 16-port serial adapter. This let me attach all the modems I needed. The other downside for MajorBBS is that doors (online games) were coded only by professional companies, and they cost a ton of cash. Renegade was DOS based and used a DOS exec command to run external doors, so amateur coders could, and did, write decent games. Some were even multinode using text files to pass data between the various PCs or DESQview "nodes." This was slower, but worked fine. I remember the latency in the chatroom at Renegade to being over 1 second, until we discovered that you could run a RAM drive and put the temp files there. This sped it up signficantly.
LANtastic was the de facto standard for multinode BBS operations that used more than one PC. I prefered this route because the processors at the time were used less in a heavy-intensity BBS. I had a ton of downloads, a ton of message boards (FIDOnet), and a ton of chatroom activity, so running DESQview was out of the question. The other problem was the fact that we had this war between Expanded memory and Extended memory (RAM over 640k accesible). The 286s I used didn't access RAM over 640k well, so they were cheap but limited for DESQview. The much-more expensive 386 processors would use up to 4MB (or 8MB or even 16MB) but RAM was expensive, and I received many donated 286's for the good cause. At one point I had 12 286s in my bedroom to handle the traffic and phone lines.
MajorBBS was much preferred by my users, since the multi-threading internally gave ZERO latency to multinode communications (in games and in the chat area). This meant that multinode games were very realtime in terms of battles between players or players and monsters, versus Renegade where you might attack another player, and the 1 second delay would mean the player though he got away freely, but you thought you hit him. Lots of ugliness there.
MajorBBS also had X.25 connectivity, which let me access national users without them paying a hefty phone bill.
So, yes, people did use networks for multinode BBSes. Troll.
Re:Does anyone know who's using it in embedded? (Score:5, Informative)
Rubbish there was a free TCP/IP stack for WfWg 3.11 as a download from Microsoft. I still have a copy on disk.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Informative)
8.0 is when they started charging for the OS.
No, it was System 7 when they started charging for the OS. 7.1 (aka "System 7 Pro") also cost, as did 7.5 and 7.6. Only the 7.5.x and 7.6.x updates were free.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
The logic behind the decision was that MacOS updates were free in the early years (until 7.1) and many users thought there was a implied promise there. So, 7.5.3 was more of a sop to owners of 68K Macs to allow them to get up to speed with modern networking and so on. Everyone who bought a PowerMac was already in the era when the OS revisions cost money.
MacOS 9 was bundled with OS X until 10.3, IIRC.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Informative)
well I guess that means that windows 3.11 has 5 years before all the patents expire if the gif patent is anything to go by.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format [wikipedia.org]
That still seems like too long but thats the deal with patents.
I thought the exclusivity granted by a patent had an expiry date and one that should be enforced.
Re:Confused (Score:5, Informative)
The reference to XP is in the light of MS sunsetting the availability of that OS for most OEMs (save for those of the ultra-mobile class)--they're getting rid of something that worked and was accepted by the customer base. It may be a sound move in business theory (and, I'd argue, for WfW 3.11, something long overdue), but it is not likely to make some consumer channels happy.
Of course, you could argue that the writing has been on the wall for a long time, so let's hope that most of the WfW 3.11 users have been planning for this one...
Re:Abandonware (Score:1, Informative)
Maintaining the rights allow companies to do things like charge you ten dollars to play the original Super Mario Brothers on your Wii.
*sigh*
A Virtual Console download of "Super Mario Brothers" is 500 points, or $5.00 USD.
Is that still a little steep for a copy of 32KB of 6502-ish machine code, first released to the public over 22 years ago? That's debatable. But exaggeration is unbecoming of you.
At least we still will have GEM (Score:5, Informative)
as OpenGEM [shaneland.co.uk] is still available and is being worked on to make it 32 bits. So your DOS machines can use OpenGEM instead of Windows 3.11 if you want to keep a GUI on them.
Re:Does anyone know who's using it in embedded? (Score:3, Informative)
It's still available, if anyone cares (unlikely): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/99891 [microsoft.com]
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they have done in the past. [wikipedia.org]