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Running Windows 98 in the Browser

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Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#111

Post by deaddodo »

galangalalgol wrote: post #93
pjmlp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even further behind, an Amiga 500 would be more than enough for many folks.

The memory footprint of workbench was incredibly low. A base alpine image with no support for any graphics is several times that size. What are we doing?

Workbench had a very limited hardware it supported. Linux Kernel supports 1000x as many pieces of hardware from different CPU configurations, all the way to the most random USB/Firewire devices.

Like, software bloat is totally a thing, but comparing Workbench to the Linux Kernel (let alone the entire GNU/Linux environment) is ridiculously naive.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#112

Post by ptspts »

bitwize wrote: post #87
liotier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not exaggerate: Winamp .mp3 playback was just fine on any Pentium running Windows 9x - though I concede that even my Pentium 75 had 16 MB RAM and I have never seen a Pentium with less than that. On the other hand, extracting a CD and compressing it's .wav to .mp3 was a whole day of computing, and sending the files as attachments through SMTP was enough to elicit flowery vehement objections from my university's…

The first mp3 I ever played was Jun Kazama's theme from Tekken 2 on a Windows 95 box (Pentium 60) using Fraunhofer's own graphical mp3 player. I had to close all other open applications and not move the mouse around too much, lest the playback start to "crackle". This would've been about 1996, just a few scant months after Damaged Cybernetics, the famed emulation group, announced on their home page: "We are investiga…

I had a 486 CPU running at 120 MHz. The WinPlay3 player was able to play MPSs smoothly, WinAMP wasn't.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#113

Post by charles_f »

nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

This! Oh, this! And look at the size as well. A fresh install of 11 is over 10gb.

It's something of a Parkinson's law of optimization. The more computing power there is, the more clutter and less optimization will be had until we fill the computing power. When your hardware is a big limiting factor, performance becomes a primary concern.

I think there is also something to be said about the size of the project. Win98 was in the hundreds, 11 is in the thousands. I have found much harder to get the fundamentals right on a larger project than a smaller one. Responsibility is diluted, architecture creates more seams and redundancies, and coordinating people is more complex. On top of that, slap a product culture that favors form over function, and cramming in the largest feature list possible, and you've got yourself a modern OS.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#114

Post by nunez »

darksim905 wrote: post #34
tonoto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still, during the time of Windows 95/98 I could hardly play even a 128kbps MP3 with WinAmp in my Pentium 133MHz with 12MB of Ram where I had got rid of lots of bloatware. At the same time I could play it smoothly in Linux with a full blown desktop environment (Window Maker) running. So it was a bad performer in comparison even back then.

I call bullshit. Windows 95/98/2000 did not have any bloatware....

Win9x/2000 didn't ship with bloatware but the OEMs that pre installed those OSes sure did.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#115

Post by hughw »

gwervc wrote: post #20
nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

Even functionally it's very comical because of how we were able to do on Win98 (even 95) almost everything we are doing today: editing documents, browsing the web (with images), playing games, watching videos, printing documents, listening to music. The only functional improvements I can note over two decades are: Unicode support, higher resolution of everything (from hardware to content), and system reliability than…

Win98 had pretty great Unicode support, didn't it? Or am I confusing it with general multibyte?

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#116

Post by kej »

peterhull90 wrote: post #78

Bravo! Was there anyone used the 'Briefcase' back in the day? I'd forgotten about that. In fact I got so in the zone that I pressed ALT-F4 to close Win98 notepad and shut down my whole web browser instead!

I used the briefcase with my first 32MB flash drive to keep school files synced between home and the computer lab (and with tons of space left over!).

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#117

Post by jstanley »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8
creshal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic desktop interaction is the same as 22 years ago, yet modern desktop environments are orders of magnitude slower at performing those same basic tasks.

Sure, but how is it surprising that an old OS built for late 90's hardware runs fast on 2020's hardware? I'm failing to see the surprise. Isn't it a a given that old SW runs faster on modern HW when you factor in how far HW evolved since then.

The surprising part isn't that near-30-year-old software runs faster now than it did then.

The surprising part is that in the intervening near-30-years of development, we have made software slower instead of faster.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#118

Post by dblohm7 »

hughw wrote: post #115
gwervc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even functionally it's very comical because of how we were able to do on Win98 (even 95) almost everything we are doing today: editing documents, browsing the web (with images), playing games, watching videos, printing documents, listening to music. The only functional improvements I can note over two decades are: Unicode support, higher resolution of everything (from hardware to content), and system reliability than…

Win98 had pretty great Unicode support, didn't it? Or am I confusing it with general multibyte?

No unicode in Win98.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#119

Post by ravenstine »

nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

There was once a time where shitty software couldn't just ride on the back of good hardware.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#120

Post by whoopdedo »

taspeotis wrote: post #55
whoopdedo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that? I remember that being an extra on the CD-ROM but I don't see it mounted and can't remember the name of the file to search for it. If the CD is there somewhere, does that mean the Weezer music video should be there too. And then I got a BSOD (Invalid VxD dynamic link call from VMM(06)+1D72 to device "C001" service E74) when I turned on the Underwater screen saver.

It’s one of the first screensavers in the dropdown. Worked for me, albeit slowly.

Oh, the screensaver. I confused myself and thought you were talking about the 3D hovercraft game. Oops.
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