Monthly Archives: August 2018

Compiling Microsoft Word 1.1a for Windows

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A while back, Microsoft had famously released the source code to Word for Windows 1.1a (and OS/2 as well!), to some fanfare.

People were excited, but then kind of dismayed as they couldn’t really do much with it.  Oddly enough the source code release really didn’t have any notes on how to build it, although everything needed is included.  I went looking for information on how to build Word to see why it keeps doing weird things on WineVDM, and I came across this thread on betaarchive: 

https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31096

Special props to yksoft1 for getting it to build in the first place, and Ringding for noticing that the OS/2 supplied compiler binaries can be re-bound to run under MS-DOS using a MS-DOS Extender.

So I went ahead and fired up Qemu and within an hour I had done it!

Word 1.1a compiled and on Windows 2.11

Well this is great fun, and all, but there isn’t a heck of a lof of people with Windows 2.x around anymore.  And of course Word 1.1a really wanted to have 2.11 or higher.  It has some hooks for what would be Windows 3.0 although I think it was much more.  Although it certainly doesn’t want to run (unmodified) under debug release 1.14.

So now that the world has gone beyond Win16 OS’s what can you do?

Well the tip of  WineVDM will run it!

Word 1.1a on Windows 10 using WineVDM

So now there is some new life for this old word processor.

Another fun thing in Word 1.1a is that it has an early implementation of MDI letting you view and work with several documents at once.  Naturally you would need a massive monitor, which we all have today.  Although people tend to just launch more than one copy of Word to accomplish this.

Early MDI

So now on my 64bit machine I can not only play with the source to Word, but I can run it at unimaginable resolutions on my modern machine!

So while out today I found a Windows RT Surface for $25

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I had to pay another $15 for the charger.  I should have run away, but I’m a sucker.

Yes, there are basically NO apps, but thanks to this little guide…

QuakeWorld on Windows RT

I was able to port over some trivial stuff, the usual things like hello world, Infocom Interpreter, a f2c build of Dungeon, then I went with something I’d been messing around an old GDI driver for WinQuake that builds with the NT 3.5 SDK (finally got it!).  So with a few minor tweeks here it is cross compiled from my x86_64 to the surface.

Last time I talked about the Surface was nearly 6 years ago…  The platform’s fate was pretty much sealed on day one.  With no open Win32 API it shunned traditional devs, and with some completely new and insane model it was such a hurdle for new devs, why put so much effort into such an old tired company like Microsoft?

I figured for the price of a good lunch it’d be a fun toy.

Too bad the speakers don’t work though.

I know the window on Windows 8.1 apps is closing soon.  I should put something together for the dead platform.  Maybe for phone too.  But for tonight, it was kinda fun doing a copy/paste attack to then run unsigned EXE’s on the device.

I might upload the tool chain later, but at the moment getting Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate is a breeze.

Reading older SQL Server 6.5 books online

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So as part of my fun day job stuff involves moving data around and from time to time, there is that proverbial server in the corner (in this case it’s even physical!) and in this case I needed to move stuff into an old version of SQL Server as I needed to remember how to use the older BCP syntax.  Obviously I guess I could have just installed 6.5 into a VM, did the SQL transfer, then the whole upgrade to 7/2000 and up to something modern, but per requirements I needed to check data in the middle, so the quickest way is to just BCP it out into something human readable, and BCP it into something new.

SQL Server Books Online on Windows 10

So it turns out the books are easily copied off the install CD, and just run the viewer application directly.  And even better the ‘massive and optional’ install of all the online documentation turns out to be absolutely trivial by modern standards.

08/27/2018  12:33 PM           457,780 SQLBOOKS.AUX
08/27/2018  12:33 PM         1,163,078 SQLBOOKS.CAC
08/27/2018  01:33 PM                28 SQLBOOKS.flt
08/27/2018  01:33 PM                79 SQLBOOKS.hst
08/27/2018  12:33 PM               766 SQLBOOKS.ICO
08/27/2018  12:33 PM           238,252 SQLBOOKS.IDX
08/27/2018  12:33 PM           118,805 SQLBOOKS.KWD
08/27/2018  12:33 PM        10,193,094 SQLBOOKS.MVB
               8 File(s)     12,171,882 bytes

As you can see it’s really not that much in the world of terabyte disks.  Anyways just copy out all the SQLBOOKS* files and then from the binn directory grab the INFOVIEW program.  To view the books just run “INFOVIEW SQLBOOKS.MVB” and you’ll be set!

Some of the other older tools like Visual C++ 4.x also use this InfoViewer format, and you can copy all the other associated files, in the off chance you want to keep this ancient stuff handy.

Origin of the Windows XP ‘Bliss’ wallpaper

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Charles O’Rear’s Bliss

You’ve probably seen this iconic image everywhere at one point.  This is Charles O’Rear’s picture simply titled ‘bliss’ that was bought by Microsoft in 2000 and used as the default wallpaper for Windows XP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVXY8OEZAEQ
Interview with Charles

I found this interview of him recently and thought it was interesting enough for a quick post.

IRC turns 30!

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irssi on the Apple //c (Blake Patterson) cropped. (CC by 2.0)

And what better way to celebrate by breaking out some ancient source and get it running!

I thought I’d take a stab at irc 2.1 first.  You can find the source archived on darenet.org, among other places.  And no doubt what made IRC popular was that not only was the protocol open (like Gopher) and the software was free without restriction except for commercial use (like Gopher).

 **
 ** IRC - Internet Relay Chat
 **
 ** Author:          Jarkko Oikarinen
 **        Internet: [email protected]
 **            UUCP: ...!mcvax!tut!oulu!jto
 **          BITNET: toljto at finou
 **
 ** Copyright 1988, 1989 by Jarkko Oikarinen and
 **                         University of Oulu, Computing Center
 **
 ** All rights reserved
 **
 ** Permission is hereby granted to use and distribute this program freely.
 ** Permission to use this program for commercial purposes and in
 ** commercial Bulletin Board or similar systems is not given.
 ** Permission to modify this program and distribute modified version is
 ** not given. This copyright notice may not be modified or removed.
 **
 ** IRC is provided 'as is', without warranty of any kind, either
 ** expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied
 ** merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire
 ** risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you.
 ** Should the IRC program prove defective, you assume the cost of all
 ** necessary servicing, repair or correction.

Using the Linux Subsystem for Windows and the Debian userland I was able to quickly get it to compile.

IRC 2.1 connected to freenode.
And it’s useless.

However the protocol has drifted too much, and you can’t join anything as the CHANNEL command has long since depreciated.

So not one to give up too easily I tried IRC 2.7h from 1991.  This version is under the GPL v1 license, which removed the restrictions that were in place back in 1989.

Again getting this to compile wasn’t too much of a challenge, which just shows how good the code is, as building for a 64bit machine works no problem.

Connecting with IRC 2.7h

And unlike 2.1 this version is new enough you can connect to channels without modifying the client all that much.  The server built as well, although I haven’t tested it at all, as setting up IRCD is way out of my reach.  As much as I’d love to setup an isolated IRC system, I know it’ll end up being abused in strange ways so I haven’t bothered that much.

Naturally you would be INSANE to use this stuff on anything serious as I’m sure these clients are full of bugs, and have numerous issues.  I’d HIGHLY recommend using stunnel to at least encrypt your connection.

If you have read this far, then I put the diffs up on sourceforge of all things.  You can find it here: sourceforge.net/projects/ancientirconlinux/.  I haven’t provided binaries as I mentioned this is no doubt highly insecure, and exploitable, and I’m going to at least raise the bar so you have to patch & compile it yourself.  Although if you are capable of doing that much, you could have ported it yourself, after you look at my diffs.

WineVDM 0.5.0 released!

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This version has MANY issues fixed, and is capable of running more and more Win16 software on Win64 based OS’s.

Printing on paper!

One of the more exciting things is that as long as I do a print setup first, I can actually print on a new printer from MS Word 2.0c!

You can download it from the releases page here:

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/releases/tag/v0.5.0

Go back to classic Gmail

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going .. back!

So yeah I”m not a fan of the new layout, it somehow manages to only render properly at a high resolution, and display farless.  “Suprpsingly” the top option on the far right is to “Go back to classic Gmail”.

Out in Hong Kong people are a buzz that Google has a secret deal with Beijing where they are not only going to build a search engine with CCP’s blessing, but they will also be moving people’s data out here into Chinese datacentres.

Then I got this email:

Due to a new agreement between WhatsApp and Google, WhatsApp backups will no longer count against Google Drive storage quota. However, any WhatsApp backups that have not been updated in more than a year will automatically be removed from storage.

This policy will come into effect for all users on 12 November 2018, although some users may see the quota benefits earlier. To avoid the loss of any backups, we recommend that people manually back up WhatsApp before 12 November 2018.

So WhatsApp is the #1 chat app out in Hong Kong.  So now presumably all our chats are going directly to the CCP. Yay.

I can’t say I’m all that surprised, when I logon from Europe or the USA all my data of course goes through the CIA via Canada, or FBI/Interpol.. So there is no escaping any of this, but the reql question is what changed to get these kinds of deals in place.

I donno what to make of any of it.

And yes, it turns out that even if you opt out of the Google tracking, they still track.  Does this mean it’s time to actually go back to an abandonded / pay platform like Windows Phone/Office 365?

Speculate wildly!

MSDN from October 1994

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I picked this 20 disc set recently and ugh the cringe is just… insane.  And yes, that is Bill Nye…

 

STUDS from Microsoft .
(Video in MPEG-1/Audio MPEG-2 care of JSMpeg).

I had this ages ago, although I couldn't remember if the NT 3.5 SDK/DDK had shown up at this point, but it's only the Japanese version in this set.  Since I'm having such a PITA in tracking down a 3.5 set, and I'm not sitting on this, I may as well archive it.

Yes, I had to rip 20 of these!

So you too can find the early Video for Windows, and all kinds of other things from the mid '90's on archive.org.

Or Wallpapers like this 'puppy' from the Japanese version of Windows 3.1

https://archive.org/details/MSDNOctober1994

Unloading some BSD/OS CD’s

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I was kindly sent these a while ago from an avid reader, and I tried to get them to boot up into anything useful and didn’t get anywhere.  I’m sure emulators of today are probably up to task, be it Bochs/PCem/86Box or even Qemu.

So they are now up on archive where I also found version 4 up there so I may as well flesh out the collection.

Enjoy!