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Windows98 Running in the Browser

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Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#31
post #6

Impressive! But loading Google for kicks, in IE, sort of killed it. Definitely can feel the nostalgia. I remember the first time I decided to leave Windows 95 run overnight, the next morning, moving the mouse would send the harddrive playhead flying like crazy... You know the old "SHRrrrrt Shrrrt..." It had such a memory leak overnight that moving the mouse was causing the swap to kick in non-stop!

Interesting. In 1997 I had a thinkpad running Windows 95 and I went weeks between reboots. It was rock solid.

There was a hard cap of around a month and a half:

https://sites.google.com/site/edmarkovich2/whywindows95andwi...

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#32

Wow, what a flashback! This was the OS I actually grew up with. I remember being 3 or 4 years old and playing Carnivores 2 on my Dad's Windows 98 PC. Even the slowness and unresponsiveness is there, just like I remember! Yeah...this was the golden age. So much hope and so much optimism for what could be in regards to technology and what it would allow for the general population. I still think we're not there, but we…

This was really interesting to read. Thanks for sharing your memory. There was a big difference between win98 and win98 “second edition”. Do you know which you used?

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#33

Awww, "My Briefcase"! I had totally forgotten that was a thing :) What a nice little nostalgia trip.

As an 8 year old child, I never understood what briefcases were but that didn't prevent me from having tons of them.

I used win98 regularly back then. Never touched briefcases. I’m not sure it was too popular.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#34

What interests me is the core interactions with Windows systems remain mostly the same, unchanged, in the span of last 20 years!

if you forget Windows 8 :)

Windows 8? After Windows XP, I Microsoft released only Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Also, Matrix never had a sequel.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#35

Wow, what a flashback! This was the OS I actually grew up with. I remember being 3 or 4 years old and playing Carnivores 2 on my Dad's Windows 98 PC. Even the slowness and unresponsiveness is there, just like I remember! Yeah...this was the golden age. So much hope and so much optimism for what could be in regards to technology and what it would allow for the general population. I still think we're not there, but we…

Yep, it makes me so nostalgic. If you like this, there's a channel on twitch streaming old episodes of Computer Chronicles [1] and the optimism and excitement in it is something I just don't feel anymore nowadays.

[1] https://www.twitch.tv/computerchronicles

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#37

What interests me is the core interactions with Windows systems remain mostly the same, unchanged, in the span of last 20 years!

Isn't the same true for osx and linux?

> osx

Between architecture changes (PowerPC to x86 to x86-64 and next up ARM), and compiler changes (I doubt Objective-C code written for OS X 1.0 will compile on the latest XCode), breaking API changes, security changes, and even deprecating standards (can't use latest OpenGL, you gotta use Metal)... not really.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#38
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In 1997 I had a thinkpad running Windows 95 and I went weeks between reboots. It was rock solid.

Windows 95/98 stability really depended on the quality of your hardware, drivers, and software. If things intracted poorly, it was easy to get a system that needed a reboot every few hours to stay responsive.

Agreed. Drivers were a big one. As I remember, they had unfettered access to everything... so they could consume all ram or cpu or read any part of memory. Powerful and scary.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#40
post #23
post #10

Plugging Fabrice Bellard's https://bellard.org/jslinux/ where you can run linux and windows on a hand crafted js x86 emulator.

Of course it was Bellard. Of course.

The challenge is to find something he made that isn't in some way impressive.
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