Windows 1.0: the Power of DOS, Plus Tiled Windows 249
jbrodkin writes "I'd always wanted my own working copy of the elusive Windows 1.0, and after a few failed attempts I got one working in a virtual machine (I had to downgrade from the latest version of Windows Virtual PC to an earlier version to get it started, but that's another story). With 416K free memory, we were able to cruise through Reversi, take a look at the first version of Notepad, as well as the now-defunct Microsoft Write, and create a 'masterpiece' in Microsoft Paint. Eventually, applications started crashing, but a simple reboot got it working again. All in all, a nice tour through computing history. Anyone have a copy of the first Macintosh OS they want to send me?"
Isn't It Past Time Slashdot Change the MS Icon?? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the deal with Slashdot still using that Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days. Bill Gates hasn't worked at Microsoft in years, and the Borg reference just is no longer current or relevant. Anyone under 25 would hardly get the references.
You guys just had a redesign, and you still can't deign to use the real Microsoft icon? For gods sake you have the real ones for Facebook and Twitter, it's not like its that hard. If anything, it makes slashdot just look so horribly unfunny and irrelevant.
This is an on-topic meta comment.
Re:Isn't It Past Time Slashdot Change the MS Icon? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that it's now passed beyond satire into meta-satire; the satire is mostly on the fact that so many Slashdot commenters bemoan their portrayal as you do. The very reason it's still being used is probably because of that. Honestly, I see more comments complaining about how Slashdotters are always biased against MS than I see comments which are genuinely biased against them.
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"Meta-satire?" Really?
I say never attribute to satire that which can be explained by sheer laziness.
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Re:Isn't It Past Time Slashdot Change the MS Icon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now THAT is a good idea. Actually does anybody beside me think that Ballmer looks like the monster from Young Frankenstein?
Re:Isn't It Past Time Slashdot Change the MS Icon? (Score:4, Funny)
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http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/12/19/ballmer_fester_bulb.jpg [regmedia.co.uk]
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I could go for a Ballmer Zombie instead.
or a chair
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They're keeping it solely to piss people like you off. It seems to be working.
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Because a sweaty Ballmer throwing chairs will not fit in a icon.
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What's the deal with Slashdot still using that Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days. Bill Gates hasn't worked at Microsoft in years, and the Borg reference just is no longer current or relevant.
Methinks the Borg reference will be more relevant in the future than it has ever been. As for Bill working in Microsoft, some of the issues many people have had in the past with MSFT were related to money Bill Gates made from work other people did.
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Speak for yourself, young kook! I'm as relevant as I - - - now, dammit, what were we arguing about?
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Given that Gates was pushing the purchase of Skype with the board I think it is still appropriate.
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The sad thing is that this Borg Gates icon was actually updated in the past few years. They went through the effort to redraw the icon even after its outdated. If they want to recycle a bad joke, do a Steve Jobs on for Apple. At least that would be relevant and actually make sense.
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What's the deal with Slashdot still using that Bill Gates Borg icon to represent Microsoft? That icon is so dated on both levels these days. Bill Gates hasn't worked at Microsoft in years, and the Borg reference just is no longer current or relevant. Anyone under 25 would hardly get the references.
Resistance is futile.
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Shills are bad enough. Whining shills are just pure lose. Billy Boy Goats - errrr - GATES left a legacy that will be memorialized in the history books. And, that legacy includes the borg icon. Don't like it? Don't read Microsloth articles on Slashdot - problem solved.
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No, but it doesn't make it more valid either.
What it does do is alienate your intended audience and make them think you're like chlorine in /.'s gene pool.
the "another story" (Score:2)
Huh, I wonder what broke it with the newer version of Virtual PC.
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Not enough bugs.
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probably emulation of modern CPU too different from old XT/AT.
They did away with some of the oldest "features".
BTW, Dosbox would likely be better suited.
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About 15 years ago I tried installing Windows 1.0 on a then-current computer (probably a 386 or 486) and couldn't get it to work. My guess at the time was that the VGA chipset of the machine was doing a poor job of emulating the EGA graphics modes that Windows 1.0 was trying to use for (but even already in those days no one actually cared enough to test), but it could have been any of a hundred devitations from the then-current "IBM PC/XT compatible" standard that Microsoft assumed it would be running on.
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Here's a screenshot [angband.pl] from an accurate emulator.
The oldest machine I had at the time I took it was a 486 (in a corner of a cellar), but it crashed the same way as the emulator did. There was some error reading the 5 1/4 installation floppies, after several tries it finally claimed success, so it might have been data corruption rather than a problem with Windows, though. Still, it had the correct colour :p
I still have a copy of Windows 2 x86 (Score:2)
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The 5.25" floppies probably are. I have a number of vintage computers. In my experience you can pretty much count on properly stored 5.25" floppies to work. 3.5" floppies are almost entirely unreadable on the other hand.
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Have Windows 1.03 on 5.25" floppies.
working as designed (Score:5, Funny)
...after a few failed attempts I got one working.... Eventually, applications started crashing, but a simple reboot got it working again.
Sounds like you have it working as designed. Bravo.
Yep. (Score:5, Funny)
Eventually, applications started crashing, but a simple reboot got it working again
Yep, that's Windows all right.
What a masochist (Score:2)
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Yes, much more fun:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/03/235257/Upgrading-From-Windows-10-To-Windows-7 [slashdot.org]
http://rasteri.blogspot.com/2011/03/chain-of-fools-upgrading-through-every.html [blogspot.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14 [youtube.com]
Of course it could be worse. It could be the Gnome 3 Shell or Unity...
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That was surprisingly fascinating to watch. I'm really impressed with how backwards compatible the windows platform is. I love my MacBook but I hate how even the most basic programs seem to always require the latest version of MacOS to run so that you are forced to upgrade. I admit this is more like "forward compatibility" though.
Heh, if you liked that (Score:5, Funny)
If you liked that experience, you should check out the windows really good version
http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/ [deanliou.com]
Errors (Score:4, Interesting)
It's amazing. The error dialogs and calculator have lasted on, virtually unchanged.
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Last time I checked, calculator in Windows 7 has a "programmer" mode as well as scientific and basic, that on first glance is helpful (swap between bases) but doesn't really allow you to do much calculation. If I'm not mistaken, they've also removed the functionality to switch between number bases in the scientific mode. And finally it doesn't keep your current calculation up when you swap modes.
Typical Windows; in theory helpful, in reality some special version of hell.
Although I'm fairly convinced at this
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Unless they changed it in 7, it works just fine in XP calculator. The base is settable from binary, decimal, octa
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Uh huh... (Score:2)
But has Netcraft confirmed Windows 1.0 is dead?
QDOS? (DOS 1.0) (Score:3)
I wonder where someone could find and run QDOS (DOS 1.0 that Gates bought and sold to IBM). "The "Microsoft Disk Operating System" or MS-DOS was based on QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer.
QDOS was based on Gary Kildall's CP/M, Paterson had bought a CP/M manual and used it as the basis to write his operating system in six weeks, QDOS was different enough from CP/M to be considered legal.
Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS for $50,000, keeping the IBM deal a secret from Seattle Computer Products." - About.com [about.com]
Re:QDOS? (DOS 1.0) (Score:5, Informative)
Here [86dos.org] you go ! It's 86DOS but as wikipedia explains [wikipedia.org] :
"86-DOS was an operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system."
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The amazing thing is the programs in the archive run just fine on XP. Some of them I didn't let do much (like chkdsk and initlarg) because of what they might do, but they run fine.
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You probably now have a boot sector virus.
Remember those?
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I remember getting the Saddam virus [teyko.com] on my Amiga, now both the man and the platform are ancient history ... if you'll excuse, me I have some heavy drinking to do.
Mac OS 1 (Score:2)
Using the stupid yes/no dialogue back then too! (Score:2)
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(it's verb/cancel, for youse unaware folk. always verb/cancel)
What if you need to cancel your appointment? Cancel/Cancel?
Remove an appointment (Score:2)
What if you need to cancel your appointment?
Remove/Cancel. Remove would cancel the appointment.
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What if it's "Are you sure you want to cancel the current operation"?
Cancel/cancel, then?
"wanted my own working copy of..." (Score:2)
It's not elusive. It's dead (good riddance).
My first Windows I ever came to use was 3, but of course I had to see and try previous versions as well back in the days. May them all rot in peace together.
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The first version of Windows I used was win95. I was happy with DOS, 6.2 was a good OS (I upgraded to that from 3.3 because of doublespace). It also came with an excellent text based shell, DOSShell. MS used to make pretty good stuff, but about the only MS program I don't loathe these days is Excel (even though I hate spreadsheets in general).
I got Win95 because of Road Rash. I just HAD to have that game!
I don't think you'll find a copy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't think you'll find a copy... (Score:4, Insightful)
>Apparently there was some sort of major bug with 1.0, or memory leak, or something.
There was an article linked to on Slashdot a while back that explained this. Here is the link:
http://technologizer.com/2010/03/08/the-secret-origin-of-windows/ [technologizer.com]
Windows 1.00 was not quite ready to release to the public but they had some obligation to release, so they branded 1.00 as Windows "Premier Edition" and gave that to certain people. Windows 1.01 was apparently the first version to actually hit the store shelves.
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Slide 3 clearly shows he is running 1.01
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it showed as 1.01 in the slideshow. oh and he thought the 'write' program got phased out -- it didn't it was renamed wordpad.
Write still present, at least as a proxy (Score:3, Interesting)
If you look in Windows 7's \system32 directory, you will find good ol' write.exe. I believe the icon is the same one it had in the Win 95 days. If you look at the property dialog for the file, and click over to the Details tab, you'll see that the "File description" is "Windows Write". Even in Windows 7, one can invoke "write hello.txt" from the command line.
However, the executable is tiny, and it appears to simply invoke WordPad. The executable that shows up in Task Manager is "wordpad.exe".
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Wordpad is basically Write- they more or less just renamed the application for 95.
OS2 Warp was the best of them all. (Score:2)
I really liked it until you found that most apps wont run...
MacOS (Score:2)
To run an old version of MacOS, you can use vMac:
http://www.vmac.org/ [vmac.org]
You'll also need a Mac ROM file and a disk image with the MacOS version you'd like to run, but you should be able to find those as well.
I don't have version 1.0, but I do have version 1.1.
Correction (Score:2)
I don't have version 1.0, but I do have version 1.1.
Admittedly weird to reply on my own post, but I just checked: I have a System 1.0 / Finder 1.1g version of MacOS running under vMac.
It appears to run just fine under the latest version of MacOS X.
MS-DOS wasn't _so_ bad (Score:2)
At the risk of unwanted attention or appearing as flamebait, I will say it again: MS-DOS was not all that bad.
Had MS-DOS been truly useless/horrible, it never would have caught on. And survived/persisted. Sure, it has deficiencies. But not so bad the Apps (which people buy hardware to run) couldn't be compelling.
MS-DOS is actually a pretty good program loader / boot environment plus filessystem and is still used as such and for BIOS flashing. Just please don't call it an Operating System, which it is no
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History? (Score:2)
Windows 1.0 is the start of the beginning of the end. This is not a tour through history, it's a tour through modern history. It's like if a history buff went to the Clinton library and then proclaimed he had a tour through presidential history. Windows 1.0 is just the start of the tiny offshoot of computing known as Windows. Even on the micro computer offshoot of history you could be looking further back at S-100 bus computers with CP/M. What about mini computers, mainframes, Smalltalk-80, Multics, U
I have 128K Mac tapes (Score:2)
I don't have an OS or even the original Mac anymore, but I hung on to the two original cassette tapes that shipped with my 128K Mac. They're audio cassettes with some New Age music playing in the background describing all the neat stuff this new computer will do. I haven't listened to them for a while.
I wonder what they're worth.
Dosbox (Score:2)
MS DOS 6.0 Dos Shell! (Score:2)
Think of it a MS Windblows 0.90! Actually it was fun to use, I liked it!
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You beat me to it.
Tandy's Deskmate was more useful than Windows at that time -- and that wasn't a very significant feat.
Notepad and Paint survived... (Score:2)
calculator, clock, calendar, notepad, print spooler, paint program, a primitive word processor and, of course, Reversi [...] Although Windows applications have evolved and expanded in the past quarter-century, Notepad and Paint survived all the way up to Windows 7.
I'm not sure whether he forgot to say Calc survived, or if he meant "survived unchanged" and deliberately left Calc out since it got a major revision in Windows 7.
If it's the latter case, he really shouldn't have included Paint either since that also got a major revision in Windows 7.
MacOS 1 not going to be easy (Score:2)
The first Macs were very hardware dependent. With only 128K RAM to work with, a lot of the OS was in ROM (and remained there throughout much of the MacOS 1-7 evolution). Not sure of the copyright on that, whether Apple would allow such a ROM dump. With so little RAM/ROM I'm sure there were a lot of techniques to save bytes, some that undoubtedly made the code very hardware dependent, and therefore harder to emulate. Also, they were Motorola 68000 machines, not Intel.
Any emulation of it would have to overc
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You're right about the ROM, and yes, the copyright is a legal issue. But AFAIK it's legal to make a ROM dump of an old Mac you own and use that yourself. Also, although technically not legal, I doubt anyone at Apple would care if you would use a ROM file obtained otherwise, given how long MacOS X is deprecated now.
The vMac website I mentioned in my earlier post also has a download link for a tool to create a ROM dump.
Macintosh OS? (Score:2)
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No, to make a fair comparison we'd have to go back to Apple II days. But then again Apple fanboys always keep forgetting the details.
Comparing Windows 1.0 to the Apple II would hardly be fair to Windows. The Apple II had a pretty mature OS at that time.
Furhtermore, straight from Wikipedia:
Windows 1.0 is a 16-bit graphical operating environment that was released on 20 November 1985
On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) introduced the Macintosh personal computer, with the Macintosh 128K model, which came bundled with what was later renamed the Mac OS, but then known simply as the System Software.
When your fairness criterium is the release date, you'd have to compare Window 1.0 with MacOS 2. Which is a sure way of becoming an Apple fanboy.
TopView, DESQview, Gem, VisiOn, Lisa... (Score:2)
You really need to put this context. Windows 1.0 came out in 1985 with non-overlapping windows. Very odd, since to anyone who was paying attention then, the very word "Windows" mean the overlapping windows developed at Xerox PARC and embodied in machines like the Alto, the Star, the Three Rivers PERQ, etc. To have a system called "Windows" without overlapping windows is missing the point on a grand scale.
IBM's TopView was a multitasking, "character-mode GUI" version of DOS that came out in 1984. DESQview no
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GEM, a genuine full-fledged, GUI with overlapping windows, shipped in 1985 for the 8086. I don't remember it having much success as an OS or user environment, but there was one faintly successful product--was it a desktop publishing program? that actually incorporated GEM as an integral part of the program.
I think you're thinking of Ventura Publisher. There may have been some other programs that shipped with a GEM runtime. It wasn't actually that odd at the time. A usable CAD program called In-A-Vision shipped with the Windows 1 runtime. You could also run it under Windows 2 and Windows 3 (real mode only). And, of course, the original AOL clients shipped with the GEOS runtime.
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GEM was picked up by Atari for its Motorola 68000-based system, which ran a rewrite of CP/M called GEMdos. Early versions were disk-based but it was quickly moved into ROM. It primarily competed with the Commodore Amiga (which was much more sophisticated), also launched in 1985, for the home market. I think I paid $800 for my Atari 520ST. PCs, including the Amstrad, were much more expensive back then.
Very little commercial software was developed for the platform.
GEM implemented a cooperative multitasking mo
Forgot the most important part of Windows 1. (Score:2)
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I walked Windows 1.4 on my IBM Portable, 8088, 512KB RAM, monochrom CGI screen. Logitech three button serial port mouse. I did write "ran" but it felt dishonest.
I remember MS sales material -- Byte magazine ads? -- that extolled the virtues of tiled windows. Seems they believed users would find overlapping windows confusing. Then 2.0 came out with overlapping windows and all was forgotten.
I remember how an Apple Lisa salesman had to preset the spreadsheet and word processor windows because they took so long
My dog ate it. (Score:2)
I wanted to see my first dead bird but my dog ate it. Fortunately, he threw it back up. I would post the pictures, but unlike jbrodkin, I don't believe in posting pictures of things that are ugly and broken.
Some older Apple OSes (Score:2)
OK, it only goes back to 6.0.3 for the Mac (but also has some newer ones), and has Apple IIGS and other downloads.. but some of the "newer old" Apple System Software is available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA48312 [apple.com]
QEMU (Score:2)
This isn't really that difficult.
Here's a screenshot I just made of DOS 3.3 / Windows 1.01 running under QEMU under Ubuntu 11.04.
http://i.imgur.com/lrEf3.png [imgur.com]
It may even run under DOSBox, but I've not tried anything earlier than WFW 3.11 in that environment.
I was rather impressed with myself recently getting this running:
Ubuntu 11.04 > VirtualBox 4.0.something > OS/2 Warp4 FP15 > WinOS/2.
That was a challenge!
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Windows technically wasn't an OS until Win 95 (although admittedly, it was kind of blurred by the time Windows 3.0 came out). Indeed, "MS-DOS Executive" was File Manager under another name (and was also, IIRC, available in MS-DOS 4.01 and possibly still there in MS-DOS 5.0)
Old OS in a VM. Hmmm. Now, old MacOS (pre OS 9.0) in a VM without using ROM iamges - that would be something
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Re:Why the hell is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nostalgia for those of us that actually used it.
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It isn't an "ask slashdot" or news, and it isn't even useful information. Yeah, you can put old OSes in a virtual machine. So what?
If you were a master in the art of using the question mark, you would be more wise and less assy.
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Me too :-) I've got a CD full of these old abandonware OS's somewhere and got most of them working.
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I also have 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11.
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Most places did that. I had 20 sealed boxes of DOS I threw away when I was a comcast employee. we bought all the copies and opened one to install on everything. works great. The same happened with NT and XP as well...
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All Data Will Be Lost
OK
(Almost as good as "Keyboard Error press F1")
No, "All Data Will Be Lost" was just teaching you to accept the inevitable. I mean, you had to get used to it running windows.
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GEOS was working on the Commodore 64 and the Amiga was multitasking multimedia in 512k... Yes indeed, computer "history" is all about MS and Apple... (rolls eyes) All we need now is a Space Nutter to claim that we only have computers and Teflon because of NASA and the circle of BS will be complete!
The trouble for Microsoft, though, was that there really wasn't cheap hardware graphics acceleration for the PC until the 90's. It was next to impossible in 1985 to have a multitasking windowing system without some additional help from the hardware. Microsoft could have done a much better job had PC's in 1985 looked like Amigas 1985 (from a hardware standpoint).
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GEOS was working on the Commodore 64 and the Amiga was multitasking multimedia in 512k... Yes indeed, computer "history" is all about MS and Apple... (rolls eyes)
Microsoft prospered with the modular design of the PC and the evolution of mass-market hardware upgrades produced for the IBM PC and PC clone.
The plug-in card that takes audio from 8 bit to 16 bit.
Microsoft prospered with the discovery that your home office PC could also play games. That was - and remains - a potent one-two punch in the consumer market.