Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video) • Hacker News Board

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#31

Post by mixmax » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:32 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #2

This is a testament to how much trouble Microsoft goes through to maintain compatibility. I wonder whether malware from those early days would continue to run, or if newer versions of the OS would block it.

Much more than you would ever know..

The original version of Sim City was written for windows 3.x and included a bug that read memory that had been freed to the system. It worked in windows 3.x, even though it shouldn't, because that particular range of memory wasn't being used for anything else until the program was terminated.

In beta versions of windows 95 Sim City didn't work because the operating system allocated memory differently, and Sim City would crash as expected because of the bug in the program. Amazingly, in the final version of Win95 the original Sim City worked. Microsoft engineers had actually tested backwards compatibility with Sim city, located the bug, and worked around it in their sourcecode.

Now that's serious dedication to backwards compatibility.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#32

Post by derleth » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:34 PM UTC

jjordan wrote: post #21

sktrdie wrote: post #15

This gives a great deal of assurance for Windows developers. You don't have to worry about your app not working in future versions of Windows.

Try running a 16-bit application on Windows x64...

> Try running a 16-bit application on Windows x64...

There's no reason for this to fail: dosemu runs 16-bit code on 64-bit Linux systems just fine. You just need to do full hardware emulation which, at this point, is neither difficult nor prohibitively resource-intensive.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#33

Post by badmonkey0001 » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:36 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #26

nailer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly enough my uncle actually knew the guy who wrote Trumpet Winsock. He says he got burnt by piracy fairly badly: computer magazines were including the full version of his app on their cover disks all over the world, ISPs were handing his app to their customers, and his company was too small to stop them.

I had no idea. We ought to set up a donation drive. edit: I was not being sarcastic. I wouldn't mind chipping a few bucks if a hat is going around.

I thought it a good idea. His name is Peter Tattam (I did some google-leg-work to find it). His site is at http://petertattam.com/ .

I found his name via a report at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.40....

If this is the guy, what should we do? Should somebody ask him what he would like?

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#34

Post by ladon86 » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:40 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #31

zdw wrote: post #2

This is a testament to how much trouble Microsoft goes through to maintain compatibility. I wonder whether malware from those early days would continue to run, or if newer versions of the OS would block it.

Much more than you would ever know.. The original version of Sim City was written for windows 3.x and included a bug that read memory that had been freed to the system. It worked in windows 3.x, even though it shouldn't, because that particular range of memory wasn't being used for anything else until the program was terminated. In beta versions of windows 95 Sim City didn't work because the operating system allocate…

Specifically, Windows actually checked whether SimCity was running and then allocated memory differently if it was.

Joel Spolsky talks about it in this old article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#35

Post by derleth » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:41 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #3

Looking forward to someone doing the same sort of thing with other OSs.

In Ubuntu, it would be one long series of do-release-upgrade commands. Not nearly as exciting.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#36

Post by Hoff » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:41 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #31

zdw wrote: post #2

This is a testament to how much trouble Microsoft goes through to maintain compatibility. I wonder whether malware from those early days would continue to run, or if newer versions of the OS would block it.

Much more than you would ever know.. The original version of Sim City was written for windows 3.x and included a bug that read memory that had been freed to the system. It worked in windows 3.x, even though it shouldn't, because that particular range of memory wasn't being used for anything else until the program was terminated. In beta versions of windows 95 Sim City didn't work because the operating system allocate…

This isn't a fun choice for the OS folks to make.

Backward-compatibility for cases such as this can lead to arcane and more complex code within the OS, to difficulty with adding enhancements and creating fixes in the future, and creates larger target areas for folks that are attempting security attacks, and more complex testing.

Bug-for-bug application compatibility is not without costs.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#37

Post by brazzy » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:42 PM UTC

pmsaue0 wrote: post #22

He applauds MS for continually supporting their legacy software... my opinion is that such legacy support is what continually hampers their rapid development

When it comes to viability as an infrastructure for business, downwards compatibility clearly trumps rapid development. The same can be seen with Java: having all the shiny, fashionable features the tech geek blogs are abuzz with may be nice... but having old, boring, clunky, uncool software that your business depends on continue to work is far, far more valuable.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#38

Post by Hoff » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:43 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #5

Impressive, but I have to wonder how many compromises had to be made, and advancements abandoned, to keep apps like Reversi and Dosshell all the way up through Win7...

That would be the innovator's dilemma.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#39

Post by georgieporgie » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:44 PM UTC

maayank wrote: post #10

Brilliant. A number of comments: * He mentions there is no multi tasking in dosshell. I'm not 100% sure about MS-DOS 5.0, but in ver 6.0 you could switch between tasks in dosshell [EDIT: this is also true for version 5.0, you can see the option at 1:13 in his video]. To switch tasks you need to first enable it through the "Options" menu ("Enable Task Swapper") and then you can either switch tasks by the all too famil…

in ver 6.0 you could switch between tasks in dosshell

That was task swapping, not multitasking. All but the currently-executing task were interrupted, written out to disk, and expunged from memory.

Re: Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)

#40

Post by InclinedPlane » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 11:45 PM UTC

jjordan wrote: post #21

sktrdie wrote: post #15

This gives a great deal of assurance for Windows developers. You don't have to worry about your app not working in future versions of Windows.

Try running a 16-bit application on Windows x64...

It's actually not that hard. Just run it under dosshell or Virtual XP. It won't run natively of course.