Legacy install



  • I'm in the middle of doing a Win98 install to test some software. Up until today I would never have guessed that I needed Win98, or that I still had a disk lying around, or that I still had a genuine license as well. To top it off (and that may actually be a WTF) is that MS doesn't have Win98 on its MSDN downloads, Apparently it was removed (with a bunch of other stuff) as part of the Sun JVM settlement many years ago.

    So what other legacy systems do people around here install/use frequently? (Last year I was using a DOS system, but I wasn't installing maintaining it)



  •  I wouldn't expect Microsoft to have a download for an OS they officially discontinued 5 years ago.



  • @bighusker said:

     I wouldn't expect Microsoft to have a download for an OS they officially discontinued 5 years ago.

     

    IIRC you can still download Windows for Workgroups 3.11 through TechNet.



  • @bighusker said:

     I wouldn't expect Microsoft to have a download for an OS they officially discontinued 5 years ago.

    There's no reason for him not to upgrade from Win98 to Win Me.



  • Really?  Wow, I stand corrected.  I've never had an MSDN subscription.



  • @mott555 said:

    IIRC you can still download Windows for Workgroups 3.11 through TechNet.
    I was looking today and you can get Windows 3.2, which I had never heard of, as well as DOS 6.22 (or some such).



  • @OzPeter said:

    @mott555 said:
    IIRC you can still download Windows for Workgroups 3.11 through TechNet.
    I was looking today and you can get Windows 3.2, which I had never heard of, as well as DOS 6.22 (or some such).
     

    I've never heard of Windows 3.2 either, but according to Wikipedia it was only released in Chinese.



  • @bighusker said:

     I wouldn't expect Microsoft to have a download for an OS they officially discontinued 5 years ago.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.2#Windows_3.2

    Up until November 2008, both Virgin Atlantic and Qantas  employed Windows 3.1 for some of the onboard entertainment systems on long-distance jets. It also sees continued use as an embedded OS in retail cash tills.  On 9 July 2008, it was announced that Windows for Workgroups 3.11 for the embedded devices channel would no longer be made available for OEM distribution as of 1 November 2008

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @El_Heffe said:

    Up until November 2008, both Virgin Atlantic and Qantas  employed Windows 3.1 for some of the onboard entertainment systems on long-distance jets. It also sees continued use as an embedded OS in retail cash tills.  On 9 July 2008, it was announced that Windows for Workgroups 3.11 for the embedded devices channel would no longer be made available for OEM distribution as of 1 November 2008

    They still use Windows 3.1 for the testing computers it at the car emission check places here in Ohio...


  • Garbage Person

    @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    They still use Windows 3.1 for the testing computers it at the car emission check places here in Ohio...
    Ha, in Maryland we have Linux.

    I got to sit and wait while the damned thing dumped core.



  • Friend of mine works at a car gargage, they service GM cars or rovers, i dunno. They apparently have this one sacred laptop running win 95/98 that still is capable of running the software to interface with the car software. Apprently it is the last known version of the software and doesn't get updated anymore. 



  • Because Win9x was the last one that allowed DOS-like direct-bit-bashing on the serial port... and 99% of the car-interfaces do come with an RS232 plug and DOS software.


  • Garbage Person

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    Because Win9x was the last one that allowed DOS-like direct-bit-bashing on the serial port... and 99% of the car-interfaces do come with an RS232 plug and DOS software.
    Hey, look. I'm using fucking C# running on Windows 7 to bit-bash the serial port.

    You can totally still do it - you just can't do it the same stupid hackassed way you could in DOS.

    In related news, FUCK EVERYBODY who decided we didn't need serial ports anymore.



  • @Weng said:

    In related news, FUCK EVERYBODY who decided we didn't need serial ports anymore.

     

    In their defense, most mainboards just got rid of the plug - but the port itself is still there, as a row of pins somewhere on the board. You just need a special cable to connect to it.

    Of course none of this applies if you have a laptop. I guess then you have a problem...



  •  so anyone know if modern cars have perhaps switched over to usb or something? or is there going to be a automotive carpocalypse when the last laptop with a serial port give the ghost?



  • @stratos said:

     so anyone know if modern cars have perhaps switched over to usb or something? or is there going to be a automotive carpocalypse when the last laptop with a serial port give the ghost?

    All "large" docking-station-capable laptops I've seen do have a serial port in the dockstation.

    @Weng said:

    Hey, look. I'm using fucking C# running on Windows 7 to bit-bash the serial port.

    You can totally still do it - you just can't do it the same stupid hackassed way you could in DOS.

    That's why I said "DOS-like" there.


  • Garbage Person

    @PSWorx said:

    In their defense, most mainboards just got rid of the plug - but the port itself is still there, as a row of pins somewhere on the board. You just need a special cable to connect to it.

    Of course none of this applies if you have a laptop. I guess then you have a problem...

    Yeah, I know. I've hoarded the shit out of those serial header cables (they used the same shit on old AT boxes)

    Unfortunately, the chances of any given serial device being within 50 feet of a properly-equipped computer is virtually nil. You should see the insane bullshit we use on my racecar at the track - where the problem is often compounded by complete lack of reasonable electricity.  I've got a bluetooth radio set up for serial comms in my toolbox just in case shit goes really south and we need to use a fucking laptop. Yeah. Programming an ECU over bluetooth is just as 'safe and sane' sounding as you think it is.



  • @PSWorx said:

    @Weng said:

    In related news, FUCK EVERYBODY who decided we didn't need serial ports anymore.

     

    In their defense, most mainboards just got rid of the plug - but the port itself is still there, as a row of pins somewhere on the board. You just need a special cable to connect to it.

    Of course none of this applies if you have a laptop. I guess then you have a problem...

     

    They eventually came up with a workaround, but you know where the standard used to be for plugging in a cable for a MIDI synthesizer?

    The joystick port.

    Seriously.

    And then someone decided that nobody used joysticks any more, stopped making computers with the port for them, and here's all this musical hardware that you can't hook up.


  • Garbage Person

     The Joystick/midi port was a bit of a happy accident - neither one needed all the pins on the header and a certain high-profile audio card manufacturer noticed that all these people were buying audio boards to [i]play games[/i] and hacked it together because sharing a port for them was the only way to physically fit it in one backplane slot. It stuck.

    And really, the disappearance of the joystick port is pretty damned lamentable, too, because it was a fairly easy way to do hacky analog inputs. However, its primary purpose was at least supplanted by USB joysticks (and the utter disregard of consumers for the existence of midi).

     

    Basically, we've gone from computers being versatile generalized tools with serviceable consumer product potential to shiny consumer products that need to be kludged heavily to get any real specialized work done.



  • @Weng said:

    Basically, we've gone from computers being versatile generalized tools with serviceable consumer product potential to shiny consumer products that need to be kludged heavily to get any real specialized work done.

    Maybe we just realized how fucking stupid it was to have 36 different ports, when you could cover all those needs with a single one?

    I'd love to hear an argument for how a 2011 Dell desktop computer is less versatile and/or generalized a tool than a 1985 Commodore 64.



  • @Weng said:

    The Joystick/midi port was a bit of a happy accident - neither one needed all the pins on the header and a certain high-profile audio card manufacturer noticed that all these people were buying audio boards to play games and hacked it together because sharing a port for them was the only way to physically fit it in one backplane slot. It stuck.

    And really, the disappearance of the joystick port is pretty damned lamentable, too, because it was a fairly easy way to do hacky analog inputs. However, its primary purpose was at least supplanted by USB joysticks (and the utter disregard of consumers for the existence of midi).

     

    So you want the "good" ol' days where stuff had to be hacked together in that special cyberpunk way.

    Instead of standardized ports that work properly.

    @Weng said:

    Basically, we've gone from computers being versatile generalized tools with serviceable consumer product potential to shiny consumer products that need to be kludged heavily to get any real specialized work done.

    Bull.

    I don't even know what "serviceable consumer product potential" is supposed to mean.



  • @dhromed said:

    So you want the "good" ol' days where stuff had to be hacked together in that special cyberpunk way.

    Instead of standardized ports that work properly.

    What he means is that for this 0.1% of us users that did random one-off electronics, the joystick port was an easily available ADC, with relatively simple to access API.

    To do that over USB, you need a microcontroller that does the A/D on-board and supplies USB on the other end (Or, separate chips for each stage and one to convert data between them), a driver so your Random Custom USB Device is recognized, and software that can communicate with that driver and receive the values.

    It's a valid point. And, actually, same reason (simplicity) is why so many embedded things communicate over serial port even today.



  • @bannedfromcoding said:

    It's a valid point.

    Only to people who don't actually do any random one-off electronics.

    Those who do know about products like Arduino which, for $30, can bridge a USB port with dozens of analog and digital electronics components. That's far cheaper than pretty much anything else required to build home electronics products (such a decent soldering iron), and the software's completely free.

    Edit: actually you mentioned something like an Arduino, but you seem to not realize how staggeringly dirt cheap it is. Sorry I didn't carefully read your post, but you're still wrong.

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    And, actually, same reason (simplicity) is why so many embedded things communicate over serial port even today.

    Like what?

    I'll give you this... 5 years ago, I worked with some network switches that *could* be connected and configured via serial port. Of course, you could also just use the network to do it, so I never really saw the point to that. (I guess requiring the port would slightly increase your physical security? Then again, you can't manage it from home if you work remotely... so tradeoffs.)


  • Garbage Person

    @dhromed said:

    I don't even know what "serviceable consumer product potential" is supposed to mean.
    "It works fine, but they have problems plugging it in"



  • @Weng said:

    @dhromed said:

    I don't even know what "serviceable consumer product potential" is supposed to mean.
    "It works fine, but they have problems plugging it in"

     

    I think I'm on a completely different track and reference frame as you, because I am even more confused. 



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @bannedfromcoding said:
    It's a valid point.

    Only to people who don't actually do any random one-off electronics.

    Those who do know about products like Arduino which, for $30, can bridge a USB port with dozens of analog and digital electronics components. That's far cheaper than pretty much anything else required to build home electronics products (such a decent soldering iron), and the software's completely free.

    Edit: actually you mentioned something like an Arduino, but you seem to not realize how staggeringly dirt cheap it is. Sorry I didn't carefully read your post, but you're still wrong.

    Yep. And it still costs $30 in here. Of course, $30 in here is about three times more expensive in the "what can you buy for that much" category. And well, my soldering iron costed $10, and was totally sufficient for the fully-analogue crap (JS port is analog, remember) I was playing with.
    $30 isn't "dirt cheap", when you could get $5 worth of discrete components and plug them into joystick port. Different environments, different needs. Don't assume everyone has your resources, no matter how "tiny" they seem to you.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @bannedfromcoding said:
    And, actually, same reason (simplicity) is why so many embedded things communicate over serial port even today.

    Like what?

    I'll give you this... 5 years ago, I worked with some network switches that *could* be connected and configured via serial port. Of course, you could also just use the network to do it, so I never really saw the point to that. (I guess requiring the port would slightly increase your physical security? Then again, you can't manage it from home if you work remotely... so tradeoffs.)

    Let's see... drive array controllers, car computers, emergency access port on misconfigured switches, satellite set-top boxes, Windows kernel debug stream, embedded OS on the (wireless when functional) barcode scanners, smart printers' console...

    "Simplicity" as in "does not require much code to handle, so can be squeezed into places where support for USB or YourFavouritePort wouldn't fit"



  • @bannedfromcoding said:

    Of course, $30 in here is about three times more expensive in the "what can you buy for that much" category.

    I have no idea what the fuck that sentence means.

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    $30 isn't "dirt cheap", when you could get $5 worth of discrete components and plug them into joystick port. Different environments, different needs. Don't assume everyone has your resources, no matter how "tiny" they seem to you.

    Ok, well, you're still being stupid and annoying. If, if, your computer came with a joystick port, you might be making sense but... I've never seen one of those. In my experience, joystick ports only came attached to >$30 sound cards anyway... so there's the $30 gap all accounted for, plus some. Joystick ports have always been add-ons.

    Ok, let's say it did come with a joystick port, because we're in fantasy land where that exists. Well, since your modern computer now is a third the price of that old joystick-port-having computer, why don't we just call it fucking even?

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    "Simplicity" as in "does not require much code to handle, so can be squeezed into places where support for USB or YourFavouritePort wouldn't fit"

    Like. Fucking. What.

    You gave me a list of shit that has serial ports because "they've always done it that way." That doesn't demonstrate your fucking point. At all. Unless your point is, "a lot of devices still use serial ports because a lot of companies are fucking lazy and never fucking update their fucking products, or they're put in devices with very long lifetimes (like expensive cars) and newer ones actually don't use serial at all." Which is a fucking stupid point, but, hey, maybe that's what you meant.

    God, this is why the industry can never move forward. There's all this fucking nostalgia for all this shit we did in the past because we *had to*. Everybody knew it was shit then. Everybody (rational) knows it's shit now. But then nostalgia strikes!! And the old "get off my lawn" geezers make retarded arguments like this.

    And who the fuck has ever seen a barcode scanner with an *OS*?! Talk about overkill.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @bannedfromcoding said:
    Of course, $30 in here is about three times more expensive in the "what can you buy for that much" category.

    I have no idea what the fuck that sentence means.

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    $30 isn't "dirt cheap", when you could get $5 worth of discrete components and plug them into joystick port. Different environments, different needs. Don't assume everyone has your resources, no matter how "tiny" they seem to you.

    Ok, well, you're still being stupid and annoying. If, if, your computer came with a joystick port, you might be making sense but... I've never seen one of those. In my experience, joystick ports only came attached to >$30 sound cards anyway... so there's the $30 gap all accounted for, plus some. Joystick ports have always been add-ons.

    Ok, let's say it did come with a joystick port, because we're in fantasy land where that exists. Well, since your modern computer now is a third the price of that old joystick-port-having computer, why don't we just call it fucking even?

    @bannedfromcoding said:

    "Simplicity" as in "does not require much code to handle, so can be squeezed into places where support for USB or YourFavouritePort wouldn't fit"

    Like. Fucking. What.

    You gave me a list of shit that has serial ports because "they've always done it that way." That doesn't demonstrate your fucking point. At all. Unless your point is, "a lot of devices still use serial ports because a lot of companies are fucking lazy and never fucking update their fucking products, or they're put in devices with very long lifetimes (like expensive cars) and newer ones actually don't use serial at all." Which is a fucking stupid point, but, hey, maybe that's what you meant.

    God, this is why the industry can never move forward. There's all this fucking nostalgia for all this shit we did in the past because we *had to*. Everybody knew it was shit then. Everybody (rational) knows it's shit now. But then nostalgia strikes!! And the old "get off my lawn" geezers make retarded arguments like this.

    And who the fuck has ever seen a barcode scanner with an *OS*?! Talk about overkill.

    3/10, overuse of 'fucking'. Not up to your usual standards. Drink more coffee or somethign.



  • @intertravel said:

    3/10, overuse of 'fucking'. Not up to your usual standards. Drink more coffee or somethign.

    Sorry, I did write that before my morning coffee. I'll be more careful next time.



  • Okay, lemme try again:

    Procedure of attaching your analog gimmick via joystick port:

    1. Plug the analog part into one of the joystick inputs
    2. Make the receiver software communicate with the well-known standard joystick driver and read the voltage values from the ADC

    Procedure of attaching the same analog gimmick via USB:
    1. Plug in the analog part into an ADC, be it separate or part of a microcontroller
    2. Connect the USB slave (be it separate chip or part of the microcontroller) to the PC
    3. Write code to make the microcontroller shuffle data between the abovementioned two
      • Write a driver so your Generic USB Device can actually be read from, install it
      • Alternatively, enable the "simulate a serial port" feature if available and install an USB-RS232 driver from the chip manufacturer
    4. Make your piece of software read stuff from that custom driver.

    Now, what I consider the pros of RS232 *in diagnostic/embedded cases*:
    You don't need to "install and detect" the connected hardware. No, you just open the port (hopefully you know what speed to use) and wait for some bits to come in (or send some out). That means you can unplug/replug at any point. I was jumping with a serial cables between two controllers just yesterday. If I'd have to wait for USB detection, I'd lose a lot of the information. This way, the text scrolls in terminal just as the cable goes in.
    And again. To communicate with an USB device, you need Quite A Bit Of Code (tm) on both ends. With serial, you just dump data to the UART's silo (or bit-bash a pin) on the uC's side, and plainly open the stream and read from it on the PC. I'm not saying your new iPoop should use serial for the "user operation". But embedded hardware diagnostics - hell yes.



  • Procedure of making your side look better in an online debate:

    1. Post a comparative list of your side versus the other
    2. Use OL and LI tags so it can't be easily copied and pasted by the person replying
    3. Gloss over points on your side that apply to both sides (for example: "make driver software" is one step in your list, and three steps on the other list)
    4. Completely ignore the negative points of your chosen technology (for example: finding the correct COM port name, figuring out which combination of baud, parity, stop, echo, etc to use)
    5. Talk about the things you ignored in the last step as if they were a positive instead of a negative("you don't need to 'install and detect' the connected hardware")
    6. If your debating opponent says that they didn't understand one of your points in the last exchange, make sure you don't bother explaining it this time
    7. If you can't address a point you formerly championed but now you can't back-up (for example, the low cost of serial ports) just ignore it and hope we don't notice. Don't concede the point
    8. Whatever you do, never change your mind!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    2. Use OL and LI tags so it can't be easily copied and pasted by the person replying

    Honestly, it was half because I wanted to check out if CS will choke on them (especially the nested one); also, I don't use the richtext editor, and HTML is HTML, so I did not think it may be harder to you. Sorry.

    @blakeyrat said:
    3. Gloss over points on your side that apply to both sides (for example: "make driver software" is one step in your list, and three steps on the other list)

    Urm, no. In one case, you have to write custom uC code, an OS driver (DDK and stuff), and then finally make your app call the driver. In the other, there's no uC, the driver's already in the OS, and all you do is talk to it from the userspace app.

    @blakeyrat said:
    4. Completely ignore the negative points of your chosen technology (for example: finding the correct COM port name, figuring out which combination of baud, parity, stop, echo, etc to use)

    You should be able to read what port you plugged the thing in. Data rates are in the manual. Again, you're talking "mass electronics for the dumb user", I'm talking "custom hobbyist hardware" and "diagnostic interfaces to be used by trained people". iApples, fruit apples, and horse apples.

    @blakeyrat said:
    5. Talk about the things you ignored in the last step as if they were a positive instead of a negative("you don't need to 'install and detect' the connected hardware")

    I meant it in "no delay caused by the detection, loading the driver, etc." Unplugging one USB device and plugging in another is notices as a change in the system. Things gets reinitialized, data streams get broken, so on. COM port is always there, you can try to read from it non stop. Unplug it, plug it somewhere else, and all your app notices is a few seconds without data. No "lost carrier", so to speak.

    @blakeyrat said:
    6. If your debating opponent says that they didn't understand one of your points in the last exchange, make sure you don't bother explaining it this time

    Not sure what you mean by this.
    The "$30" part? Well, I mean that to you, in USA, $30 is cheap. To me, a not quite highly-paid tech from a former East Bloc country, it's worth ~100 local, and is a noticeable amount (Yes, to large part of local population it is cheap.). To a stereotypical starving Third World inhabitant? Much more. Either way, my main point was that "just $30" isn't convincing if it's "just $30 and a lot of coding" to interface your old $5 homebrew water flow meter that reported directly in a joystick port.
    Paying extra for joystick port? Well, every frakkin' mainboard I saw between 98 and 2005 had an embedded ac 97 card; most of them (twenty, maybe) had the JS port on the back panel, rest had the pins on the mainboard.
    The "why serial port?" part? Below.

    @blakeyrat said:
    7. If you can't address a point you formerly championed but now you can't back-up (for example, the low cost of serial ports) just ignore it and hope we don't notice. Don't concede the point

    Not low cost. Low complexity of handling. Sometimes you can "afford", codewise or timingwise, to drive a serial port, but not something more complex. "Primitive embedded serial port" (without the flow control and other pins, just Rx/Tx) is simple. It's just a stream of bytes. It doesn't require installing drivers (which may or may not be available for your particular platform). It doesn't require packet communication, or any kind of "cooperation" from the host. It can be read from with nothing connected. It can be written to with nothing connected. There's no secret handshake that the host controller need to send to your controller. @blakeyrat said:

    8. Whatever you do, never change your mind!
    I just want to keep things simple and flexible. The "can be adapted in five minutes in the middle of the ocean without the official equipment" type of flexible, not the "we can customize it for you in three years, for $200k" type.

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @OzPeter said:

    So what other legacy systems do people around here install/use frequently?



    Apropos of nothing, via Larry Osterman: Chain of Fools



  • @PJH said:

    @OzPeter said:
    So what other legacy systems do people around here install/use frequently?

    Apropos of nothing, via Larry Osterman: Chain of Fools
    That was pretty interesting.  Although I noticed that he jumped from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and skipped Windows ME.  It makes me wonder if he "cheated" a little bit and deliberately bypassed ME because of a possible upgrade problem.  ME is the only version of Windows I've never used so I don't really know if it was as terrible as everyone claimed.

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    That was pretty interesting.  Although I noticed that he jumped from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and skipped Windows ME.  It makes me wonder if he "cheated" a little bit and deliberately bypassed ME because of a possible upgrade problem.  ME is the only version of Windows I've never used so I don't really know if it was as terrible as everyone claimed.

    It was. It really truly was.

    That said, it was probably still less buggy than Mac OS 7.0.0. Which would corrupt its own files when you attempted to remove a font by dragging the font file in the trash, and then require a reinstall. Mac OS 7.0.0 is IMO the buggiest mainstream OS release ever. Certainly the buggiest I've used.

    Vista was not even close. It was just poorly-thought-out and gave a bad impression to first-time users. That is, all the fucking annoying stuff it does it does only in the first 3 days of using it... excessive UAC alerts, disk-chugging search indexing, DLL cache building, etc. In addition, hardware developers became complacent during the decade of them not having to actually touch driver development, and so initially Vista third-party drivers ranged from "non-existent" to "crashy piece of shit." (Fortunately, the OS had better protection for crashy piece of shit drivers, but still.) If you could tolerate the first 3 days of Vista, the OS got substantially faster and if you had the patience to wait for driver upgrades, it got substantially more stable.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    That was pretty interesting.  Although I noticed that he jumped from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and skipped Windows ME.  It makes me wonder if he "cheated" a little bit and deliberately bypassed ME because of a possible upgrade problem.  ME is the only version of Windows I've never used so I don't really know if it was as terrible as everyone claimed.

    It was. It really truly was.

    I find that really odd.  Windows 98 was OK (by 1998 standards) and Windows 2000 was good.  It's weird that they would fuck things up so bad in the middle.@blakeyrat said:
    Vista was not even close. It was just poorly-thought-out and gave a bad impression to first-time users.
    I don't think I would call Vista "poorly thought out", but more like "this is our first new OS release in 6 years so we have to make it really really different and change everything, including things that are just fine and don't need to be changed."  Overall, I thought it worked well, and once I got used to the random things that they changed just to make them different the biggest problem was stuff that really wasn't Microsoft's fault.

    I had pretty good luck with drivers.  The biggest problem I had was a couple of applications that didn't work right with Vista.  Which really pissed me off because I didn't even start using Vista till mid-2007, 6 months after its release, and I seem to remember there was at least one publicly available beta.  So when shit doesn't work, and there's no updated version available yet, I'm thinking "WTF?  You've had a year to figure this out."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    That was pretty interesting.  Although I noticed that he jumped from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and skipped Windows ME.  It makes me wonder if he "cheated" a little bit and deliberately bypassed ME because of a possible upgrade problem.  ME is the only version of Windows I've never used so I don't really know if it was as terrible as everyone claimed.

    It was. It really truly was.

    I find that really odd.  Windows 98 was OK (by 1998 standards) and Windows 2000 was good.  It's weird that they would fuck things up so bad in the middle.@blakeyrat said:
    Vista was not even close. It was just poorly-thought-out and gave a bad impression to first-time users.
    I don't think I would call Vista "poorly thought out", but more like "this is our first new OS release in 6 years so we have to make it really really different and change everything, including things that are just fine and don't need to be changed."  Overall, I thought it worked well, and once I got used to the random things that they changed just to make them different the biggest problem was stuff that really wasn't Microsoft's fault.

    I had pretty good luck with drivers.  The biggest problem I had was a couple of applications that didn't work right with Vista.  Which really pissed me off because I didn't even start using Vista till mid-2007, 6 months after its release, and I seem to remember there was at least one publicly available beta.  So when shit doesn't work, and there's no updated version available yet, I'm thinking "WTF?  You've had a year to figure this out."



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @PJH said:

    @OzPeter said:
    So what other legacy systems do people around here install/use frequently?



    Apropos of nothing, via Larry Osterman: Chain of Fools
    That was pretty interesting.  Although I noticed that he jumped from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and skipped Windows ME.  It makes me wonder if he "cheated" a little bit and deliberately bypassed ME because of a possible upgrade problem.

    He skipped Me because you can't upgrade Me to 2000 (or so I heard). Although I'd prefer he did 98SE -> Me -> XP, since he initially went with the 9x and not the NT line.



  • @Spectre said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    @PJH said:

    @OzPeter said:
    So what other legacy systems do people around here install/use frequently?

    Apropos of nothing, via Larry Osterman: Chain of Fools
    That was pretty interesting.  Although I noticed that he jumped from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and skipped Windows ME.  It makes me wonder if he "cheated" a little bit and deliberately bypassed ME because of a possible upgrade problem.

    He skipped Me because you can't upgrade Me to 2000 (or so I heard). Although I'd prefer he did 98SE -> Me -> XP, since he initially went with the 9x and not the NT line.

    I thought the  DOS 5 --> Windows 7 thing was pretty cool and Microsoft certainly does deserve some credit for maintaining decent compatibilty over all these years.  But something has been bugging me and I couldn't put my finger on it.  Then it finally occurred to me -- the amount of disk space used by newer versions of Windows far exceeds what early versions could handle.  So there definitely was some "cheating" going on by using a VM rather than real hardware.

     


  • Garbage Person

    @El_Heffe said:

    I thought the  DOS 5 --> Windows 7 thing was pretty cool and Microsoft certainly does deserve some credit for maintaining decent compatibilty over all these years.  But something has been bugging me and I couldn't put my finger on it.  Then it finally occurred to me -- the amount of disk space used by newer versions of Windows far exceeds what early versions could handle.  So there definitely was some "cheating" going on by using a VM rather than real hardware.
    Now I'm considering doing it - but adding contemporary software with each layer and taking the path via Me instead of 2k. Resizing the HDD to fit is an acceptable rejiggering of things in my opinion - but I'd have to find out exactly where that horizon is at.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    I thought the  DOS 5 --> Windows 7 thing was pretty cool and Microsoft certainly does deserve some credit for maintaining decent compatibilty over all these years.
     

    I think it's interesting from an academic point of view, in that it demonstrates a lower boundary for compatiblity. On live systems, an upgrade chain of sufficient length will certainly fail at some point.



  •  Hey bannedfromcoding (appropriate name.. it should be true)

     

    hers' your fucking RS232 port... and the drivers already exist for the slaved microcontroller

     

    http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-to-rs232-dongle-with-extension-cable-5859

     

    STFU already



  • http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156008&cm_re=serial_to_usb-_-12-156-008-_-Product

    $12.99 - USB to Serial cable, 1' long.

    @Kazan said:

     Hey bannedfromcoding (appropriate name.. it should be true)

     

    hers' your fucking RS232 port... and the drivers already exist for the slaved microcontroller

     

    http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-to-rs232-dongle-with-extension-cable-5859

     

    STFU already



  • @Kazan said:

     Hey bannedfromcoding (appropriate name.. it should be true)

    It is. That's why I'm doing other work nowadays.

    @Kazan said:

    hers' your fucking RS232 port... and the drivers already exist for the slaved microcontroller

    http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-to-rs232-dongle-with-extension-cable-5859

    What the fuck an "add a serial port to your PC" adapter has to my argument with Blakeyrat, which was "serial port sucks, make your embedded electronics use modern port like USB" / "serial is simplest to work with, and thus has the lowest hardware and code overhead"? @Kazan said:

    STFU already

    I was quiet in this thread since it got derailed three days ago. Now you made me come back here so I can answer your post. A bit ironic, isn't it?



  • @Spectre said:

    He skipped Me because you can't upgrade Me to 2000 (or so I heard). Although I'd prefer he did 98SE -> Me -> XP, since he initially went with the 9x and not the NT line.

    I agree. Windows 2000 wasn't really targeted at consumers and nobody upgraded Win98 to it. I think it was just an excuse to avoid installing the garbage that was WinME and ruining his video. I'd like to see someone do the WFW->NT4->2K->etc path, that's always fun.



  • @error_NoError said:

    Windows 2000 wasn't really targeted at consumers and nobody upgraded Win98 to it.
    I upgraded from Win98 to Win 2000.  Although it tooks a few tries.  Whenever I installed Win 2000 my ethernet port didn't work and I couldn't connect to my cable modem. So I had to revert back to Win98 and search the Internet for answers.  After repeating this a few times I discovered, entirely by accident, that USB was disabled in my computer's BIOS, which I never noticed because I wasn't using any USB devices at the time.  Enabling USB in the BIOS fixed the ethernet problem.  Although I'm still not sure of the connection between the two.  Since this was 11 years ago, I'm just assuming it was some sort of weird motherboard flaw (or feature).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PJH said:

    Apropos of nothing, via Larry Osterman: Chain of Fools
    Along similar lines (from the same bloke): We are IE - Comparing every version of Internet Explorer.:
    [On IE4]The first Acid test now bears some resemblance to the reference rendering and the Acid 2 test at least has some of the right colors in it.


Log in to reply