Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/24/windows-95-is-25-years-old.html
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I’ll bet it’s still chugging away on a lot of yellowed old machines tucked away in the server closets of small businesses.
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For most people, this also means the internet is 25 years old. While untrue in the technical sense, W95 brought what most people think of as “the internet” to their homes for the first time.
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Microsoft should Open Source it like they did with GW-BASIC and DOS.
IIRC there was no USB support until the “USB Supplement to OSR2” was released. Win95 is barely usable today, more of a curiosity now, but it might be fun to have it free for art projects and academic study.
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Hopefully not connected to the internet…
I have a project coming up to migrate some VMs to newer hardware for someone and more than a few of them are server 2003. I’m not touching those. I’m begrudgingly migrating the 2008 64 bit ones.
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I remember there was hype, including at least one local store staying open late, or opening early, to be the first to sell the new package. And I think people lined up.
I think it’s 95 that some people are still using at home, and then complain that they can’t do this or that.
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Oh man - I LOVED the “secret” “fun stuff” folder on the install disk that didn’t get put on the computer. The Buddy Holly Weezer music video where they are composited into Happy Days. A random trailer for Rob Roy. Bill Plympton animated shorts. A couple of games like a doom-style graphic game with cars (Hover).
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I bought a book to learn Windows 95. I’m using Linux now, but I set up my menus and all pretty much like I did in 95. I still use a file structure similar to what I did in DOS. Yea I’m old and don’t like change.
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Oh yeah, no doubt. About ten years ago I was providing tech support for small doctor’s offices, and I had one guy using a DOS system with hardware dating from 1987. And he was pissed when it died and had to be replaced. He’s probably still using the Windows XP systems we gave him as temporary replacements because he was too cheap to buy new ones for his staff.
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It didn’t work well on the Midwest Micro 486SX 33Mhz Machine I had at the time. It took 10 minutes to boot up…
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Man, is that all? It sure hasn’t aged as well as Disintegration (The Cure’s Disintegration is X Years Old Today was the first headline that actually made me feel old).
I started on DOS, but did eventually install Windows 3.0 on an IBM XT, using something like 30 low density 5.25" floppies. It would only run in monochrome, even though the computer itself was capable of four colors.
I guess that means I didn’t even have it on the 486 I got for college. And now I don’t strongly remember when I finally got the Pentium Pro, but that must have had Window 95. You could still boot Windows 95 into DOS to play games, right? I think that went away with Windows 2000.
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We were running our PBX on an antique running OS2 Warp until a few years ago.
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I remember how frustrated my father was when Windows 95 came out since he had spent years getting used to understanding Windows 3.1 drivers and other issues. He refused to upgrade for a while, then upgraded to Millennium Edition, which was the last based on the Windows legacy build before they switched to Windows NT for Windows 2000, so he was still stuck in the past for years after that.
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Given that they’ve only released the code for MS-DOS 2, I think that’s unlikely
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I wasn’t the only person to notice it, but this was my first reaction, as a tech-native 19-year-old:
ME: Anyway, five hours is enough Solitaire for one day. …wait, where’s the shutdown button?
FRIEND: It’s on the “Start” menu.
ME: You have to press “Start” to stop it?
FRIEND: I guess.
ME: [~20 minutes of profanity]
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Trump’s weirdo doc is… not remarkably unlike the guy in question, actually. Could be his brother.
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To expand that technical sense for folks here…
Out of the box, Windows 95 had no internet access. Nada. Zip. Zilch. It also had no browser - you’d have to get hold of Netscape yourself, or buy the Plus Pack to get Internet Explorer.
That having been said, it DID have a native TCP/IP stack[1] and a native interface for modem handling (TAPI), which meant that it laid the foundations for easier internet access.
Unless you used earlier versions of AOL, CompuServe etc - all of which chose to port their horrific legacy systems rather than embrace the platform Windows 95 was providing. That’s why us folks in technical support hated those earlier versions…
[1] (Windows for Workgroups 3.11 had a TCP/IP stack available, but not on the original install floppies. You had to call Microsoft or connect to a BBS to download it…
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WFW represent.
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I forget, did Windows 95 top out on memory usage at 16M or 64M? (i.e. even if you had more memory, it wasn’t going to use it.)
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