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

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

#111

Post by warfangle » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 3:29 PM UTC

flomo wrote: post #80

moe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't everyone do it that way? I tried the upgrade-option exactly once. I can't remember whether it preserved my background color. But I do remember that all sorts of drivers got screwed, software installs would fail with obscure error messages, and it generally was nothing but problems until I finally wiped and re-installed.

I upgraded from NT4 -> 2000 -> XP without any major issues. AFAICT it was mostly just a file replacement process. The DOSWin to NT upgrade path always seemed pretty flaky though. The demonstration cheated a bit by using a vanilla VMWare config; an actual PC would be loaded with crappy vendor drivers and startup software which complicated any upgrade.

Upgrading from the NT line to further along the NT line wasn't much of a problem IIRC. Upgrading from '95 to '98 to 2000 probably would be, if you'd actually used the machine. Registry rot from years of use would hinder this process.

The idea of a well-used registry from Win95 being still used in a 2000 or XP machine makes me shiver in horror.

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

#112

Post by gaius » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 4:42 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #94

georgieporgie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not completely true. In MS-DOS you could terminate a program, but make 64K of its memory resident. And then you could program a time interrupt handler to wake it up and do stuff periodically. That's how some viruses worked btw :-)

TSR, that was called, terminate and stay resident. It was a legitimate technique, software like Sidekick used it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick

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

#113

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

p_trumpet wrote: post #85

badmonkey0001 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

yep. I'm still around. I live a quiet existence in not so sunny Hobart, Tasmania. Most unusual request - still thinking about it. Donations willingly accepted - just trying to think what kind of cool thing to provide in return for the generous donations.

> created: 13 hours ago

Welcome!

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

#114

Post by rospaya » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 6:39 PM UTC

ladon86 wrote: post #34

mixmax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The part about millions of people sending millions of checks to companies really hit me. Why are Americans still using checks? I haven't seen one in more than a decade.

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

#115

Post by Gormo » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 7:06 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…

Nitpick: the original version of SimCity was released for DOS before Windows 3.0 came out.

I never knew that MS went so far out of their way to fix a bug for a single game though - it seems that they were much more dedicated to backward-compatibility then than they are now.

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

#116

Post by zandorg » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 7:33 PM UTC

I have a VB3 (or VB4) application which uploads samples to my hardware sampler over MIDI. But it doesn't work on XP, only 95/98. So there's a counter example to it being totally backward compatible.

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

#117

Post by krakensden » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

rospaya wrote: post #114

ladon86 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The part about millions of people sending millions of checks to companies really hit me. Why are Americans still using checks? I haven't seen one in more than a decade.

Bank transfers basically aren't supported by anyone you'd like to give a large sum of money to, so you have to write them a check.

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

#118

Post by megaframe » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 7:48 PM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #13

megaframe wrote: post #4

It's like taking every upgrade I've ever done with Windows and condensing it down to 9:49 (omit the various reinstalls)

I never used the upgrade option. I'd always get a new hard drive with my upgrade (to get OEM price) and install clean, usually using the original hard drive as a slave. The next cycle that hard drive would become an archive on the new slave. I have backed up files from 1996 on my home desktop.

I always did the upgrades once to see how they worked out but I would usually just go fresh install shortly after. (It's what I do now with Ubuntu upgrades). With the exception of Windows XP, and only because I had one of those disks that would only do an upgrade.

There might have been a way around that at the time but a fresh 98 install with XP on top was clean enough for the one or two times I did it.

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

#119

Post by sh4na » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 8:55 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #100

Anyone know why the Windows installer takes so long? What's it doing for an hour and a half?

Some say it's probably due to the installer copying lots of things around, combined with slow IO on the VM plus the installer assuming reads are going to be slow (the source being slow CDs or floppies).

I call pish posh on that. What you're actually witnessing is The Microsoft Minute, as explained by http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990318

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

#120

Post by Swannie » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:34 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #100

Anyone know why the Windows installer takes so long? What's it doing for an hour and a half?

I'd guess lots of decompression & file creation. Windows install = lots of CAB files in a flat file structure.