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Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

copy.sh

61–70 of 171 posts

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#61

That is brilliant. Little things like being able to change the screen resolution and waste time on Solitaire - what more could one want!!! Works amazingly. Also it is quite a historical artefact, things like Active Desktop were truly cool back in the day. Plus the simplicity of the Win98 UI is a joy to return to. Congratulations!

The start menu is pretty nice, compared to the awful "launch pad" style full-screen app menus that are now in OS X, GNOME, and Windows...

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#62
post #50
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning about CPU internals was a huge part of your first year in CS? Where did you go to school? At my school and every other school I'm remotely familiar with, the knowledge needed to emulate a CPU would be covered in upper division computer engineering courses, and not covered by CS undergrads at all, certainly not in their first year.

Bologna, Italy (from the school of Science, not Engineering). At the time (16+ years ago, under prof. Renzo Davoli), the introductory "Computer Architecture" course [1] was almost entirely dedicated to CPU architecture, including building basic ones (IIRC). To be fair, I did drop out a year later :) [1] http://www.unibo.it/en/teaching/degree-programmes/study-plan...

This kind of course (computer architecture) is typical of the cross CS/EE requirements and can usually be taken during any year of an undergraduate degree in CS. Prerequisites are minimal if any.

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#63
post #16

oh the irony, Win98 was the MS "internet as desktop" release. Least favorite OS ever Awesome project though!

Windows ME was my most disliked OS (too buggy, even after service packs). I think the level of complexity finally hit the wall given the 9x series lack of good memory/file protections. My favorite 9x OS is 98 SE (which was a stand-alone release, not a service pack). But 98 "first edition" did add substantial features to 95: IE 4, multi-monitor support, sfc was added (which was useful because 9x got corrupted a LOT),…

I ran all of those windows versions as well, but my favorite remains NT4. I stuck with that for a long time, until the lack of drivers forced an upgrade. It was incredibly fast (smooth on a 66 mhz 486), rock-solid (uptimes of weeks with daily use), light-weight (32 MB RAM was doable, 128 MB was multi-tasking heaven). It's nice that MS is trimming down windows lately, but I keep thinking that it's a bit like seeing someone who has let themselves go get back on a diet. If they hadn't put on the weight in the first place, they would have never needed to lose it.

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#64

This is actually really useful to me. I've been working on-and-off re-implementing Comic Chat using HTML5. It's nice having a working copy again to reference. The paper is great but it omits some details.

Comic Chat, like the program used to make jerkcity comics? Would be amazing to have a web version, best of luck!

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#65
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, Windows 98 has drivers for the NE2000 network card we're emulating ( https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/src/ne2k.js ). However, currently the emulation isn't accurate enough, Windows 98 refuses to use it.

The bigger problem would be what to connect it to, and how. You can't make arbitrary outbound connections from Javascript.

I have a barely working HTTP proxy in client-side-JavaScript here: https://github.com/ysangkok/browser-http-proxy

This allows you to connect to CORS enabled sites without using the WebSocket proxy. It talks HTTP on the serial port.

I want to add SNI support to tlstunnel so that I can tunnel to google.com by navigating to https://google.com.mydomain/ and having the snitunnel tunnel to http://google.com by reading the bottom-level domain names using SNI.

Using this with browser-http-proxy, it would be possible to tunnel to HTTP sites on a request-based level (making it easier to scale) and without relying on tun/tap on the server. Also it could serve as a fallback for non-CORS enabled hosts.

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#69

Are there license issues around this project? I doubt Microsoft would care to put the resources into enforcement of windows 98 licenses but I am just curious about the legality.

Essentially you are being given a copy of a VM that has a copy of Windows pre-installed. It's unlikely (but possible) that Microsoft has granted a license for this. I imagine this is technically not legal, but as you say, unlikely to matter much.

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#70
post #66

Doesn't work on my Android phone, in Chrome. But I didn't expect it to :) Edit: for what it's worth, FreeDOS boots there. No way to put in keyboard input though.

Install Hacker Keyboard from fdroid (or the Play Store...). There's an option for a persistent notification that you can click, which will enable the keyboard wherever.
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