Happy Birthday Windows 95!

[Steve Mehs]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1851769,00.asp

Wow, I can't believe it's been 10 years!

My first computer was ordered just before WIN95 started shipping with new PCs. It was an IBM so it had WIN3.1 as well as OS/2 Warp. Eventually I had Windows 95 installed on it.

A decade ago, I couldn’t imagine doing much with a computer besides typing a letter and playing solitaire. I remembering my mom and I hooking up the computer and it the box there was a piece of phone cable. Looking perplexed I asked my mom, ‘what this for?’ And she said she thinks the sales guy said the phone line would be needed to go on the internet. I looked at my mom and said why would I ever want to go on the internet and threw the phone line in the garbage. I also almost made my mom take the computer back and exchange it for one with out a CD-ROM drive. I wanted nothing to do with CD-ROMs.

Now 10 years later I’m on a 5MB (soon to be 8MB) internet connection, communicating with people all around the world, playing games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto, downloading music, making my own CDs and DVDs, have my own wireless network going, etc. Back then I wanted nothing to do with computers, now I live on one.

It’s amazing how much things have change in the past decade, I can’t help to wonder about the future which I see there being two major improvements.

1) The widespread in-depth convergence of the internet, TV and digital media as a whole. One central box in your home provided by a cable or phone provider that serves out all of your entertainment needs to your entire house hold in an on demand type environment and 2) what I can’t wait for, AI.

I almost want to stat humming that song, In the Year 2525 :)

[Richard King]

Al who? :D

[Laverne]

A decade ago, I couldn’t imagine doing much with a computer besides typing a letter and playing solitaire. I remembering my mom and I hooking up the computer and it the box there was a piece of phone cable. Looking perplexed I asked my mom, ‘what this for?’ And she said she thinks the sales guy said the phone line would be needed to go on the internet. I looked at my mom and said why would I ever want to go on the internet and threw the phone line in the garbage. I also almost made my mom take the computer back and exchange it for one with out a CD-ROM drive. I wanted nothing to do with CD-ROMs.You're really about 75, aren't you?? :sure: You never had us fooled that you were just 20! ;) That kid in that pic is really your great-grandson, isn't he? :lol:


The first computer my parents bought was also right before WIN95 came out, but it was several years before they agreed to let go of 3.1. :rolleyes: That was back when my mom thought the internet was the tool of the devil! :D

[BobMurdoch]

Laverne! I didn't recognize you without Brad staring back at me......

I bought Win95 the day it came out as an upgrade and then wrestled with it as I tried to make it work on my 486 computer with my "massive" 120 MB hard drive (that's MEGAbytes for you young'uns). We used to have to load one good PC game at a time because the hard drive would fill up too fast otherwise. Ah, Wing Commander III rocked (Is that Mark Hamill?). I'm still waiting for another first person space shooter like that to come along.....

[ntexasdude]

If you recall there were 2 versions of Win 95, the first (sometimes called version A) and the second, version B. Version A, while a big improvement over win 3.1 pretty much sucked. Version B was a vast improvement as far as stability and crashing went. I think (but I could be wrong) you had to have a CD to install version B. There wasn't a way to go to the internet and download patches to upgrade A to B.

My first experience with a "PC" was a Timex Sinclair that you hooked up to a TV. That was in 1982 or so. Then in the mid 80's we used Zenith Z-100's. Some of the Zeniths had massive 20 MEG hard drives. In the late 80's I had a Radio Shack Color Computer III or CoCo3 as we called them. I subscribed to a magazine for enthusiasts called Hot CoCo. You pretty much had to know Basic or Basic A to be able to use it. I taught it to myself.

The first "real" computer I bought was a Dell Windows 95 version B, 233mhz Pentium II in 1996. I paid $2300 for it. I still have it if anybody wants it. :D
One day I needed to upgrade the graphics card so I took it apart. I looked at how it was built and thought, anybody can build one of these. I have never bought a branded computer since. I just scavenge for parts and build my own boxes. It's easy. :)

[n8dagr8]

um.....I still have a computer with Windows 3.1 on it. :(

[Cholly]

Heh - my first "personal computer" was probably the Sage computer at Truax AFB in Madison, WI. Another field engineer and I collaborated on a program to synchronize the two computers at the site and make them play "On Wisconsin" on the speakers on the maintenance consoles. One computer played the melody, the other the harmony. :grin: The computers took up a huge amount of floor area and had thousands of vacuum tubes and ferrite core memory..
In the real world of PC's, I started out with a Bally Arcade, which had a calculator style keyboard and probably 8K of Tiny Basic. You saved your programs on a cassette tape recorder.
Graduated from that to an Atari 800 with a whopping 48K of memory. Still used a cassette recorder until the 810 diskette drive came out.
Next was a PCjr, which I beefed up with 512K of memory and two 5 1/4 inch diskette drives. The jr. was a much better machine than people (and IBM management) gave it credit for.It had DMA capability and an expansion bus, which would have greatly enhanced its performance. Teldyne was planning an expansion unit for it, but it never reached the market.
From the PCjr, I moved on to an IBM PC-XT286, and from there on, never looked back. I started building my own computers. The latest is a Small Form Factor computer (about 7 x 8 x13 inches) with Athlon 64 3400+ processor, 1G PC3200 RAM, 250G hard drive, tri-format DVD writer, TV/FM tuner card and 19" LCD monitor. It's running Windows XP MediaCenter Edition 2005. It's got lots more computing power than that Sage computer I started out with!
As to PC operating systems, I've gone thru all versions of PC-DOS from 2.1 to 7.0 (the last version) and Window from 3.0 to XP. Prior to Windows 95, Windows ran as an application under DOS. Even 95, 98 and Me allowed you to drop back into DOS. How times have changed! :D

[BobMurdoch]

If you recall there were 2 versions of Win 95, the first (sometimes called version A) and the second, version B. Version A, while a big improvement over win 3.1 pretty much sucked. :)

Actually I miss 3.1. There was no massive registry to deal with, and my system hardly ever crashed. Of course, their was no internet explorer yet either, so there was no spyware and very few viruses to deal with....

[Mark Holtz]

My first computer was a TRS-80 Model III which I received for Christmas, 1980. Five years later, I got a Apple //c, and hooked up to a box called sactoh0 which was a AT&T box run by a PacBell Employee.

And, yes, there was a Internet Explorer for Windows 3.1. Development stopped at version 4.

In regards to support, my company discontinued support for Windows 3.1 (as well as Mac OS prior to version 8) on 12/31/1999, and Windows 95 on 12/31/2004. While fundamentally, the setup for Windows 95 and 98 are identical, the primary reason we discontinued support for Windows 95 was that the software that is coming out now requires a minimum of Windows 98, with the trend going to minimum Windows 2000 and XP. As explained in our newsletter:Since the Windows 95 release in 1995, computer technology has drastically improved and technology that wasn't even imagined then -- such as DVD-ROM drives, CD burners, USB flash drives, huge hard drives, and support for more memory -- are now commonplace in newer computers. In that time, newer operating systems have been released to take advantage of that technology, and Windows 95 simply isn't able to keep up with the changes even after numerous patches to the operating system. Newer versions of software, such as web browsers and e-mail programs, now require that you run Windows 98 or later, and some web pages will not be displayed correctly with older web browsers. (In some cases, the software has to be running Windows 2000 or XP). While the support pages for older programs will continue to be online for the foreseeable future, telephone technical support for Windows 95 and NT 4 systems will be for basic settings only.Of course, we were rarely taking calls for Windows 95 anyways.

Last year, however, a woman had purchased a new computer system, and wanted to give the old one to the kids. After setting up the account, I started the setup process and discovered that she was running Windows 3.1. I spent the next five minues explaining how obsolete Windows 3.1 is.

[Laverne]

ACTUALLY, my parents' VERY first computer was a TRS-80 also (I believe I mentioned at some point earlier somewhere :confused: ), but I don't usually count it because it was really like a giant color calculator that knew BASIC (or BASIC A :confused: ) with an alphanumeric keyboard that you could plug a handful of available games into.

Laverne! I didn't recognize you without Brad staring back at me......Yeah, I did that back in late July when I saw that pic of him with the almost greenish-white hair. :barf:
Got kinda upset with him for that, and wanted something a little more befitting of some of my other interests. :)

[BobMurdoch]

Ah, I understand now.......

I used the TRS-80 Model III in high school computer lab. I used to write Infocom-like games there. Quite the scam... most of my friends were stuck in "study hall", but I got excused to go to the "computer lab". I was a pioneer in that I was using them for games long before most. I used to use the "debug" utility to hack into the hex code and change the text labels on various items (it also helped me figure out what verbs the REAL infocom games like Zork were looking for (ie. the game would grind to a halt as you tried to read the programmers mind and guess what the game wanted you to do next).

In 1984, I started college at Drew University in Madison, NJ and was part of the first class where everyone got a new computer (a CP/M based Epson QX-10... basically useless for anything but word processing). I was making friends all over campus keeping their computers working when they had problems.

Backstory sidenote......I actually met my wife by drawing her roommates name out of a hat at a blind date dance (my all male dorm was across the courtyard from their all girl dorm). She was a heavyset jock that could drink me under the table, but she almost tackled me when she learned that I knew computers well. She said that her and her roommate were stuck taking a Fortran programming course (it was a core requirement at the time..... schools didn't realize that we didn't need to be programmers to be able to use them effectively, but oh well), and that they were clueless. I told them I worked for backrubs and pizza (ah, the heady pre-PC days... I would get charged with harassment probably nowadays). She chomped at the bit and invited me over. I pretty much was smitten with her roommate at first sight. Survived three other suitors (I employed the trojan horse technique.... be a friend and wait until they all blew up on their own and then consoled her each time. She finally decided that dating her friend was a better idea (and to which I heartily agreed). Wed five years after that, and still married 15 years later....

And back to our original topic....I remember the day when a friend across the hall bought a second PC, and IBM compatible 286. Wow, I thought I'd never see anything so fast. And it had a 10MB "fixed disk" drive too!

[ntexasdude]

Interesting story Bob. This reminded me of some old computers I saw when I was in the USAF. They had 8" or 8-1/2" floppies. Big ole' things. I have no idea what exactly they were used for and have never seen or heard of them since.

My kids (and millions of others) have grown up with high speed access and blazing fast machines. I wonder what kind of stories they will tell in 15 or 20 years. :lol: :lol: Probably something like this: I remember when I was a kid, we had these mouse like thingies and those old timey optical discs, uh, I think they were called DVD's or something.

[Geronimo]

DEC machines used to use floppies like that. I think that soem Wang stuff might have as well. There were also some early CP/M machines with drives like that. I don't recall tehs torage capacity. Probably laughable.

[ntexasdude]

Wang, that was it!!! Boy, this is a stroll down memory lane. :)

[Bogy]

I believe those 8" drives are what the space shuttle still uses. NASA is looking for some working replacements.

[Richard King]

My first exposure was to a Univac (I think) computer at the University of Minnesnowta (1969 or so) where I was taking a class in Fortran IV programming, a requirement for a business degree. The computer took up a room larger than my house, which is around 2,000 square feet. I submitted my programs on computer cards which I keypuched myself. From the cards the programs would go to mag tape units that looked like large reel to reel tape machines and read from there into the computer, which of course was a large device mounted in many 6'+ tall racks.

My next exposure was at a trade school in about 1974 where I took a basic class. The computer there was a Burroughs and still used punch cards.

The first that I owned was a Commodore Vic20 which read programs off of a cassette tape. I then graduated to a Commodore 64 and then on to a portable version of the 64. I wrote a program on this machine (in basic) to do commission paychecks for the salestypes where I worked. It had a builtin floppy and an external cassette tape drive. My first PC was based on an 80186, yes, a 186. This thing ran a blazing fast 9Mhz and had a 20 Meg HDD and 5 1/4 floppy. This computer with it's monochrome monitor and DOS something ran about $2000 brand new. I eventually upgraded the HDD to 40 Meg at a cost of about $600 or so. I used this machine for several years and had an integrated program called "Frameworks" by Ashton Tate that did just about everything I needed to do. Frameworks was nearly a Windows type environment and really pretty nice for it's day.

[Richard King]

WangWhen I worked in the brokerage business we had a Wang bond calculator that took up about half the size of a desktop and would flash a bunch of lights while calculating bond yeilds, etc. from your input from the numeric keypad. I forget what the display was called, but it was vacuum tube numbers.

[Geronimo]

not amy 80186 machines out there. most of those chips went on cards. I had a Commodore "IBM Compatible" that used the NEC V 20 chip. It ran at a balzing 9.77 Mhz. It actually ran Windows 286 as well. Somehow it passed the test at install to see if a 286 was on the machine.

Having said that windows 286 was not a whole lot more than a DOS shell. You could run the earliest version of Excel with it but you had to turn off the calc function as it took several seconds to recalcualte the spreadsheet everytime a change was made.

[ntexasdude]

I forget what the display was called, but it was vacuum tube numbers.
Was it a "nixie" tube display? Nixie tube counters were common in the 70's and 80's before widespread use of led's.

[Bogy]

My first computer was an Amstrad 64 I bought in 1989. 640K of memory, two floppy drives and a color monitor. I bought it at Sears for $200. It had originally been $999, but was on clearance. It was a 186, came with DOS 3.1, and a GUI (don't remember which one). The user interface didn't work that good, so I just used DOS. Later I put in a 30 meg hard drive. I ordered an IDE with an adapter card at first, but when it didn't work the tech finally realized that there were two computers that were not compatible with the card, the Amstrad and the Epson. They sent me an MFM in exchange. I was sure I would never fill up all 30 megs of space. :)

Later I added my second computer, an XT, when a computer store in the area gave away computers at the county fair. For them it was a way to get rid of tradeins. It came with no operating system, so I used my trusty 3.1 DOS on it too. After a while I changed the motherboard to a 386, with a whopping 4 meg of memory and two floppy drives. I would go to church in the morning and boot up the computer with DOS, and then load the word processing and database programs I used regularly into a virtual disk. At the end of the day I saved my files back onto the floppies. These were very simple programs, and the virtual disk in RAM was lightening fast, even by today's standards. I did eventually add a 340 meg drive to that computer, and worked up to DOS 6.

[Redster]

Its not very old but I have a fully functioning quad 166 netserver with 2 full memory cards sitting in our computer room. It makes a pretty good table, cant think of what else to use it for. My first was an Acer 200mhz back in 91, I was a late bloomer I guess.

[Richard King]

Was it a "nixie" tube display?Yep. The numbers glowed a nice orange color.

[ntexasdude]

Nixie tube counters are still very cool devices. We used to use them to check the output frequencies of radio transmitters. I would imagine there are probably some still in use. :D

[cboylan3]

[QUOTE=BobMurdoch]

I used the TRS-80 Model III in high school computer lab.


ahh yes, the Trash 80's...hehe....I remember them quite well.

[Cholly]

Interesting story Bob. This reminded me of some old computers I saw when I was in the USAF. They had 8" or 8-1/2" floppies. Big ole' things. I have no idea what exactly they were used for and have never seen or heard of them since.


My guess is that they were IBM Series/I computers. In my former life at IBM, I programmed them, using both assembly language and an interpreter called EDL (Event Driven Language). They were cool machines, used largely in process control systems. In the Air Force, they were used in Minuteman silos.

[Danny R]

First computer was a Commodore 64. That thing definately was a fun game machine and its still sitting out in my garage for the rare occassions I want to play some of the old cartridge games that worked with it.

I certainly don't miss the high end cassette tape drive though. ;)

[Richard King]

It was a 186, came with DOS 3.1, I have run into very few people who have ever heard of much less owned a 186 based machine in the past. Most people when I tell them that I had one say that there was no such processor and that I am mistaken. I just dumpstered mine about 6 months ago.

[Pepper]

The Tandy 2000 had a 80186 and two dual sided 720K floppy drives. I never had one but wanted it real bad when it was introduced.

At the time I had a TRS-80 Model 4P which was slightly less (only $2499) expensive. Before that a TRS-80 Model III with 16K and a cassette recorder.

[Bogy]

I have run into very few people who have ever heard of much less owned a 186 based machine in the past. Most people when I tell them that I had one say that there was no such processor and that I am mistaken. I just dumpstered mine about 6 months ago.
I did the same with my Amstrad not long ago. Later I ran across an outfit that would have really liked to have gotten their hands on it, they collect very obsolete stuff like that. The Amstrad was neat in that the monitor stand sat in a small well on the top of the computer case. Under that was a well that took (I think) C batteries. This was the battery backup for the computer. About once a year you just changed the batteries. Very handy, batteries very available, didn't even have to take the cover off.

[SimpleSimon]

My old boss still has a full set of Windows 1 diskettes. :)

Of course, I started a bit before that - over 30 years ago. Was a beta-tester of the 8086 when I worked for Siemens. That was a couple of years before I built my first PC - an S-100 machine. The FDD controller issued seek pulses too fast for those IBM 8" drives I got surplus, so I had to design and build a speed-matching buffer for it. :)

[Bogy]

This was in my Clean Laffs email this morning. It has to have been one of the very early Windows, Since it came on floppies.

An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a
Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.

Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from work to install
them on my home computer." Training stresses that we are
"not the Software Police," so I let the little act of piracy
slide.

Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"

Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they weren't
initialized."

Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly, ma'am?"

Customer: (proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This is not a
Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it?'"

Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"

Customer: "After they were initialized, all the disks
appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work,
and I can't read them in the A: drive; the PC wants to
format them. And this is our only set of Windows disks for
the whole office. Did I do something wrong?"

[TNGTony]

I still have my Atari 800 computer in its original box. I also have the printer, external 5¼" floppy drive and lots of disks. I also have the cassette tape drive. I think I also have several game cartridges too.

The computer box has a sticker on it proudly stating, "Now with 48k memory!"

See ya
Tony

[SimpleSimon]

And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?" :D Pirates get what they deserve. :lol:

[Tim Lones]

My first computer was a used ACER with Win 95..Dont remember what the memory was but it had I think it had an 800 MB HD. this was about 1997-98. My first new computer was an Emachines ETower 533i with Windows 98SE which I bought in 1999. With all the discounts and rebates at Best Buy I ended up paying about $25 out of pocket for it. It had 8GB HD which I thought was huge. I just this spring upgraded to the EMachines T2894 wth Windows XP, 512 Ram and DVD Combo Drive..with a 60GB Hard Drive..should be the last computer I have to buy for a long time