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Big day today, 20 years since the launch of Windows 95.
+7
Book.
Walther von Oldenburg
Werewolf
Morpheus Eberhardt
GarryB
PapaDragon
JohninMK
11 posters
Windows 95 Anniversary
JohninMK- Posts : 15656
Points : 15797
Join date : 2015-06-16
Location : England
PapaDragon- Posts : 13474
Points : 13514
Join date : 2015-04-26
Location : Fort Evil, Serbia
I was among the last generation to learn text based interface.... good old days.
GarryB- Posts : 40557
Points : 41059
Join date : 2010-03-30
Location : New Zealand
Meh... Workbench 1.3 in the Mid 1980s was far superior to Windows 95 in the mid 90s.
A friend of mine bought an Amiga 1200 which had an even better OS and an 80MB hard drive...!!!
A friend of mine bought an Amiga 1200 which had an even better OS and an 80MB hard drive...!!!
Morpheus Eberhardt- Posts : 1925
Points : 2032
Join date : 2013-05-20
I have used punch cards, paper tapes, and ...
GarryB- Posts : 40557
Points : 41059
Join date : 2010-03-30
Location : New Zealand
My first computer was one of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
But I upgraded in 1989 to an Amiga 500... what a difference...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
But I upgraded in 1989 to an Amiga 500... what a difference...
Morpheus Eberhardt- Posts : 1925
Points : 2032
Join date : 2013-05-20
My first general-purpose digital computer was an "IBM" System/360.
The following image is an earlier version of the System/360 than the one I was using.
The following image is an earlier version of the System/360 than the one I was using.
Werewolf- Posts : 5931
Points : 6120
Join date : 2012-10-24
How did you even pay for such computers back then?
If i remember correctly the prices ranged from 2000 - 9000 DM for a computer no one knew what to do with it.
If i remember correctly the prices ranged from 2000 - 9000 DM for a computer no one knew what to do with it.
Walther von Oldenburg- Posts : 1725
Points : 1844
Join date : 2015-01-23
Age : 33
Location : Oldenburg
Do you mean the one from Amiga 500? It wasn't even a proper OS, just a user interface,. It had no be looaded from a floppy disc each time upon turning computer on and when yu played a game, you could not access the OS.GarryB wrote:Meh... Workbench 1.3 in the Mid 1980s was far superior to Windows 95 in the mid 90s.
JohninMK- Posts : 15656
Points : 15797
Join date : 2015-06-16
Location : England
Wrote my first assembler program in 1967 on an ICL mainframe for a car dealer in Birmingham, included in the computer's price was a systems and programming team of which I was part. We were in regular competition with those IBM systems, sometimes we won others they did. But we had a big installed base of punched card tabulator/calculator installations that we were able to hold onto.Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:My first general-purpose digital computer was an "IBM" System/360.
The following image is an earlier version of the System/360 than the one I was using.
In the 70's I first supported then sold some really big systems. First exposure to PCs was in 1982, good old WordPerfect and Lotus 123.
Seen it all
Book.- Posts : 692
Points : 745
Join date : 2015-05-08
Location : Oregon, USA
kvs- Posts : 15861
Points : 15996
Join date : 2014-09-11
Location : Turdope's Kanada
IBM f*cked up the market big time. It chose a piece of sh*t OS and CPU for its PC. The IBM executives did not treat the PC
as a serious computer platform. Of course they were morons who did not understand what Moore's "law" meant.
IBM should have chosen the Motorola 68000 (a real 16/32 CPU with linear memory addressing) but instead chose the turdlet
known as the Intel 8088 an 8 bit waste of silicon with segmented memory addressing. Instead of adopting the available, superior
Unix OS flavours on the market it chose some no-name upstart Microsoft and their Mickey Mouse DOS. A total joke compared to
Unix.
IBM established the Microsoft and Intel monopolies (de facto) in the PC marketplace. And we have been living with this legacy
ever since. Although I will credit Intel for going somewhere, eventually. But Microsh*t and Winblows are still afflicting us today.
Winblows is nothing but semi-functional bloatware. All of its claim to greatness is utter triviality that Linux has had since the 1990s.
With Linux and GUI Unix OS's you can chose the menu-driven point and click or the command line as you wish. Nothing is foisted on you.
Winblows still does not have proper security features. You can't hack Unix like you can hack Winchunks. And God that endless hard
disk grinding and the epic conceptual fail called the registry. Then you have the cherry on top: every software package you install
mucks around with system shared libraries. This public toilet approach to OS design is hallmark Microshaft. A real OS does not allow
applications to do this.
But to throw Microsoft a bone, I will say that Windows 7 is stable and OK as was WinXP. Every other version is utter trash.
as a serious computer platform. Of course they were morons who did not understand what Moore's "law" meant.
IBM should have chosen the Motorola 68000 (a real 16/32 CPU with linear memory addressing) but instead chose the turdlet
known as the Intel 8088 an 8 bit waste of silicon with segmented memory addressing. Instead of adopting the available, superior
Unix OS flavours on the market it chose some no-name upstart Microsoft and their Mickey Mouse DOS. A total joke compared to
Unix.
IBM established the Microsoft and Intel monopolies (de facto) in the PC marketplace. And we have been living with this legacy
ever since. Although I will credit Intel for going somewhere, eventually. But Microsh*t and Winblows are still afflicting us today.
Winblows is nothing but semi-functional bloatware. All of its claim to greatness is utter triviality that Linux has had since the 1990s.
With Linux and GUI Unix OS's you can chose the menu-driven point and click or the command line as you wish. Nothing is foisted on you.
Winblows still does not have proper security features. You can't hack Unix like you can hack Winchunks. And God that endless hard
disk grinding and the epic conceptual fail called the registry. Then you have the cherry on top: every software package you install
mucks around with system shared libraries. This public toilet approach to OS design is hallmark Microshaft. A real OS does not allow
applications to do this.
But to throw Microsoft a bone, I will say that Windows 7 is stable and OK as was WinXP. Every other version is utter trash.
GarryB- Posts : 40557
Points : 41059
Join date : 2010-03-30
Location : New Zealand
Do you mean the one from Amiga 500? It wasn't even a proper OS, just a user interface,. It had no be looaded from a floppy disc each time upon turning computer on and when yu played a game, you could not access the OS.
I guess you are not an IT person... Workbench was a proper OS... the fact that it originally came on a floppy disk was because hard drives were enormous and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time.
When you turn on your 286 and start Windows 95 it loads from hard drive the same way Workbench loads from Floppy. Both are operating systems, but one you bought separately from the computer and came on a dozen floppy disks with almost twice the capacity of the floppy disks used on the Amiga ten years before... on the Amiga it used the same 720K floppy disks the IBM computers used but with superior formatting they had a capacity of 880K. The IBM floppies were improved to 1.44MB double sided double density disks but the Amiga never made the same upgrade so it remained an 880K double sided standard density disk.
Of course you could use Workbench to control all aspects of the computer, but just like DOS games for old IBMs they used all of the fast memory so they unloaded the OS and the computer game controlled the computer including RAM etc.
the breakthrough was XP where XP acted as a software layer and controlled the computer hardware directly... that meant when you installed a game you didn't have to choose sound and graphics options because the games made requests for hardware access through the OS instead of directly to the hardware.
That does not mean Windows 95 and Windows 98 and Amiga Workbench were not OS.
Amiga workbench allowed me to pretty much do everything XP could do, but due to the fact that XP operated between other software and the hardware it was vastly more stable so crashes that required reboots were rather more rare.
A new Workbench designed like XP would be the best Linux OS ever...
Even at the time windows 95 was renowned for being bloatware... Windows 3.1 did the job fine.
But to throw Microsoft a bone, I will say that Windows 7 is stable and OK as was WinXP. Every other version is utter trash.
Microsoft were a bunch of greedy sharks, IBM on the other hand were a bit naive... fortunately that was the correct way around because the IBM standard or clone meant anyone could make components to that standard and with a driver could be added to almost any IBM system. With Apple... you bought Apple.
I haven't had much experience with Windows 7 or Vista for that matter, and I have a KVM switch running my oldest IBM clone running Windows 98 as a games machine for old games, two machines running XP, and a machine I just loaded Cinnamon Linux.
I have an old mini laptop with Windows 10 as a free upgrade... it came with Win 7 but was almost non functional with that OS... ironic as my mini laptop has a touch screen that is ideal for Windows 10.
I have just installed Knoppix on a laptop and I am really impressed with the software that comes with it...
I got it from here:
http://www.technic3d.com/Knoppix-Mirror/knoppix-dvd/
And I downloaded the english version of the latest release:
http://knoppix.technic3d.com/knoppix-dvd/KNOPPIX_V7.6.1DVD-2016-01-16-EN.iso
Just over 4GB but it looks like a pretty complete and free operating system.
I am upgrading my computer this year and probably setting up a NAS and a media centre computer and I am thinking of making them all various versions of Linux to keep costs down.
magnumcromagnon- Posts : 8138
Points : 8273
Join date : 2013-12-05
Location : Pindos ave., Pindosville, Pindosylvania, Pindostan
kvs wrote:IBM f*cked up the market big time. It chose a piece of sh*t OS and CPU for its PC. The IBM executives did not treat the PC
as a serious computer platform. Of course they were morons who did not understand what Moore's "law" meant.
IBM should have chosen the Motorola 68000 (a real 16/32 CPU with linear memory addressing) but instead chose the turdlet
known as the Intel 8088 an 8 bit waste of silicon with segmented memory addressing. Instead of adopting the available, superior
Unix OS flavours on the market it chose some no-name upstart Microsoft and their Mickey Mouse DOS. A total joke compared to
Unix.
IBM established the Microsoft and Intel monopolies (de facto) in the PC marketplace. And we have been living with this legacy
ever since. Although I will credit Intel for going somewhere, eventually. But Microsh*t and Winblows are still afflicting us today.
Winblows is nothing but semi-functional bloatware. All of its claim to greatness is utter triviality that Linux has had since the 1990s.
With Linux and GUI Unix OS's you can chose the menu-driven point and click or the command line as you wish. Nothing is foisted on you.
Winblows still does not have proper security features. You can't hack Unix like you can hack Winchunks. And God that endless hard
disk grinding and the epic conceptual fail called the registry. Then you have the cherry on top: every software package you install
mucks around with system shared libraries. This public toilet approach to OS design is hallmark Microshaft. A real OS does not allow
applications to do this.
But to throw Microsoft a bone, I will say that Windows 7 is stable and OK as was WinXP. Every other version is utter trash.
What I hate most about Microsoft is all the backdoors (for spying of course) built in to the OS software, which blackhats have been exploiting, and constantly providing us with a endless stream of malware/spyware (the gift that keeps on giving).
higurashihougi- Posts : 3417
Points : 3504
Join date : 2014-08-13
Location : A small and cutie S-shaped land.
Anybody has Eastern Bloc/Soviet old computers ? 
JohninMK- Posts : 15656
Points : 15797
Join date : 2015-06-16
Location : England
There speaks I suspect a techie view.kvs wrote:IBM f*cked up the market big time. It chose a piece of sh*t OS and CPU for its PC. The IBM executives did not treat the PC
as a serious computer platform. Of course they were morons who did not understand what Moore's "law" meant.
IBM should have chosen the Motorola 68000 (a real 16/32 CPU with linear memory addressing) but instead chose the turdlet
known as the Intel 8088 an 8 bit waste of silicon with segmented memory addressing. Instead of adopting the available, superior
Unix OS flavours on the market it chose some no-name upstart Microsoft and their Mickey Mouse DOS. A total joke compared to
Unix.
IBM established the Microsoft and Intel monopolies (de facto) in the PC marketplace. And we have been living with this legacy
ever since. Although I will credit Intel for going somewhere, eventually. But Microsh*t and Winblows are still afflicting us today.
Winblows is nothing but semi-functional bloatware. All of its claim to greatness is utter triviality that Linux has had since the 1990s.
With Linux and GUI Unix OS's you can chose the menu-driven point and click or the command line as you wish. Nothing is foisted on you.
Winblows still does not have proper security features. You can't hack Unix like you can hack Winchunks. And God that endless hard
disk grinding and the epic conceptual fail called the registry. Then you have the cherry on top: every software package you install
mucks around with system shared libraries. This public toilet approach to OS design is hallmark Microshaft. A real OS does not allow
applications to do this.
But to throw Microsoft a bone, I will say that Windows 7 is stable and OK as was WinXP. Every other version is utter trash.
Quite a different view from marketing and sales (where the commercial power is) as the last thing the big computer (mainframe) manufacturers wanted was to introduce a product that would eat into that market quickly. With hindsight the Microsoft/Intel combination with the phased introduction of more powerful processors and operating systems was pure marketing genius. First they surrounded the mainframe with intelligent replacements for dumb terminals then they ate into the mini computer market, killing the typewriter and comptometer markets on the way. It was many years of juicy profits before they impacted mainframes.
Svyatoslavich- Posts : 399
Points : 400
Join date : 2015-04-22
Location : Buenos Aires
I don't. But there is one guy who has an impressive collection of functioning Eastern Bloc computers and all kind of electronic devices:higurashihougi wrote:Anybody has Eastern Bloc/Soviet old computers ?
http://sfrolov.livejournal.com
kvs- Posts : 15861
Points : 15996
Join date : 2014-09-11
Location : Turdope's Kanada
JohninMK wrote:
There speaks I suspect a techie view.
Quite a different view from marketing and sales (where the commercial power is) as the last thing the big computer (mainframe) manufacturers wanted was to introduce a product that would eat into that market quickly. With hindsight the Microsoft/Intel combination with the phased introduction of more powerful processors and operating systems was pure marketing genius. First they surrounded the mainframe with intelligent replacements for dumb terminals then they ate into the mini computer market, killing the typewriter and comptometer markets on the way. It was many years of juicy profits before they impacted mainframes.
This only demonstrates that the market was basically rigged by a few players to milk the consumer. Apple chose the Motorola 68000 for the Mac.
Nothing was stopping IBM from treating the PC as something more than an upgraded typewriter. It did not have to saddle the market with the
legacy of Intel and Microsoft crap in order to follow the incremental approach you describe. It could have made good products that would
enable progress and not hinder it.
Apple followed the Xerox PARC innovations from the 1970s. IBM could have done the same thing. I am afraid you are being way too
generous to the IBM executives. They were dinosaurs with no vision.
GarryB- Posts : 40557
Points : 41059
Join date : 2010-03-30
Location : New Zealand
A famous quote from an IBM executive was that he saw a world wide demand for computers at maybe 6 or 7 computers the size of a large multistory building.
Personal computers had no future...
Personal computers had no future...