Fortran users of the world, rejoice!
Dungeon being debugged
Not only does the CLI tools run, and compile stuff like say Dungeon, but much to my surprise, the UI works, and even better so does the debugger!
Personally, I’ve always preferred the Microsoft debugging tools.
Very cool, if I do say so myself.
No really! It’s an article from PC Magazine, 29th of May, 1990. And it’s authored by Ray Duncan, before the infamous split.
NOTE FROM THE FUTURE It’s now possible to look at the version that Microsoft published after this version “An actual look at Microsoft OS/2 2.0“!
Of course, the thing that stands out from the screen shot is that OS/2 2.0 looks more like OS/2 1.2. And there is it’s ability to run two MS-DOS VDM’s in a window at the same time!
Flight Simulator, in a Window!
Although this was a feat that Windows/386 was capable of doing, going far back as far as 1987.
Windows 2.1/386 running Flight simulator 3.0 in a window
But as you can see, OS/2 did it better. Windows/386 was unable to run EGA graphics in a window, instead I was forced to run Flight simulator 3 in CGA mode. While the OS/2 2.0 beta could give over 620kb to a MS-DOS session, Windows/386 could only give me 550kb.
And when it came time to ship, well here is IBM OS/2 2.00 0xr6100 running Flight simulator 3.0 in a window and showing a MS-DOS box with about 600kb free.
IBM OS/2 running Flight Simulator 3.0
The real shame is that MS OS/2 2.0 was looking really promising in 1990, but thanks to the split the world didn’t get to try it out until 1992.
The article is a good read to get an idea of the state of development back in 1990. And of course all of PC Magazine’s 1990’s magazines are up on google books. I’ve managed to find 2/3rd of the Beta since I started looking (from 1990… been looking a long long time), and I have reviewed the SDK/toolkit earlier, and here.
PC Magazine, May 29th 1990 Pages 387-388
PC Magazine, May 29th 1990 Pages 389
Power Programming part 2
Power Programming Part 2, contd.
Power Programming pt3 1-2
Power Programming pt3 3-4
Power Programming pt3 5
Power Programming pt4 1-2
Power Programming pt4 3-4
I couldn’t believe it! Â You can find the official announcement here.
So this is MS-DOS 1.1 & 2.0 source code. Â Pitty it’s not 3.x but heck, it’s a start!
Also the Word in question is 1.1a however it does seem to include the OS/2 bits which was a big surprise.
I haven’t tried to build any of it, as I just got up but I know what I’ll be doing today!
OS/2 Programmers Ref
Well recently I did manage to get some GREAT books on OS/2, going back to the Microsoft days.. And they contain a lot of information, which was actually quite substantial.
Although there is the impression after the fact that Microsoft really wasn’t that dedicated to OS/2 the wealth of information in these books seem to be otherwise..
Anyways there is four volumes in the set, 1-3 going over version 1.1, and volume 4 with the 1.2 release of OS/2.
As luck would have it, someone gave me a lead on an ISO that contained not only these, but all of the programming documentation of the time on a CD.  No doubt this was the predecessor to the excellent MSDN.
There of course, is just one catch. Â It uses the .hlp files, but not from Windows 3.00 its something much earlier and the only way to view the files is with an MS-DOS program.
Glorious MS-DOS interface
I even tried it on OS/2 hoping it was a family api program (like so many of the era were) but no luck. Â I was then hoping maybe I could just ‘print’ the files to a virtual printer, and spool the whole job. Â BUT YOU CANT PRINT.
So I then wondered if I could put together a TSR that would scrape the screen, append it to a file, and just keep hitting page down.  A few hours of cobbling together some example programs, and remembering to compile with the LARGE memory model (FAR pointers! remember those?)  I could then finally unleash the TSR through the program and extract some of the texts.
For those wondering how to do this kind of thing from MS-DOS here is the source. Â While I wanted to use Scott’s program, there was the one drawback that almost everything grabs printscreen now so doing a REAL printscreen that hits interrupt 5 seems like it’d actually require a physical PC in MS-DOS. Â And my current ‘retro’ PC has no ethernet so I wasn’t going to go that route.
So there is a lot of hacks with this, you can’t even uninstall it, just reboot …. but this hooks the clock, gives you about a minute to go where you want to go, then it saves a portion of the screen to a file, waits a few seconds and hits pagedown, and repeats….
// Written by Scott Hall of the U. of Missouri - Columbia, USA.
// This program will redirect your print screen button so that
// it goes to a file. The file name is at the beginning of the
// start() function. It can easily be modified to print screens
// that are larger than 80x25.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <io.h>
#include <dos.h>
#ifdef __cplusplus
#define __CPPARGS ...
#else
#define __CPPARGS
#endif
char far *scr=(char far*)0xb0008000L;
#define VIDMEM 0Xb0008000L
#define INTR 0x1c
int busy=0;Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // mutual exclusion (MUTEX)
void interrupt (*oldhandler)(__CPPARGS);
char far *old_dta;
char fname[9];
void interrupt int_5();
void tsr(unsigned size);Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // standard tsr bios call
void write_char(int x, int y, char ch, int attrib);
void write_string(int x, int y, char *str, int attrib);
void start(void);
void interrupt handler(__CPPARGS);
int main(int argc, char*argv[])
{
if(argc==2)
sprintf(fname,argv[1]);
else
sprintf(fname,"log.txt");
printf ("installing\n");
disable();
oldhandler=getvect(INTR);
setvect(INTR,handler);
setvect(32,oldhandler);
enable();
printf("done\n");
tsr(1000);
return 0;
}
void tsr(unsigned size)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // standard tsr bios call
{Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // you can also use keep()
union REGS r;
r.h.ah = 49;Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // function 0x31
r.h.al = 0;
r.x.dx = size;
int86(0x21,&r, &r);Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // last line executed
}Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // never get to this line
unsigned char j=0;
unsigned int tcount;
unsigned int dcount=0;
//void interrupt int_5()Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // print screen button starts here
void interrupt handler(__CPPARGS)
{
if(dcount>480)
{
if(!busy&&tcount>5)
{
char far *p;
union REGS r;
struct SREGS s;
p=scr;
*p+=6;
*p++=j;
*p++=0x4f;
j++;
busy = !busy;Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // mutex around tsr
start();
r.h.ah=0x5;
r.h.ch=0x51;Â Â Â //pagedown?
r.h.cl=0x0;
int86x(0x16,&r, &r, &s);
busy = !busy;
tcount=0;
}
tcount++;
}
else
dcount++;
}
void write_char(int x, int y, char ch, int attrib)
{Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // displays 1 character at (x,y)
char far *v;
v = (char far *) VIDMEM;
v += y*160 + x*2;
*v++ = ch;
*v = attrib;
}
void write_string(int x, int y, char *str, int attrib)
{Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // writes string str at (x,y)
for( ; *str; str++,x++)
write_char(x, y, *str, attrib);
}
int firsttime=0;Â Â Â Â Â Â Â //need to skip 3 lines after the first time we
//page down.
void start(void)
{
int fd,x,y;
char cr=0x0D, lf=0x0A;
old_dta=getdta();
setdta((char far *)MK_FP(_psp,0x80));
//if((fd =_open("c:\\temp\\log.txt",O_WRONLY))<0) // open the file
//Â Â Â Â Â Â Â if((fd =_creat("c:\\temp\\log.txt",_A_NORMAL))<0) // try to make new
//Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â write_string(1,1,"OOPS--write error1",0x8F);
if((fd =_open(fname,O_WRONLY))<0) // open the file
if((fd =_creat(fname,_A_NORMAL))<0) // try to make new
write_string(1,1,"OOPS--write error1",0x8F);
lseek (fd,0,SEEK_END);Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // jump to end of file
//for(y=0;y<25;y++)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // grab lines 0 to 24
for(y=2+firsttime;y<24;y++)
{
//for(x=0;x<80;x++)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // grab rows 0 through 79
for(x=1;x<79;x++)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â //cut the bars from msl
if(_write(fd,(char far *)(VIDMEM+160*y+2*x),1)==-1)
write_string(1,2,"OOPS--write error2",0x8F);
if(_write (fd,&cr,1)==-1)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // put a cr and lf at end
write_string(1,3,"OOPS--write error3",0x8F); // of line
if(_write (fd,&lf,1)==-1)
write_string(1,4,"OOPS--write error4",0x8F);
}
_close(fd);Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â // close the file
setdta(old_dta);
if(firsttime==0)
firsttime=1;
}Hopefully this will help someone in the distant future, maybe it’ll just serve as a warning on how not to build stuff … lol
Oh and I used Borland C++ 3.1, but compiled this as C for the LARGE memory model.
Windows 3.1 turns 20!
I still remember when Windows 3.1 was announced, and there was all the excitement in our programming class as Windows 3.1 was going to change everything. Â One kid had already gotten it on launch and was all excited as it supported more resources, had better fonts for printing, and included multimedia support! Â The teacher was all excited about it too, as at the time everyone loved Windows 3.0 but only if it could do more in terms of being able to run more reliably, and support more things at once.
Later, I found out later that this lucky kid had a 386 with 8MB of ram, a full MIDI setup and VGA graphics, which of course blew away my glorious 80286-16 with 1MB of ram, a 20MB hard disk (with stacker!), and CGA.  Needless to say wing commander was actually playable on his computer.
There was no denying it, Windows 3.0 had started the shift from an exclusively MS-DOS world, in which everyone was hoping and searching for a graphical way out of, to the world of Windows we know today.  Windows 3.0 established the beached, and Windows 3.1 basically won the war.
Visually Windows 3.0 and 3.1 look very similar, but Windows 3.1 builds on Windows 3.0’s success and adds in some very important technologies, not limited to:
The only ‘down’ side that I was aware of is that Windows 3.1 dropped support for IBM PC/XT’s. Â You needed an 80286 processor as Windows 3.1 ran in protected mode, which at the time it only shut out one person that I knew of. Â However he was just a new motherboard away from being able to run Windows 3.1 . Â Which is another point against OS/2 as Windows 3.1 used the PC BIOS for almost all hardware access, even a 286 with mostly XT guts would work, but sadly even XT’s with Intel inboard 386’s were not supported, however AT’s with inboard 386’s were. Â Even Microsoft MACH 20 card owners were restricted to Windows 3.0 standard mode (after some extensive updates). Also was there ever a special version of OS/2, like how the box claims?
While many of these things seem obvious now, back then this was a big thing to include so many technologies into Windows, and the more compelling the technology people were starting to replace their MS-DOS applications with windows ones, and the ‘dream’ of spending more and more time in Windows was starting to happen.  Although for many of us this ‘dream’ was a freaking nightmare as more applications would install and overwrite system libraries, and end up with massive system instabilities. Not to mention the DLL hell that many of us still face, as even side-by-side and .net only save us from some things, even though nothing is ever perfect.
Windows 3.1 also saw the PC world transition from 16bit to 32bit with the shift of users from 80286 based computers to 80386 and 80486 based machines.  With the split from IBM with OS/2 2.0, Microsoft was pressed to keep Windows 3.1 relevant to the 32bit crowd, and there was plenty of addons for Windows 3.1 to keep things going.  Namely:
I don’t think Winmem32 ever took off, as it really was just a way to allocate larger memory segments, I’m almost positive that Watcom’s Windows Extender was more popular.  Naturally these predate the ever popular Win32s, which I’ve covered before.  WING was the fast video for games that I’ve covered once more again, with WinDoom. But I’ll just state it again, that Win32s was very important for bringing the whole ‘internet’ experience to mere users as almost everything that was TCP/IP based was 32bit for the ‘rest of the world’ and Win32s brought a taste of real 32bit computing to the masses, esp for people using Mosiac and Netscape.
Winvideo was Microsoft’s answer to the ever popular Quicktime.  Not to mention this add on was to solidify Windows 3.1 as a multimedia powerhouse. Microsoft still to this day has the test avi’s available for download here, And thanks to the University of British Columbia, you can download the Video for Windows Runtime here.
Needless to say the open standard of how the Winsock DLL should work helped standardize internet applications early, esp while there were multiple competing stacks for both MS-DOS and Windows.  Ultimatley when Microsoft wrote their own it pretty much took over everything, but seeing a chance to sell another version of Windows “Windows 3.11 for workgroups” was later released, which could be extended with MS’s TCP/IP.  At the end there even was a version of IE 5 for Windows 3.1, that I remember being as somewhat poor, and even NT 3.51 users were pushed into that direction.  Not to mention it had a tendency to not want to install on machines with more than 16MB of ram. I suppose the good thing is that IE 5 (probably 3 & 4 as well) came with PPP dialers, which was good enough for the majority of users.  Microsoft even made its improved Media player 5 (beta 2), and Net Show players available for 3.1, although I’ve never used them. “Good” IE releases didn’t come until 95/NT 4.0 anyways, the retrofitted ones were just unstable and lacking.
ODBC was a major selling feature in the world of databases, as now you could write uniform code to access data from all kinds of data sources. Â Imagine if you had old dbase files, and a SQL database, it would be a major pain to tie them together. However programs like Access which used ODBC could quickly and easily talk to multiple data sources, and create data reporting and entry systems. Â This is how the business world got hooked on Access & Visual Basic. ODBC typically came with either database programs, or with database driver disks, like the one for SQL Server.
While Windows was becoming more and more useful, users were going insane, clamoring for a full 32bit version, which led us down the ‘short’ road to Chicago, which was originally expected some time in 1993, but instead didn’t ship until August of 1995.  Windows NT 3.1 was another contender, but again it didn’t ship until March of 1993, and it was far too resource hungry for anything serious.  This left a gap for OS/2 to fill, and around the shipping time of Windows 3.1 was OS/2 2.0 which only included a runtime version of Windows 3.0 .  Lots of people feel that the additional features to 3.0 could have been delivered via a patch, but the 3.1 release was to purposely make OS/2 2.0 obsolete right after it had been released. Even OS/2 2.1 didn’t ship until May of 1993, although it was always locked into a race with Microsoft as various add-ons would either break OS/2 for Windows requiring updates to OS/2 or even sometimes entire new releases (Warp 3.0 for Win32s for example..)
What also made Windows 3.1 popular was the so called “Microsoft Tax” where Microsoft would sell to OEM’s copies of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 at an incredibly low price with the condition that they resell them with *EVERY* PC that they sold.  This of course was annoying to UNIX users, even NT users as they all had copies of MS-DOS & Windows 3.1 that they never needed, nor wanted.  But this strategy was pretty successful at locking out not only OS/2 from being preloaded & configured on systems, but pretty much any hope of competition.  Many people attempted to sue, and only Digital Research managed to get anything out of it, as there excellent DR-DOS product was effectively barred from the market (very few end users ever change operating systems, they typically buy new PC’s its always been that way, upgrade sales lag way behind new sales), but by the time the courts had done what they were going to do the damage had been done.
1-2-3 for $495 or Office for $459 …
Another typical bundle was Microsoft Office. Â Microsoft took advantage of Lotus’s failure in the market place to deliver a graphical application (The OS/2 switch doesn’t matter, Lotus still released a text mode app in the OS/2 heyday), combined with 1-2-3’s heft price tag, Microsoft made Word, Excel, PowerPoint and their Mail product available for less than the price of 1-2-3 with a new PC.
Microsoft C/C++ 7.0 + Windows 3.1 SDK $139.00
In the end it all comes down to developers.  Something that some companies still struggle with, esp those that positioned themselves in an OS/2 type fix.  If your native tools are too expensive, too restricted, nobody will write for you, esp if you can run other peoples applications better than the native platform.  And this was not only the cause of the ‘why bother’ with OS/2 native applications, but even today you can see it with RIM and their QNX based products that run Android applications.  Combine this with other low cost compilers from Borland and it really is no wonder why everyone was programming for Windows, esp the cost of Windows was typically cheaper than licensing a single seat for any DOS Extender that required royalties.  How much of this was due to Microsoft brilliance, or the competition being bent on short term greed, it is hard to say, but IBM wasn’t taking out full page ads trying to court developers with cheap access, but rather you had to phone them up, go through some IVR’s and be ready to charge a few thousand dollars for the honor of developing for OS/2.  I still remember Watcom C/C++ 10.0 being the cheapest way to build for everything, its a shame in a way that their SQL product was so good, as Sybase snapped up Watcom, and pretty much killed the languages, but thankfully not before open sourcing them.
The quest for the holy grail
With high resolution, and color depth displays, audio cards, multimedia games like “Monty Python’s quest for the holy grail” started to appear for Windows, as programmers could now concentrate on content, as Windows provided the layer for audio/video abstraction. Â While some games worked great others did not as there was a performance gap from raw MS-DOS to Windows, but tech like WinG was closing the gap. Â Not to mention the device driver patch hell was being shifted from the game devs to the hardware vendors, although that race still goes on, as even today Steam still combats older drivers and tries to hand hold users into updating them.
Even the horrible shell saw some competition for improvement, there was the Workplace shell for Windows 3.1, and of course BOB. Â And boy were people so happy with BOB. Â Not to mention thinking that this was just some great tech, it made its way into Office, to be forever remembered as Clippy in Office 97, who was tuned down in 2000 and killed in Office 2003. Â Its funny how future looking movies always go on about these animated seemingly helpful digital assistants, and yet in the real world they usually are the first thing turned off. Â I even remember the whole “Chrysler New Yorker’ debacle back in the day. Â Even in the show room it just went endlessly on about the door being a jar. Â Maybe its just HAL-9000 backlash.
So what can be said of Windows 3.1?  It still lingers in 32bit versions of Windows 7 (Wow! or Windows on windows), and it basically tipped the world into the Win-centric place we are today, along with the office everywhere mentality.  I can’t even imagine giving someone a 1-2-3 wks file, let alone a Word Perfect document, as I’m pretty sure there are no translators anymore. Oddly enough Win64 based OS’s can’t directly run Win16 based programs, there is always emulation.
While one may think that Windows 2.x started with the ‘regular’ version, it does indeed turn out that rather the 386 specific version was rushed out the door to appease Compaq, and their new Desqpro 386 computer, namely the 20Mhz 386 model that was going to debut in late 1987. Indeed, Compaq not only set the standard with the 386 CPU, but they were going to set the future standard of bundling not only MS-DOS but Microsoft Windows. At this moment in 1987 you could really say that the ‘modern pc market’ was born.
Windows/386 2.01 from OS/2 Museum.
And it does make perfect sense, with 386 specific software being very rare/hard to come by, keeping in mind that Phar lap 386 was only announced in December of 1986! But it was expensive, and 386 specific applications cost a fortune, and didn’t have wide market penetration (we were still years away from DOS4G/W or GCC).
Another thing to keep in mind is that OS/2 had not shipped either at this point, and apparently this version of Windows/386 would not even support the IBM PS/2 model 80, as there was some noise about IBM not wanting to bundle Windows on their computers. Now when you think about it, it is kind of funny that Windows an inferior product came out with a GUI and multitasking MS-DOS via the 386’s v86 mode, while OS/2 was still in a beta stage. Not to mention IBM’s reluctance to bundle Windows/386 shows just how the Windows rift was an issue even back in 1987!
Looking at this December 1987 InfoWorld issue we can see it in action:
From, InfoWorld Dec 1987, Windows/386 in action
And it’s no wonder why this was going to be a hit. And the UI looks just like how Presentation Manager for OS/2 1.1 was going to look, almost a full year before OS/2 1.1 was delivered (Halloween 1988!)
Now trying to peg down exactly When these releases of Windows 2.x were, esp with Windows/386 2.01 being the first, in September of 1987.
From what I can work out, Windows 2.01 ‘regular’ was shipped around November of 1987, with the 2.1 update in July of 1988, and 2.11 in March of 1989.
While on the topic of Windows 2, there was one slightly interesting feature, of the ‘regular’ or ‘286’ version of this product. It could multitask MS-DOS. No really, but it was all out of the same conventional memory space. So unless you were into COM programs it wasn’t terribly useful.
The later 286 versions included early himem.sys drivers that permitted some trickery with the A-20 gate allowing an additional 64kb of ram to be accessed from real mode. It may be a good thing that nobody found out about unreal mode at the time..!
I don’t know if it is even possible to tell them apart, besides the 386 and 286 (regular) versions but here is a small gallery of Windows 2.0 running command.com
Windows 2.03
Windows/386 2.03
Windows/286 2.1
Windows/386 2.1
Windows/286 2.11
Windows/386 2.11
Included is something special for the 2 or 3 people that’ll figure it out. 🙂
Bill Gates with Windows 3.0 / credit:Carol Halebian
There is no denying it, when it comes to revolutionary products you simply cannot ignore the powerhouse that was, Windows 3.0 .  Simply put this is what made the Microsoft empire, broke the alliance with IBM, and changed the future of OS/2 3.0.
Not only that, but Windows 3.0 changed the way businesses operate world wide, and finally delivered on the ‘dream’ of what could be done with the 286/386 microprocessor where OS/2 had failed.
To really appreciate Windows 3.0 you have to see the world as it was before it was under development. Â Back in 1989 the pc market was in turmoil. Â While OS/2 had the promise of breaking all the old barriers of the real-mode only OS MS-DOS, it simply cost too much, and hardware compatibility was just too poor. Â The other striking thing was that the only 386 specific feature that OS/2 1.2 (current version in 1989) could exploit was that the 386 could quickly move in & out of 286 protected mode. Â The LAN server product also had a 386 specific HPFS driver, but that was it. Â OS/2 1.2 was still limited to a SINGLE MS-DOS box.
OS/2 1.2’s DOS session
And there wasn’t a heck of a lot you could do memory wise. Â Not to mention there was no ability for the DOS session to use EMS/XMS memory. Â It’s no wonder it became to be known as the ‘penalty box’.
Meanwhile, Windows/386 circa 1987Â could run multiple MS-DOS VDM’s on the 386 processor. Â You were only limited by how much extended memory was in your system. Â Windows/386 exploited the v86 mode of the 386 processor which allowed for hardware virtualization. Â However Windows itself was a ‘real mode’ program, meaning that it had to fit in 640kb of ram, just as the VDM’s it spawned had to.
Windows/386 2.11
So unless your goal was to run a bunch of MS-DOS sessions all your extra memory was for nothing.  That also included Windows programs since they all ran in real mode.  For people with enough disk space you *could* actually install one copy of Windows/386 in say VGA, then another with a lower video resolution (CGA or EGA), then actually run Windows in Windows… in a Window.  But it really wasn’t that useful, it ran better full screen.  And all this had the effect of doing was partitioning your windows programs from each other, if you dedicated a VM per application.  Needless to say with OS/2 2.0’s seamless windows this was far more easier to setup, and frankly far more practical.
In 1989 building large applications meant that you either forced people to use Unix (SCO Xenix!) or OS/2.  For those that could afford it, Xenix would have been the way to go, as they not only ran in 386 protected mode, offered a far larger address space, but it was also multiuser!  But Xenix was expensive, needed specialized knowledge.  And as mentioned the cost of OS/2 development was HIGH, and it required your end users to have OS/2 (naturally).  And the users would have to fight that a lot of PC/AT compatible PC’s on the market were not compatible enough to run OS/2.  Despite this a lot of banks latched onto OS/2, and some still use it today (look at why parallax came into existence!).  Then out of nowhere, PharLap had developed a piece of software that changed everything, the DOS Extender.
Originally for 386 computers, the first DOS extenders required people to use special 386 compilers, runtimes, and of course linkers & extenders. Â The tools were expensive, the right to redistribute wasn’t free, but end users could run your multi-megabyte (lol) applications on regular MS-DOS. Â Which is what 99% of PC’s were running, and it didn’t require users to change their OS, abandon their applications, it would simply just work.
Links 386 pro
One of the earliest and most popular DOS Extended game/application was Access Software’s Links 386 pro. Â That’s right this game ran in protected mode! .. And it would *NOT* run under, or near Windows/386.
It was out of this wildly great but incompatible world that the first DOS Extender vendors, tried to standardize their products with the original and short lived VCPI specification, from Phar Lap.  However in 1989 Microsoft was busy working on Windows 3.0 as the next great thing.  Using a protected mode debugger, they were converting Windows/386 from a real mode ‘hypervisor’ into a protected mode application.  And if Windows couldn’t run these new extended applications, then people would naturally have to exit Windows to run them.  And that was the major problem with Windows is that people may have an application for windows but they spent most of their time in DOS. So Microsoft’s Ralph Lipe came up with the DPMI specification, managed to get all of the major vendors to support and take over it, in exchange for leaving Windows as a 0.9 level client/server.  After all why would you need their products if Windows were to incorporate the entire 1.0 spec?  At the time it was a big deal, but the success of Windows would eventually kill the extender market save for video games until Windows 95.  There is a great article about the rise of DPMI here.
So with a firm dos extended foundation Windows 3.0 could do something the 2.x products could never do, which was to actually utilize all the memory in peoples computers. Â And because it hinged on a dos extender (ever wonder what dosx.exe was?) it meant that there was no special disk, mouse, network driver/software needed as it could jump out of protected mode, and call real mode software like the BIOS, or even mouse drivers if need be. Â However older protected mode programs would only error like this:
No Lotus 1-2-3 r3 for you!
Another popular application for MS-DOS just happened to be Lotus 1-2-3, and it was *NOT* DPMI compliant. Â Oh sure they had DOS & OS/2 support, but would you believe that the OS/2 version wouldn’t run in a Window? Â Oh sure the install program may have, but some how someone didn’t think there would be any value in being able to SEE more then one application at a time. Â Not to mention the dark horse, Excel was starting to sell in 1987 like crazy, in 1988 Excel actually started to out sell 1-2-3, and by 1989 it was already over.
Lotus 1-2-3 r3 for OS/2
Microsoft Excel 2.2 for OS/2
There is no doubt about it, GUI applications were taking over.  The old ‘DOS’ interface was dead.  And Lotus had basically killed their product line by providing an identical interface and experience to their customers by providing an OS/2 application that looked and felt just like the MS-DOS application.  While you may hear that Lotus got distracted with OS/2 and missed releasing a Windows version of 1-2-3 to counter the rise of Excel, the truth is that they straight up missed windowing UI’s. Their hubris is that the users simply didn’t like the 1-2-3 interface, they wanted a windowed application.
What they did want was graphical Windows, and of course more memory! Â And there is nothing more annoying than having say 16MB of VERY expensive memory in a computer like a 286, but being restricted to 640kb or less is just … insane.
So let’s see Excel in action. Â Excel 2.1c shipped with a ‘runtime’ version of Windows 2.1. Â Mostly because nobody was buying Windows in 1987 Microsoft had to do something to get people running the thing. Â So the best way was to allow you to run an application with it. Â By late 1989 and early 1990 application vendors were making updates to their products so that they could run under Windows 3.0. Â And here is the first version of Excel to do so.
Excel 2.1c and the Windows 2.1 runtime
So here we have Excel running under Windows 2.1 ala the runtime environment. Â All you have here is excel. Â Also worth noting is that the setup program is 100% DOS text based.
Moving forward we can now upgrade to Windows 3.0.
Excel 2.1c running on Windows 3.0’s real mode
So as you can see Windows 3.0 takes up 30kb more memory then Windows 2.1! Â For someone with an XT this could mean bad news! Â Now it’s time to see what all the babling was about, running the same application in protected mode to access more memory!
Excel 2.1c running in Windows 3.0’s standard mode (286 and above)
Now we are running in 286 ‘standard’ mode.  Notice that Excel thinks it’s conventional memory, but we now have 14MB of the computers installed 16MB accessible to the application!  Now this is pretty amazing stuff! Now it’s no secret that the 286’s memory management left a lot to be desired, and Microsoft really didn’t want to write for it, as the 386 was where they wanted to be.  So unlike OS/2 the 286 cannot swap.  You are only limited to what extended memory you have in your computer.  But this is different for the 386..
Excel 2.1c running under 386 enhanced mode
And here we are, 386 enhanced mode! So finally  our Windows applications are clearly running in protected mode, with demand paging!  With 36MB of available memory in a computer with 16MB of ram.  The colors are distorted on Virtual PC under 386 enhanced mode… But as you can see the environment runs!  And even graphical programs that for example used CGA could happily run on an EGA system in a window.  Even better you could copy the screen, and paste it into any Windows application you want.  Yes you could buy games and use them for clipart!
Another feature of Windows 3.0 that people didn’t realize is that it could pre-preemptively multitask DOS based VDM’s
As you can see, there it is, the timeslice, and scheduling options.. Â Great ways to confuse users for decades… 🙂
Who could resist?
As always, there is a great InfoWorld article here.
So why was Windows 3.0 successful? A lot of it is timing, as there was no other environment that could offer people access to their whole machine without upgrading their operating system.  And of course there was the whole thing with bundling Windows, Word & Excel with new computers.  I mean who would resist something like a graphical application like Excel when compared to the klunky and significantly more expensive 1-2-3?  Sure the bundling practices were found to be illegal, but looking back, Lotus & Word perfect basically GAVE Microsoft the market.  And of course, talk about aggressive upgrades!  I’m not sure they even do such things anymore.  Although I’ve heard of big companies, and governments pushing for discounts for running things like Linux.
And there is the other things that Windows 3.0 supported that OS/2 simply did not.  For starters backgrounds (wallpapers), and of course the desk accessories.  Sure they sucked but in a panic at lest you *could* do something… where OS/2 basically left you in the lurch.  Not to mention how much more expensive OS/2 was when compared to Windows.
So with all that out of the way, what fun is a write up without a demo?
And thankfully I’ve found all the bits in prior posts, and I can put them together right here.
Windows 3.0 working demo, click to launch!
Continuing from the previous post, let’s get started with Microsoft OS/2 1.1
I added a 500MB hard disk to VirtualBOX, booted up an OS/2 1.1 boot diskette I had created that allows me to fdisk/format and do basic backup/restores, esp since OS/2 1.0 cannot install on a large (lol) 500MB disk.
So with the restore done, I’m booting up the Microsoft OS/2 1.1c Nokia OEM release.
And..
The dates for this release is 2/20/1989. Â I would have imagined that the original version of OS/2 1.1 shipped in 1988, as mentioned by the copyright. Apparently the Microsoft versions of OS/2 1.0 & 1.1 included support for the 386 method of switching from protected mode to real mode, while the IBM versions only included the 286 triple fault method. Â I’d imagine the Microsoft ones would include both, but the only way to verify is to install on a 286. Â Something that I simply do not have.
This style of the OS/2 installer will be with us for quite some time. Â it’s not until Warp did the look and feel start to change.
It’s a little worrisome that OS/2 is always looking for a way to format your drive. Â OS/2 1.1 only supports the FAT filesystem at this point, and formatting defeats the point of the upgrade.
The setup program renames my config.sys , autoexec.bat and startup.cmd files. Â Obviously things are now different from OS/2 1.0
And at this point it’s just an install disk to prepare the disk, then we reboot off the hard disk to continue the install, in text mode.
We just feed some disks to the OS, then we get to select a mouse.
Thankfully the PS/2 option is in here! Very exciting stuff.
For some reason things like serial ports are optional, so after letting it load the serial driver, we are all set to go!
Ok, let’s experience some real OS/2 power!
What is cool is that my printer choice has been preserved.
And the C drive has been cleaned up… some. Â Although most of this stuff is backups of my OS/2 1.0 stuff, along with some portion of the OS/2 1.0 install in os2.000 .. I just deleted all of this crap.
Now to see OS/2 1.1 in action…
So again you are limited to 12 sessions in OS/2, along with the single DOS Box.  However notice that the windowed icons (the black ones) and the full screen are independent.  This was also another annoyance in OS/2, that you cannot switch an application from full to windowed at will, and some text mode stuff is compiled as full screen so launching it from a window will jump you fullscreen.  OS/2 also finally included a game, a breakout clone, with various neat pictures.  I like the Seattle one myself.
And a text editor! A nice one too. Â Also I don’t know if it’s VirtualBOX but the UI is VERY sluggish, the worst thing you can do is open a command window and have it scroll.
But all in all, OS/2 1.1 was certainly a step in the right direction, and really what people would start to expect in an OS. Â The GUI really is needed to get a feel for multitasking. Â It’s a shame that ‘paging’ the real mode box out to disk and going between multiple sessions could have been done…. But I imagine they tried it, and it failed badly. Â Or the paging got out of hand.. Hard to say.
As a slight detour I’ve also setup IBM OS/2 1.1 Extended Edition, which you can see my quick review here.
And for the few people who care, here is what 1.1 in Mono EGA mode looked like:
The other things that Microsoft OS/2 is really lacking is online documentation, and a way to shut down the OS from the desktop. It’s still control-alt-delete.
Onward to OS/2 1.2
So since I was looking at the Doom stuff, I thought I’d try to track down the WinG version of Doom, and luckily someone pack ratted away two versions! Needless to say the older one didn’t work for me, but the last one, the April 13th, 1995 build, worked just great!
WinDoom on Windows 7 x64
Even on Windows 7 x86_64, sp1!
So how much of a chore was this to run back in 1995, before Windows 95?
Well to start WinDoom requires a display capable of at least 256 colors. I thought I’d use Qemu for this, but this proved to be… exceptionally difficult to locate a satisfactory display driver. I know lots of people point to the SVGA.EXE update from Microsoft, that uses VESA extensions to drive the video. Oh sure it sounds great but this is what I got:
And.. corruption.
Ok, so you say, there is this great patch to enable better VESA support right?
Wrong.
Yeah. I also hunted down various cirrus drivers for the specifically emulated chip (I checked the source) and they were all consistently defective. So I tried using a lower chip driver from HP and amazingly the 640x480x16MM colors works! (well, works ‘enough’).
Installing the right driver.
It’s the GD5430 v1.25f, 640x480x16.8M
The next thing is that Doom in both MS-DOS and Windows are full 32bit executables. On the MS-DOS side, it relies on the DOS4G/W extender. For Windows, it relies on the then new Win32 standard, and Windoom was written to conform to the Win32s standard, meaning with an addon it can run on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, And Windows NT. I just fished around the internet and scored a copy of Win32s 1.25. I just remember this being a somewhat stable version.
Installing Win32s
Win32s installs pretty smooth, (as long as you remember the share.exe). Now we just need the WinG runtime to be installed. WinG was Microsoft’s first real attempt at high speed gaming video under Windows. From what I understand it kind of went down because it was ‘too difficult’, and buying DirectX seemed to be a better fit.
Setting the midi mapper.
Another thing I’ve found is that if you change the midi mapper from the default “Ad Lib” to “Ad Lib general”, you can at least get the midi working in Doom.
Once WinG is installed, then it’ll want to do some blit tests…
WinG calibrating.
And after that, we can even bump it up to glorious 640×400, something the initial MS-DOS version couldn’t do easily as VESA wasn’t a big standard with INSTALLED cards at the time, and it’d require lots of work from the iD team, where the move to Windows pushed all the peripheral development to the Vendors to work around Microsoft. Even to this day, it’s still a big deal with video and audio.
One thing that is cool about Qemu is that at compile time, you can put in adlib & soundblaster cards to give the ‘full’ Windows 3.1 multimedia experience. There is also GUS (Gravis Ultra Sound) support
in Qemu, but I’ve never played with it..
With all of that out of the way, WinDoom will launch.
WING dispdib.dll missing error that turned out to be Video for Windows.
Then it’ll throw an error, because Windows 3.1 doesn’t have the same video backend as Windows NT 3.5 (and higher), hit ok and then …
And it works! WinGDoom running on Windows 3.1 on Qemu!
Sadly on Windows 3.1 the sound effects do not seem to work, but overall it’s a GREAT little port, mostly because as it comes up on 16 years old, it still works, and with sound. I wish other OS’s could give this kind of support for legacy applications, even ones that had such a brief window of support.
Anyone crazy enough to even think of playing along can download the blob of software I used to get this going here (Updated on archive.org here: Windows-3.1-WING-doom)
I should also add if you want sound effects to work on WinDOOM you really should install the Video for Windows Runtime, and it’ll work… poorly on Qemu/SoundBlaster 16, but it does work!
Well using the link at Microsoft, I managed to get NetBSD installed. Don’t forget you’ll need a new version of putty that supports serial ports, and connect it to \\.\pipe\USART0 when requested by the simulator. I always get a C++ exception, that I just ignore and let it keep on chugging.
So for the curious, here is a bootlog….
NetBSD/emips 4.0.1 Netboot Bootstrap, Revision 1.0
([email protected], Mon Aug 9 00:23:36 PDT 2010)Default: 0/ace(0,0)/netbsd
boot:
Loading: 0/ace(0,0)/netbsd
2694960+177944 [152192+143455]=0x305cf4
Starting at 0x80020000memory segment 0 start 00000000 size 10000000
memory segment 1 start 10000000 size 00100000
Too much memory in cluster 1, trimming memory to range 10000000..10000000
Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006, 2007
The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.NetBSD 4.0.1 (GENERIC) #137: Fri Dec 17 00:21:13 PST 2010
[email protected]:/usr/obj/sys/arch/emips/compile/GENERIC
Xilinx ML50x (eMIPS)
total memory = 256 MB
avail memory = 247 MB
timecounter: Timecounters tick every 62.500 msec
mainbus0 (root)
cpu0 at mainbus0: Microsoft eMIPS CPU (0x70401) Rev. 1 with software emulated floating point
cpu0: 64 TLB entries
ebus0 at mainbus0
eclock0 at ebus0 addr 0xfff80000: eMIPS clock
timecounter: Timecounter “eclock” frequency 10000000 Hz quality 2000
dz0 at ebus0 addr 0xfff90000: neilsart 1 line
ace0 at ebus0 addr 0xfff50000 : System ACE
ace1 at ebus0 addr 0xfff50100 : System ACE
enic0 at ebus0 addr 0xfff10000: eNIC [16 16], address 00:03:ff:e1:5e:ea
icap0 at ebus0 addr 0xffed0000: Internal Configuration Access Port
epio0 at ebus0 addr 0xfff60000: GPIO controller
gpio0 at epio0: 32 pins
flash0 at ebus0 addr 0xfffb0000 base f0000000: 8MB flash memory (2 x StrataFlash 28F320)
lcd at ebus0 addr 0xfff40000 not configured
evga at ebus0 addr 0xfff20000 not configured
ps2 at ebus0 addr 0xfff30000 not configured
ac97 at ebus0 addr 0xffef0000 not configured
timecounter: Timecounter “clockinterrupt” frequency 16 Hz quality 0
flash0: 8192 KB, 1 cyl, 1 head, 16384 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 16384 sectors
ace0: drive supports 255-sector PIO transfers
ace0: card is
ace0: 2048 MB, 128 cyl, 1 head, 32768 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 4194304 sectors
ace1: drive supports 255-sector PIO transfers
ace1: card is
ace1: 4460 KB, 0 cyl, 1 head, 32768 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 8920 sectors
boot device: ace0 part0
root on ace0a dumps on ace0b
root file system type: ffs
dzparam: c_ispeed 9600 ignored, keeping 38400
Sat Mar 19 21:10:50 GMT 2011
swapctl: adding /dev/ace0b as swap device at priority 0
Checking for botched superblock upgrades: done.
Starting file system checks:
/dev/race0a: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/race0d: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/race0e: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/race0f: file system is clean; not checking
Setting tty flags.
Setting sysctl variables:
Starting network.
/etc/rc: WARNING: $hostname not set.
IPv6 mode: host
Configuring network interfaces:.
Adding interface aliases:
Building databases…
Starting syslogd.
Checking for core dump…
savecore: no core dump
Mounting all filesystems…
Clearing /tmp.
Checking quotas: done.
Setting securelevel: kern.securelevel: 0 -> 1
Starting virecover.
Starting local daemons:.
Updating motd.
postfix: rebuilding /etc/mail/aliases (missing /etc/mail/aliases.db)
newaliases: warning: valid_hostname: empty hostname
newaliases: fatal: unable to use my own hostname
Mar 19 17:11:08 postfix/sendmail[402]: fatal: unable to use my own hostname
Starting inetd.
Starting cron.
Sat Mar 19 17:11:09 EDT 2011NetBSD/emips (Amnesiac) (console)
login: root
Mar 19 17:11:14 login: ROOT LOGIN (root) ON console
Last login: Sat Mar 19 17:04:07 2011 on console
Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006, 2007
The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.NetBSD 4.0.1 (GENERIC) #137: Fri Dec 17 00:21:13 PST 2010
Welcome to NetBSD!
Terminal type is vt100.
We recommend creating a non-root account and using su(1) for root access.
#
It’s not very often you see any UNIX originating from Microsoft* (Yes I know .. Xenix) anyways it does boot, and to save anyone interested, I’ll spare you the 1.5 HOUR long install and give you my disk image.
Speaking of which, it’s SLOW. I mean S-L-O-W.
Also as a side note, here is how to mount a CD-ROM ISO image…
mount -t cd9660 /dev/ace1c /mnt
At any rate, the speed just isn’t there for any real usage.