Check out this awesomeness I got at work today

[bbhaag]

Hey check it out WFW3.11 splash screen!


Anyone here ever heard of the Program Manager before or the Control Panel??? Wonder what those do?

 

[lxskllr]

I still have my first IBM compatible computer(486), and it should boot up if I put the hd back in. You almost got me wanting to do it. Almost... :^D

 

[brianmanahan]

My rig had crazy CONFIG.SYS menuing, all added by me, to accommodate different DOS games / SoundBlaster support on/off, MSCDEX.EXE support on/off, different dev environments, etc.

ugh nothing as annoying as a DOS game that wanted 620+ KB of conventional memory free

 

[snoopy7548]

It's not a real Win98 (or older) machine unless the case is beige!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Damn, win 3.1 that brings back memories. First OS I ever used.

I have a few of my older machines, I hope I still have the driver disks too... need to set one up one of these days. The machines I have are more windows 2000 era mind you but that would still be cool.

I actually had to pull out my old XP machine a while back to use the floppy drive.

 

[Ken g6]

Or a sleeper PC, remove all the components and put something kick ass in there.

That's not as easy as it used to be. Cooling requirements have gone up. It's hard to cool a modern CPU with a 92mm fan. Even harder to find a water cooler of that size.

 

[lxskllr]

I didn't like win3.1. Bogged down my 486. I used a shareware program that had a "desktop" which allowed you to create buttons with a program name on it to click, and it would launch the program. It didn't do anything else. That's all I really wanted from windows at that time anyway.

 

[sdifox]

Damn, win 3.1 that brings back memories. First OS I ever used.

I have a few of my older machines, I hope I still have the driver disks too... need to set one up one of these days. The machines I have are more windows 2000 era mind you but that would still be cool.

I actually had to pull out my old XP machine a while back to use the floppy drive.

3.1 was more a GUI than OS. It was still dependant on DOS.

 

[fralexandr]

3.1 was more a gui than OS. It was still dependant on DOS.

DOS literally stands for Disk Operating System

DOS - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

edit: sorry sdifox, I misunderstood your post hah
While 3.1 wasn't as developed an OS as 95 and 98, I'd still consider it an operating system

Windows 3.1x - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

even if it's mostly a graphical overhaul for DOS, it allows the user to operate a system. Wikipedia considers it not quite an operating system though.

 

[sdifox]

DOS literally stands for Disk Operating System

DOS - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thank you, I didn't know that

<--- had Apple ][ clone as first computer.

 

[Captante]

You should install windows ME on them

Damnit ... beat me to it!

(actually to my recollection Win ME INSTALLED easier then 2k or 98se... and that was about its ONLY advantage beyond better USB support!)

That's not as easy as it used to be. Cooling requirements have gone up. It's hard to cool a modern CPU with a 92mm fan. Even harder to find a water cooler of that size.

Nevermind the fans GL fitting in that 360mm AIO!

My latest project is going to be a Win 10 mini-ITX system in an ancient Mac enclosure.

This one:

 

[Captante]

whoops

 

[Red Squirrel]

3.1 was more a GUI than OS. It was still dependant on DOS.

Well if you want to get technical, so was win95 and win98. I think ME is when they started to break away from DOS.

 

[sdifox]

Well if you want to get technical, so was win95 and win98. I think ME is when they started to break away from DOS.

Umm, yes? But 95, 98, NT reduced their dependence on DOS gradually.

 

[lxskllr]

Not really. That's what made ME suck. It was still dos underneath, and had no reason to exist since there was already a 2kpro. ME wasn't has bad as people made it out to be. Yea, it sucked, but it didn't suck any worse than the dos based systems it was built off of.

 

[Captante]

Well if you want to get technical, so was win95 and win98. I think ME is when they started to break away from DOS.

Starting with Win 95a Windows still had MS DOS integrated but was its own OS to a large degree. ME had no "real" DOS prompt but it was still just 95/98 deep down inside.

Windows NT had a command prompt but was the first widely released OS that used NTFS and didn't "rely" on DOS ... it was also a major PITA to work with in many ways. (LOTS of things just didn't work)

2k was the first DOS-free (for operation) MS OS that was actually good IMO. I still miss it in some ways.

Not really. That's what made ME suck. It was still dos underneath, and had no reason to exist since there was already a 2kpro. ME wasn't has bad as people made it out to be. Yea, it sucked, but it didn't suck any worse than the dos based systems it was built off of.

Shens .... ME sucked FAR more than 98SE.

Ever try setting ME up with more than 512mb's RAM for one example? (I hope un-fixable boot-looping requiring a format is something that you enjoy!)

I can accept defending Windows Vista BUT ME? No thank-you!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Vista was pretty horrid but mostly because it was so resource intensive for the hardware available at the time. It would ship on machines that were better suited for 98 or 2k and it was slow as molasses right out of the box. I converted so many people's computers back to 98 or 2k so I can make it faster. Would be interesting to see how it runs on something modern like a Threadripper with a SSD and like 32GB of ram. Vista hit everything at once, the cpu, ram and HDD. It was just horribly inefficient. 7 fixed a lot of those issues.

 

[WelshBloke]

Alright so I was helping a customer weigh up some stone today and I noticed he had some PCs in the back of his truck. So I asked him about them and he said I could have them for free!
So what do you guys think I should do with them?? I was thinking about building a sweet Win98 machine with them but I'm open to suggestions.

View attachment 47692

Those look pretty manky!

Like you might catch something from them manky. And I don't mean an ancient computer virus.

 

[Captante]

Vista was pretty horrid but mostly because it was so resource intensive for the hardware available at the time. It would ship on machines that were better suited for 98 or 2k and it was slow as molasses right out of the box. I converted so many people's computers back to 98 or 2k so I can make it faster. Would be interesting to see how it runs on something modern like a Threadripper with a SSD and like 32GB of ram. Vista hit everything at once, the cpu, ram and HDD. It was just horribly inefficient. 7 fixed a lot of those issues.

Vista after all patch's was eventually good and essentially WAS just Win 7 under the hood. The biggest issues were lack of stable 64-bit drivers and MS's absurd "mimimum-spec" system requirements on release.

Many features/menus in Vista that were only one or two clicks deep, became 3-4 clicks deep in Win 7 and often 5-6 clicks in Win 10 for no good reason.

 

[lxskllr]

Vista was my favorite MS os. It was also the last one I used regularly. I switched to Ubuntu as my daily driver by the time windows 7 came out. I only have passing familiarity with 7-10, I only use them when I'm working on someone else's computer. My windows skills have gotten pretty rusty over the years.

 

[Captante]

Vista was my favorite MS os. It was also the last one I used regularly. I switched to Ubuntu as my daily driver by the time windows 7 came out. I only have passing familiarity with 7-10, I only use them when I'm working on someone else's computer. My windows skills have gotten pretty rusty over the years.

To be fair the most recent versions of 10 Pro ARE the best version of Windows ever overall in terms of "just working". If they can figure out the dang update bugs it would be nice though!

I also liked Vista a lot however and would still prefer to use its simpler GUI.

 

[lxskllr]

I put 10 on the secretary's machine, and it's been pretty problem free afaik. I don't hear complaints. Every time I have to do something, I'm like "Umm...". I don't know where to find stuff anymore. I usually resort to hitting the meta key, and typing. I don't fully grasp window's internal structure anymore. It just isn't something I have to deal with much.

 

[Captante]

I put 10 on the secretary's machine, and it's been pretty problem free afaik. I don't hear complaints. Every time I have to do something, I'm like "Umm...". I don't know where to find stuff anymore. I usually resort to hitting the meta key, and typing. I don't fully grasp window's internal structure anymore. It just isn't something I have to deal with much.

I make a point of staying as familiar as possible with the latest version of Windows for two reasons... first because PC gaming is still my main hobby and for that current Win 10 is the only way to go to avoid constant issues.

Second however is because I need to be able to work on a Win 10 machine and have it be as natural as it would be on Win Vista/7 or XP used to be.

Been playing around with 11 lately for just that reason.

 

[PowerEngineer]

I didn't like win3.1. Bogged down my 486. I used a shareware program that had a "desktop" which allowed you to create buttons with a program name on it to click, and it would launch the program. It didn't do anything else. That's all I really wanted from windows at that time anyway.

OMG, I remember doing the exact same thing!

 

[PingSpike]

ugh nothing as annoying as a DOS game that wanted 620+ KB of conventional memory free

I remember finding a tiny mouse driver on a PC at my school and feverishly copying it to a floppy because "I really might need this".

I had a lot of fun with dos PCs but man that memory management shit sucked.