I love the old times :)

For complicated reasons that I don't entirely remember, back in 2001 or so, I installed Windows 95 OSR2 on a machine. I then tried to use IE3 to pull down a more recent version of IE.

Guess what? Microsoft's own servers would not let me in, not even to view the main welcome page, as they no longer supported HTTP 0.9 as advertised by IE3.

Fail.

mallard

@Steve The Cynic said:

@dtech said:
<meta http-equiv="Bulletin-Text" content="Just Released: Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. Download it Today!"&rt;

:')

For complicated reasons that I don't entirely remember, back in 2001 or so, I installed Windows 95 OSR2 on a machine. I then tried to use IE3 to pull down a more recent version of IE.

Guess what? Microsoft's own servers would not let me in, not even to view the main welcome page, as they no longer supported HTTP 0.9 as advertised by IE3.

Fail.

I installed NT4 on a system not so long ago. It included an early version of IE (either 1 or 2, it used the Windows version in the about box). This version did not send a "host:" header, so virtually no websites worked with it.

In the end I had to download Opera using the command-line FTP client. I then used that to install IE4 (to get the desktop update) and then IE6.

error

Host headers are HTTP 1.1, so any pre-1.1 browser will have this issue.

A lot more features were introduced in 1.1 than one might suspect from a 0.1 version increase.

dhromed

@joe.edwards said:

A lot more features were introduced in 1.1 than one might suspect from a 0.1 version increase.

Versioning is arbitrary.

blakeyrat

@dhromed said:

@joe.edwards said:
A lot more features were introduced in 1.1 than one might suspect from a 0.1 version increase.

Versioning is arbitrary.

It wasn't nearly as arbitrary back then.

I recently installed a VM with Windows 98, in an attempt to get some old games running. Windows Update didn't work with IE4, but I could use Google to find the IE6 installer. Surprisingly, the 500k IE6 downloader still worked fine, and once it was installed I could use Windows Update without any problems. Then after spending like an hour and a half figuring all this out, it turns out Dungeon Keeper 2 doesn't run in the VM. Oh well.

aihtdikh

@lizardfoot said:

Or better yet...

The Daily WTF

Aww, history in the making!
@Alex Papadimoulis said:

... suggested I start a separate blog where we all submit ideas. I did the first step, and registered TheDailyWTF.com.

The_Quiet_One

@aihtdikh said:

@lizardfoot said:
Or better yet...

The Daily WTF

Aww, history in the making! @Alex Papadimoulis said:
... suggested I start a separate blog where we all submit ideas. I did the first step, and registered TheDailyWTF.com.

Wow... pre-community server. *sniff* I miss those days.

DaveK1

@dhromed said:

@joe.edwards said:
A lot more features were introduced in 1.1 than one might suspect from a 0.1 version increase.

Versioning is arbitrary.

Java versioning, doubly so.

ender

It's funnier that this page was still active (and practically unchanged) as recently as April 2nd 2010.

RogerWilco

Oh yeah, the web archive.

@Cratig said:

Even better when you look at: http://web.archive.org/web/19980120122308/www.microsoft.com/syspro/technet/tnnews/features/mscom.htm

Look at the section showing how many servers and what they're running - and how much ram

Those are resonably impressive hardware numbers for 1998.

But as MS was late to the party called the Internet, anything quoting their pressence on the net is relatively late to the game any way.

I would link to the first version of my homepage, but the Wayback machine doesn't go back far enough, and didn't pick it up until much later. It has some 1996/7 versions of pages of a couple friends of mine. This is what the early internet looked like:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970122072631/www.cpedu.rug.nl/~N0719927/main.html

http://web.archive.org/web/19970118080706/rugth10.th.rug.nl/~ma/

http://web.archive.org/web/19970509071614/polypc47.chem.rug.nl/~chrkok/

http://web.archive.org/web/19970606170211/www.cpedu.rug.nl/~N831824/danijel.html

I had a page under www.cpedu.rug.nl/~N831867 but it doesn't show up until 1999 or so.

We had some pretty cool machines for the day: http://web.archive.org/web/19970606222419/www.cpedu.rug.nl/~N0798347/icons/hein.gif

Hein actually knew how those Unix SGI workstations worked. I could just manage to use telnet, ftp, gopher, the webcam, and early Mosaic and Netscape. Still those Indy's with their 17" screen, 150 Mhz CPU, 64MB RAM, integrated sound, webcam and 3D graphics were quite a pleasure to toy around with in 1994/5.

I remember making webpages for Mosaic and early Netscape mostly on Windows 3.1 though, as I didn't understand Emacs.

blakeyrat

@RogerWilco said:

Those are resonably impressive hardware numbers for 1998.
But as MS was late to the party called the Internet, anything quoting their pressence on the net is relatively late to the game any way.

Quick! Someone figure out a way to bash Microsoft! Doesn't matter that it's entirely off-topic, Microsoft was mentioned!

Actually I've always been fond of that "Microsoft was late adopting the Internet" meme in Slashdot circles. As compared to *who*?! Apple wasn't even shipping TCP/IP or PPP with their OS until System 7, so Microsoft was waaay ahead of them. Linux barely even existed at the time. NeXT obviously was "ahead" of Microsoft with Internet stuff, but who used it? Three guys in Europe? Did OS/2 have some kind of way above-the-norm Internet connectivity? BeOS didn't exist until Windows' Internet support was finished. Solaris? Maybe? Ok, so Microsoft was "late" to the Internet because SGI-- but oh wait you said 1994, and Microsoft was set up by then.

I think it's just one of those things Slashdotters constantly repeat without bothering to verify if it's actually true or not. Like when they tell you how much DRM is in Windows.

@RogerWilco said:

I remember making webpages for Mosaic and early Netscape mostly on Windows 3.1 though, as I didn't understand Emacs.

You say that almost like "understanding Emacs" is a desirable thing.

XIU

@blakeyrat said:

I recently installed a VM with Windows 98, in an attempt to get some old games running. Windows Update didn't work with IE4, but I could use Google to find the IE6 installer. Surprisingly, the 500k IE6 downloader still worked fine, and once it was installed I could use Windows Update without any problems. Then after spending like an hour and a half figuring all this out, it turns out Dungeon Keeper 2 doesn't run in the VM. Oh well.

Any other way you got it running? I would love to play it again

blakeyrat

@XIU said:

@blakeyrat said:
I recently installed a VM with Windows 98, in an attempt to get some old games running. Windows Update didn't work with IE4, but I could use Google to find the IE6 installer. Surprisingly, the 500k IE6 downloader still worked fine, and once it was installed I could use Windows Update without any problems. Then after spending like an hour and a half figuring all this out, it turns out Dungeon Keeper 2 doesn't run in the VM. Oh well.

Any other way you got it running? I would love to play it again

Nah, sadly. Compat mode worked for long enough to fool me into thinking it was working, but the game inevitably crashed about halfway through the first level, or about 5 minutes in. There are forum posts from people who have (or claim to have, maybe it crashes for them too after 5 mins) it working in Windows 7, so I can only surmise they have different video cards than I do.

A friend told me VMWare does good GPU emulation, which is why I tried it. Total non-starter, DK2 doesn't even get to the splash screen.

ender

@blakeyrat said:

A friend told me VMWare does good GPU emulation, which is why I tried it.

Only with Windows 2000 and up.

blakeyrat

@ender said:

@blakeyrat said:
A friend told me VMWare does good GPU emulation, which is why I tried it.
Only with Windows 2000 and up.

Huh. If I get time this weekend I'll try putting Win2k on the VM and see what happens. Pretty sure (not 100%) that the game worked when my actual computer was Win2k...

wrack

At least my copy of DK II worked in Win98 and WinXP (even without the "compatibility tab" stuff enabled), but failed miserably on W2k.

I don't think I tried the XP-like compat tab in W2k (install SP4, regsvr32 %windir%\apppatch\slayerui.dll , then look into shortcut's properties. May need a reboot to appear, don't remember), maybe enabling 98-compat there will help.

blakeyrat

@bannedfromcoding said:

At least my copy of DK II worked in Win98 and WinXP (even without the "compatibility tab" stuff enabled), but failed miserably on W2k.

I don't think I tried the XP-like compat tab in W2k (install SP4, regsvr32 %windir%\apppatch\slayerui.dll , then look into shortcut's properties. May need a reboot to appear, don't remember), maybe enabling 98-compat there will help.

Oh man, now I'm in a batch of trouble... do I try Win2000 or WinXP? The choices! The choices!

blakeyrat

@blakeyrat said:

@bannedfromcoding said:
At least my copy of DK II worked in Win98 and WinXP (even without the "compatibility tab" stuff enabled), but failed miserably on W2k.

I don't think I tried the XP-like compat tab in W2k (install SP4, regsvr32 %windir%\apppatch\slayerui.dll , then look into shortcut's properties. May need a reboot to appear, don't remember), maybe enabling 98-compat there will help.

Oh man, now I'm in a batch of trouble... do I try Win2000 or WinXP? The choices! The choices!

No luck. I tried XP, and as it did on Windows 7, it just ran about 5-6 minutes before crashing.

wrack

http://dk.404forums.net/ - "Dungeon Keeper II Fix for XP"

Third hit in Google...

blakeyrat

@bannedfromcoding said:

404forums.net - 404forums Resources and Information.

- "Dungeon Keeper II Fix for XP"

Third hit in Google...

I had to leave to pick my parents up from the airport (posting from the cellphone lot), but before I left, DK2 ran without crashing for about 20 mins. That was using their XP instructions, but running in Win7.

Cheers! It never occurs to me to just Google stuff like that.