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Windows98 Running in the Browser

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Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#91

Post by nolok »

csomar wrote: post #77

Here is something that I stumbled upon that I think was a big loss: HTML Help [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help ] It's unfortunate that Microsoft didn't work toward making it an open source standard for documentation. We'd have avoided every other documentation having it's own format, style, etc... Plus you get the whole documentation in a single file, not worrying about broken stuff, missi…

Think about how screwed up the modern web is (both security wise and complexity / bloat wise), and then realize if the format hadn't evolved to include all of that then help designer would still go with their own thing.

I'm a huge chm fan but I for one don't want out of update electron apps to open everytime I look up something. And then they would still go online to find up to date stuff anyway.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#92

Post by zuppy »

aronpye wrote: post #85

Has it crashed for anyone yet? I tried using Windows Update and it hung, it’s Windows 98 alright.

you can crash it with the /con/con commad too

edit: for the ones who haven't lived the windows 95-98 era: https://coderanch.com/t/131585/engineering/Folder-con-Window...

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#94

Post by hyperman1 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #38
toast0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In win95, everything had access to everything if it wanted. E.g. DLLs were mapped in a shared memory segment that was shared between all applications. Lots of 16 bit code was still running, and this did IPC basically by messing in some other program's memory. Backward compatibilitty required very thin walls between processes.

DOS TSR programs started before windows were still running. I had one that popped up a calculator in dos text mode, and if you pushed its hotkey in win95, it switched win95 back to text mode, paused win95, did its thing, then popped back in win95.

Only the very basics of protected mode and virtual memory where there, and a well-behaving program had a reasonable chance of staying in its own sandbox. But only because it wanted to. Seen from the CPU, you could argue EMM386 was more the actual OS than win95/win98.

None of this is meant to be negative. It was a solid step up from windows 3.x, and yet quite usable with 4MB RAM of which the first 1MB wanted a very different treatment.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#95

Post by nsomaru »

zozbot234 wrote: post #44
lewiscollard wrote: post #7

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

The Briefcase feature was used to keep folders up-to-date across multiple machines, via removable media (as opposed to a network connection). You can still do this today using rsync.

Dropbox for sneakernet

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#96

Post by brittspace »

benbristow wrote: post #82
max_ wrote: post #64

Hypothetical question: If you where a program running in the VM how would you know if you are in one?

There's ways. Detecting whether tools like VMWare/Virtualbox are installed, whether certain drivers are installed, checking the hardware listings etc. etc. Malware is quite a good study subject about this question. There's a lot of malware that won't run if it's in a virtual machine to avoid researchers from testing it inside one.

Do you have a reference that is runnable in this emulator? (Genuinely curious.)

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#97

Post by arethuza »

nolok wrote: post #88
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #74

Back when the system settings could be reached with less clicks, were organised in a logical way and didn't use most of the screen as white-space.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

That tablet interface also made it to the server version - which probably had the worst windows interface ever.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#98

Post by kjaftaedi »

arethuza wrote: post #97
nolok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

That tablet interface also made it to the server version - which probably had the worst windows interface ever.

Personally I've always been slightly amazed that at no point in time did anyone at Microsoft think that making msn.com the default homepage for servers was a bad idea.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#99

Post by jychang »

kjaftaedi wrote: post #98
arethuza wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tablet interface also made it to the server version - which probably had the worst windows interface ever.

Personally I've always been slightly amazed that at no point in time did anyone at Microsoft think that making msn.com the default homepage for servers was a bad idea.

Hilariously, Microsoft production servers are also set to the MSN default homepage, even though most forests are firewalled off from the entire internet.

So the homepage doesn't even load.

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