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Windows 96

windows96.net

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Re: Windows 96

#281

Post by wccrawford »

koyote wrote: post #106
thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

Back in those days re-formatting and re-installing Windows was a very common thing because usually the system would get into some kind of bad state after several months of usage (or at least mine did). I believe I only had a Windows 98 'Upgrade' CD, which could not be used to install on a bare system. This meant I had to first install a previous copy Windows, which in my case was Windows 95 on floppy disks (and I fee…

>I believe I only had a Windows 98 'Upgrade' CD, which could not be used to install on a bare system.

As I recall it, there was actually a minimal set of files needed to trigger the CD to install and you didn't actually need a full 95 install. I worked at a shop at the time and remember doing a lot of reinstalls from those upgrade disks and we definitely didn't spend the time to reinstall both OSs.

I tried searching and the closest I could find was that win95 upgrade would do a full install if you told it to find the old win3.1 on the win3.1 install floppy. I vaguely remember doing something similar, so either it was those versions (unlikely, but possible) or later versions had the same trick.

We definitely did a lot of full windows installs from the upgrade disks without installing the full previous OS first.

Re: Windows 96

#282

Post by LadyCailin »

ycuser2 wrote: post #198
jamal-kumar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned computers because in 1996 I was completely ignorant and a little kid who decided to drag everything into the recycle bin because I thought it would be 'recycled' back into place but really it just destroyed windows enough that I had to learn how to reinstall from floppies created in DOS

Same here: "Why there are so many files? I only need the .exe to start my game." After deleting the "unnecessary" files the game woudln't work.

I went through system32 and deleted all the files that we never used, to free up disk space.

And that was the day I learned how to reinstall an OS.

Re: Windows 96

#283

Post by kwanbix »

thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

I had to do the same, but we used imaging software. It was called Ghost. Symantec later bought them.

Re: Windows 96

#284

Post by unixhero »

ddalcino wrote: post #119
deathanatos wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably not old enough to qualify as "crotchety old man", but yeah, 3.5" are diskettes to me since they weren't really floppies. I raise your floppy disk install one OS/2 Warp install: https://twitter.com/jhegarty/status/1162326199445655552/phot... I still feel that OS/2 Warp feels more valuable in ones hands, just because of the sheer weight of it… (compared to modern OSes that have no weight because I download…

In middle school I was taught that 5.25" diskettes were "floppies", and 3.5" diskettes were "hard disks", because of the hard plastic case. It was awesome.

Many teachers tried to convince me that the computer chassis was called the CPU.

Re: Windows 96

#285

Post by jaclaz »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89
thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

I just want to quietly grumble, like an appropriately crotchety old man... '3.5" floppies? Bah! Try 8", and they were really floppy! Try installing AT&T Unix from those...'

Just in case:

https://tinyapps.org/blog/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html

Re: Windows 96

#286

Post by [deleted] »

GuB-42 wrote: post #57
pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

I don't think it is nostalgia, I'd say that Windows 2000 was the peak when it comes to usability, and XP, Vista and 7 made it prettier, taking advantage of improved graphics hardware. And then Windows 8 arrived and broke everything. It is easy to find the culprit: tablets, and mobile devices in general, and to a lesser extent, web apps. Mobile devices needed a new kind of UI, something suitable for small touch screen…

[deleted]

Re: Windows 96

#287

Post by Symbiote »

hunter2_ wrote: post #143
deathanatos wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably not old enough to qualify as "crotchety old man", but yeah, 3.5" are diskettes to me since they weren't really floppies. I raise your floppy disk install one OS/2 Warp install: https://twitter.com/jhegarty/status/1162326199445655552/phot... I still feel that OS/2 Warp feels more valuable in ones hands, just because of the sheer weight of it… (compared to modern OSes that have no weight because I download…

It's been so long since I've seen the word "diskette" that upon seeing it, I just had a crazy a-ha moment: could it be that the convention of "disk=magnetic, disc=optical" is based on the fact that they were all originally discs but the c was changed to k for magnetic media in order to facilitate the spelling of diskette (since discette with a c doesn't really work)? Or put another way, disk is just an abbreviated ve…

I think it's much simpler:

Diskettes, floppy disks etc were invented in the USA, where the standard spelling is "disk".

Compact discs were invented by Philips, who probably preferred the British spelling "disc", and Sony, who probably didn't care.

You can find the spelling "hard disc" in RISC OS, a 1990s British operating system: https://www.riscos.info/index.php/Introduction_to_RISC_OS#Us...

Re: Windows 96

#288

Post by jaclaz »

dragonshed wrote: post #147
GuB-42 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is nostalgia, I'd say that Windows 2000 was the peak when it comes to usability, and XP, Vista and 7 made it prettier, taking advantage of improved graphics hardware. And then Windows 8 arrived and broke everything. It is easy to find the culprit: tablets, and mobile devices in general, and to a lesser extent, web apps. Mobile devices needed a new kind of UI, something suitable for small touch screen…

> Mobile devices needed a new kind of UI, something suitable for small touch screens. People tried things... Exactly this. The flat "Metro" UI style was initially modeled and developed on Windows Phone 7, and for what it did, it was (imho) a great way to use a phone. Then the rest of microsoft took what that group was doing and made it one-size-fits-all UI for everything windows.

... and then most if not all the mobile/tablet part was abandoned, at the time the concept was dubbed "continuum":

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_Mobile

and it had its merits (from a phone-centric view) but the (crappy) UI remained even when there was not any more need for it (and a Windows 2000/Windows 7 like one would be much more suitable to laptos/desktops or anyway for no-touch devices).

Re: Windows 96

#289

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

mweberxyz wrote: post #33

This is snappier running in my browser than my actual OS shell. Ahh, I miss the simpler days of computing.

Turns out that while hardware has become several orders of magnitude more powerful, software has degraded to the point that it makes no real difference.

Re: Windows 96

#290

Post by asr21 »

LadyCailin wrote: post #282
ycuser2 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here: "Why there are so many files? I only need the .exe to start my game." After deleting the "unnecessary" files the game woudln't work.

I went through system32 and deleted all the files that we never used, to free up disk space. And that was the day I learned how to reinstall an OS.

Hahahaha.. same thing I did. I didn't realise there is a thing called hidden files.. I went to a folder in system32 and it seemed empty to me.. I was like let's delete it.. I deleted some 10-20 folders like these and when I try to restart the OS.. it wouldn't load.
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