ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-28, 00:24:

Yeah the retail box was. Why do you think they did that?

To try to move the boxed copies off shelves before the next release? I don't know who they were trying to support by the Windows consumer release in 2000, but yeah, the original plan was to do a consumer OS release per year. It looks like that was never a good idea coming out of MS.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-27, 21:32:

Just a random thought I had - I can't remember if Me got rid of the MS-DOS mode completely, but assuming it did, there might have been another reason. Certainly into 1996, 1997, era, plenty of people were still writing games for DOS that ran... shakily at best... in multitasking Windows and that pretty much needed MS-DOS mode.

Could removing those DOS features from Me be effectively a message to those guys "okay, we're not kidding about this NT thing, you better start writing your code for DirectX and the other gaming APIs [soon] available in the NT side of the world."?

Apple tends to be better than Microsoft at Godfather-style communication with third-party developers, but if you're planning to abandon something and third-party developers don't get the hint, well, sometimes you have to up the ante...

Pretty much. It seemed like in the end was to trash 9x so much to get everyone to want NT, but yes they needed to kick start more app development for NT. It's kind of like how they're trying to force people off Win7 come to think about it.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:22:

Pretty much. It seemed like in the end was to trash 9x so much to get everyone to want NT, but yes they needed to kick start more app development for NT. It's kind of like how they're trying to force people off Win7 come to think about it.

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at least some game developers had passable support for 2000).

But fundamentally, I think one can explain the entire 1993-2001 Microsoft OS roadmap as basically "trying to kick start more app development for NT" and "trying to keep people on the IBM-compatible DOS/Windows platform until NT-capable hardware becomes affordable thanks to Moore's law." The primary purpose of the Win9x operating systems was to i) nudge people away from DOS/16-bit Windows software slowly and gradually, ii) create a huge installed base for Win32 software that could run just as well on NT, and iii) do so at the most minimal hardware costs possible and therefore prevent the emergence of a lower-cost platform that could supplant Microsoft's.

And those of us who bought copies of Windows 95 on Aug. 24, 1995... fell for it. And made Microsoft the monster it became until the rise of mobile, Chrome being the new OS, etc.

It's worth noting - I remain astounded, 27 years later, that the Win95 launch is the only (or last - I don't have the system requirements for Office 3.0 handy) time in Microsoft history where they launched a version of Office that required the new OS at basically the same time. Office XP didn't need Windows XP (in fact, I think it ran on 98SE and NT4); Office 2010 didn't need Windows 7. But Office 95 needed Windows 95.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:43:

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at […]
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the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:22:

Pretty much. It seemed like in the end was to trash 9x so much to get everyone to want NT, but yes they needed to kick start more app development for NT. It's kind of like how they're trying to force people off Win7 come to think about it.

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at least some game developers had passable support for 2000).

But fundamentally, I think one can explain the entire 1993-2001 Microsoft OS roadmap as basically "trying to kick start more app development for NT" and "trying to keep people on the IBM-compatible DOS/Windows platform until NT-capable hardware becomes affordable thanks to Moore's law." The primary purpose of the Win9x operating systems was to i) nudge people away from DOS/16-bit Windows software slowly and gradually, ii) create a huge installed base for Win32 software that could run just as well on NT, and iii) do so at the most minimal hardware costs possible and therefore prevent the emergence of a lower-cost platform that could supplant Microsoft's.

And those of us who bought copies of Windows 95 on Aug. 24, 1995... fell for it. And made Microsoft the monster it became until the rise of mobile, Chrome being the new OS, etc.

It's worth noting - I remain astounded, 27 years later, that the Win95 launch is the only (or last - I don't have the system requirements for Office 3.0 handy) time in Microsoft history where they launched a version of Office that required the new OS at basically the same time. Office XP didn't need Windows XP (in fact, I think it ran on 98SE and NT4); Office 2010 didn't need Windows 7. But Office 95 needed Windows 95.

Actually, Office 95 can run on Windows NT 3.51 RTM, which predates Windows 95 by a few months.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-28, 00:36:

Yes, and they were trying to do one other sneaky thing. In, roughly, the 1992-1999 time frame, you only really had one price for […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-28, 00:24:

One thing I will agree with you on was that MS did cripple the sales of its own OS, and it did it in more ways than one.

Yes, and they were trying to do one other sneaky thing. In, roughly, the 1992-1999 time frame, you only really had one price for DOS/Windows, then Win9x. Businesses buying Win9x paid the same as home users, or more precisely, businesses bought computers from OEMs who paid the same for Windows on those computers than they did on consumer computers. Then, of course, you had a different price for NT Workstation, but almost no one cared about that except for high-end things.

By the time Win2000 "Professional" (no longer Workstation - note how "Professional" suggests a broader audience) and Me came out, Microsoft was clearly laying the grounds for what they ended up explicitly doing with XP, i.e. forcing businesses to pay more for the Professional version so they could get Active Directory, group policy, etc. And, by the same logic, a consumer computer gets an XP Home licence, a serious business computer gets an XP Professional licence (or, even better for Microsoft, an XP Home OEM licence that is upgraded to XP Pro through some kind of volume licencing deal with the end-user company). But really, at a time when computers were getting "Designed for Windows 98/2000 Professional" stickers, Microsoft didn't want to wait until the XP release date to make it clear that out of those two OSes, if you were a business, it was time to open up the wallet for Windows 2000 Professional.

The downplaying of Me was entirely consistent with that - they wanted to establish a clear understanding that if you are a business, you bought the Professional OS, whether it's Win2000 Professional or XP Professional. And, assuming 98SE was no longer widely available on new computers after its release, that gave them a year ahead of the XP launch to charge businesses more - now you either got the joke Me OS or opened your wallet for 2000 Professional.

98SE was the last Microsoft OS in the lower-priced tier to come with any real businessy/management features. It's been all "Professional", "Business", and now "Enterprise" since then.

Having listened to Daves Garage Im not so sure they were that clever or foresighted any more, because I used to think something like that, but having listened to him I get the impression MS was usually playing catch up rather than aiming to set a trend.
You only have to look at the WPA debacle to see that. Because Dave actually thinks he did a good job with it... Something it took meer hours to defeat!

It looks to me like MS tried to develop 9x into something more, they took 98 and developed it as much as they could in the time they had and came up with ME, which was a few good ideas from Windows 2000, which they had been working on for a very long time. They had more time on the development of Win2k than they did with 98 and ME just took ideas from both, and the Windows 2000 ideas they could transplant into 98 they did, otherwise it was left out.
It was at that point after pushing it out as far as it would go they realised it had run its distance and there was nothing left.
Then you got a new SKU of Windows XP called it Home edition, which took the Pro version stripped out some gubbins and presented it to home users. AND they were able to do that because of all the development done on Windows 2000... Not only by Microsoft but software developers and enthusiasts.
Dont forget from DirectX 6 they baked DirectX support into Windows 2000, something they ignored in NT4, and given its user based nobody really cared.
I mean would you use NT4 if it had better DirectX support? Or should I say just because it had better DirectX support.

Dont forget what the community thought about Windows 2000, even quite early on, in that it was the NT4 they always wanted. It was all things to all men because of its DX support and amazing stability.
To turn Windows 2000 into a good home computer at the time all they really needed to do was add decent scanner support, digital camera support and make it look nice.
There are of course many fundamental changes made to Win2k to turn it into XP but many of them came along in Service Packs but its essentially Win2k home... NT5 becomes NT5.1.

But it wasnt until they tried to develop 98 and failed that they turned to a home version of Windows NT. And you can see that when you look at the differences between XP Pro and Home.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:43:

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at […]
Show full quote

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:22:

Pretty much. It seemed like in the end was to trash 9x so much to get everyone to want NT, but yes they needed to kick start more app development for NT. It's kind of like how they're trying to force people off Win7 come to think about it.

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at least some game developers had passable support for 2000).

But fundamentally, I think one can explain the entire 1993-2001 Microsoft OS roadmap as basically "trying to kick start more app development for NT" and "trying to keep people on the IBM-compatible DOS/Windows platform until NT-capable hardware becomes affordable thanks to Moore's law." The primary purpose of the Win9x operating systems was to i) nudge people away from DOS/16-bit Windows software slowly and gradually, ii) create a huge installed base for Win32 software that could run just as well on NT, and iii) do so at the most minimal hardware costs possible and therefore prevent the emergence of a lower-cost platform that could supplant Microsoft's.

And those of us who bought copies of Windows 95 on Aug. 24, 1995... fell for it. And made Microsoft the monster it became until the rise of mobile, Chrome being the new OS, etc.

It's worth noting - I remain astounded, 27 years later, that the Win95 launch is the only (or last - I don't have the system requirements for Office 3.0 handy) time in Microsoft history where they launched a version of Office that required the new OS at basically the same time. Office XP didn't need Windows XP (in fact, I think it ran on 98SE and NT4); Office 2010 didn't need Windows 7. But Office 95 needed Windows 95.

The development staff were trying to shore up the instability in 98. They added more and more features to it making it better to use and more unstable.
They knew they could make a stable OS but it didnt have the features, it was the DOS sub system they wanted to keep because thats where the games ran.
It was the lack of support in Win2k for the DOS subsystem that made it incompatible with so many games.

The older NT got in NT4, NT5 the more software got developed for it, the more support it had the easier it would be to move new users onto NT. But they didnt plan that, it just happened like that.

Windows 95 was just a shell for DOS. Dont forget that the Windows 95 shell was also compatible with NT3.51. There were development previews sent out to Select customers on CDs months before the release of Windows 95. We didnt know it at the time, it was just a cool looking shell at the time. Windows 95 was a shell that could run on top of DOS and NT, and made both much easier to use for most users.

With Windows 95 MS realised they could take DOS into the future because they could hide it under a nice looking working shell. So you have the best of both worlds in it... All that software people want and they even like the look of it!

Don't forget Windows for Workgroups! 😂

DosFreak wrote on 2023-10-26, 23:23:

I remember finding out that Doom wouldn't run on my 286 by playing it on a 486 at a store and we'd talk about and try games out at on school computers and on friends home computers.

Had a similar experience trying Doom at a friend's home, then immediately pestering our parents for a 486. 😁

I also recall discovering Mo'Slo to slow down older games after learning that they wouldn't work on our newer computers. So speed sensitive games and relative performance was a thing back then.

Speaking of Internets....no modem/NIC?

I can look at adding those. I've already started adding modem specs and will post an updated list soon.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-27, 02:23:

I just noticed that you don't list speakers with any of those builds. IMO, those were an important part of a multimedia/gaming PC back in the day.

I agree, definitely an important part of gaming setups.

That said, I've been trying to keep the list to the core system components for simplicity's sake. Same reason I haven't added things like monitors, joysticks, or other peripherals.

I may add those in a future update, just focusing on core system specs for now.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-26, 23:56:

So yes, to the OP, add a quality modem at the maximum available speed for each year - 14.4, 28.8, 33.6, then the X2/K56Flex/V90/V92 era. Actually I would forget about V92 - by that point, 'ultimate' users would have been long away from dial-up. I would probably add a 10BaseT Ethernet card starting in/around 1996 - I think in most places, that's when telcos/cable cos started doing high-speed Internet trials, with widespread commercial launches closer to 1998-1999. Upgrade that to 100BaseT in 1998-1999. And really, high-speed Internet is what brought Ethernet into the home.

There was a big gap between 56 Kbps dialup and 10BaseT Ethernet filled by ISDN (64, 128, and 256 Kbps) and T1 (1.5 Mbps). They were selectable options in some Win9x multiplayer games and streaming media players (RealPlayer etc.). Similar to Pentium Pro, though, those connection speeds were not designed for or marketed to consumers but businesses and professionals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEda7SQxh18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier

I've never heard of any individual with T1 connection but a few diehard enthusiasts had ISDN back then.

And the specs of a dream computer in 1994: 😉

It was not until 2010 -- 16 years after the comic strip -- did my family buy the first computer with matching RAM and HDD capacities.

Been combing some old magazines looking for the earliest examples of gaming rigs.

So far the earliest I can find is from January 1993 (CGW) in a contest ad. It features a 50 MHz 486 with 340MB HDD and 8MB of RAM.

Keep trying to find something earlier, but nothing yet.

dormcat wrote on 2023-10-29, 02:47:

There was a big gap between 56 Kbps dialup and 10BaseT Ethernet filled by ISDN (64, 128, and 256 Kbps) and T1 (1.5 Mbps). They w […]
Show full quote

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-26, 23:56:

So yes, to the OP, add a quality modem at the maximum available speed for each year - 14.4, 28.8, 33.6, then the X2/K56Flex/V90/V92 era. Actually I would forget about V92 - by that point, 'ultimate' users would have been long away from dial-up. I would probably add a 10BaseT Ethernet card starting in/around 1996 - I think in most places, that's when telcos/cable cos started doing high-speed Internet trials, with widespread commercial launches closer to 1998-1999. Upgrade that to 100BaseT in 1998-1999. And really, high-speed Internet is what brought Ethernet into the home.

There was a big gap between 56 Kbps dialup and 10BaseT Ethernet filled by ISDN (64, 128, and 256 Kbps) and T1 (1.5 Mbps). They were selectable options in some Win9x multiplayer games and streaming media players (RealPlayer etc.). Similar to Pentium Pro, though, those connection speeds were not designed for or marketed to consumers but businesses and professionals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEda7SQxh18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier

I've never heard of any individual with T1 connection but a few diehard enthusiasts had ISDN back then.

Two things:
1) ISDN was much, much less popular here in North America than anywhere else, at least for residential use, so that's why I didn't mention it. Here at least (Bell Canada territory), I believe the biggest issue is that they charged for minutes of usage, European-style, whereas analog lines had unlimited local calling. So that meant that if you were pricing out a 64 Kbps Internet connection over ISDN, you had to count the ISP cost, the line cost, and the usage. And if you wanted to use two channels (128 kilobits), double that cost. Some working-from-home consultants certainly had ISDN lines (and in my recollection, dumped them for DSL/cable as soon as they could), but I think very, very few enthusiasts would have, not at those pricing levels. You could get an extra analog phone line (if you needed it) for like CAD$22/month, 120 hours of dial-up for CAD$30/month (unlimited dialup plans, while common south of the border were very rare in Canada at the time), while ISDN would have cost you at least CAD$150-200 IIRC.
Also, would people have had ISDN modems directly in their computers? I've certainly seen ISDN to Ethernet bridges back in the day, but I don't know if you could just get an ISDN modem and connect direct to your ISP. Maybe.

2) I actually remember a fellow on a newsgroup who had a T1 at home around 1998 or so. He was some kind of computer consultant... oh, and I also knew a dude on IRC who had a T1 - must have been from a really rich family and/or his parents running a fairly serious business from home. but one thing worth noting for this exercise, a T1 would not have terminated directly into a computer. You'd have your T1 go into a CSU/DSU, which would be connected to a router like a Cisco 2500 over 2-megabit serial, then you'd connect your computer(s) over Ethernet to the other side of the Cisco 2500. And... these would be real routers, not NAT routers, because NAT hadn't really been invented yet.

T1s were real serious back then too. CAD$3000-5000/month is the numbers I remember hearing for an Internet T1 in the 1996-98 era. You could (and many people did) run an entire dial-up ISP off a single T1...

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-28, 03:20:

Windows 95 was just a shell for DOS

This might be the most factually incorrect thing I've seen posted on this forum. It's like saying a square is round.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-29, 03:29:

Also, would people have had ISDN modems directly in their computers? I've certainly seen ISDN to Ethernet bridges back in the day, but I don't know if you could just get an ISDN modem and connect direct to your ISP. Maybe.

You could have ISDN in all flavors . ISA Cards, PCI Cards, USB Connected...
That thing then would connect to your phone box.
The dailing worked just like a regular dailup modem.
As soon as you had ISDN you must have a phone box... wich was like a DSL router .
If i remember right if you got DSL you also got ISDN with 5 or 7 phone numbers for "free".
ISDN was great for families and businesses. You had 2 parallel working Phone lines with up to 7 numbers.
You could even use both lines for 128k internet instead of 64k single line.
The Telekom pushed this technology a lot here in germany.
It was the time where we should have gone fiber optics, but the usage of copper was pushed politically.
The telekom decided that instead of renewing the net with proper new technology, copper was (and is being) pushed to the digital limits.
Germanys net infrastructure was and is horrible, especially out of cities.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:43:

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at least some game developers had passable support for 2000).

Are you referring to Millennium Edition when you say 9x codebase in 2000? If so, I agree. If you're referring to Windows 98, I disagree.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-29, 03:29:

1) ISDN was much, much less popular here in North America than anywhere else, at least for residential use, so that's why I didn't mention it. Here at least (Bell Canada territory), I believe the biggest issue is that they charged for minutes of usage, European-style, whereas analog lines had unlimited local calling. So that meant that if you were pricing out a 64 Kbps Internet connection over ISDN, you had to count the ISP cost, the line cost, and the usage. And if you wanted to use two channels (128 kilobits), double that cost. Some working-from-home consultants certainly had ISDN lines (and in my recollection, dumped them for DSL/cable as soon as they could), but I think very, very few enthusiasts would have, not at those pricing levels. You could get an extra analog phone line (if you needed it) for like CAD$22/month, 120 hours of dial-up for CAD$30/month (unlimited dialup plans, while common south of the border were very rare in Canada at the time), while ISDN would have cost you at least CAD$150-200 IIRC.

Exactly. Here in East Asia we didn't have unlimited or high-hours local calling plans (even today), so small businesses or heavy users might choose ISDN, before DSL killed it almost overnight. 😅

As for T1, its monthly fee was on par with an average monthly household income; any individual with that amount of money to spend on hobbies was more likely to buy sports cars and jewelries, travel in first class / private jets and presidential suites, etc.

kingcake wrote on 2023-10-29, 04:07:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-28, 03:20:

Windows 95 was just a shell for DOS

This might be the most factually incorrect thing I've seen posted on this forum. It's like saying a square is round.

Not seen a lot then.

While its a bit unkind and not true in a technical sense, it felt like it, and by many a developer it was used like it too.

kingcake wrote on 2023-10-29, 04:10:

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-28, 01:43:

Funny thing is, by 2000, 9x was so unstable that any reasonable person wanted NT anyways except for gaming (and even then... at least some game developers had passable support for 2000).

Are you referring to Millennium Edition when you say 9x codebase in 2000? If so, I agree. If you're referring to Windows 98, I disagree.

If youre refering to the instability of 9x then if it counts for one (ME) then it counts for the other (98) because of the reasons why it is so unstable.
Windows 98 was based on DOS which wasnt designed to do what they tried to make it do, the software written for the hardware was a major problem and stems from its foundation, poor resource management, PnP didnt work as intended and it didnt handle those problems very well, instabilities caused by software running on it.

If you ignore all that then yeah I would agree with you it was quite stable!

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-29, 03:00:

So far the earliest I can find is from January 1993 (CGW) in a contest ad. It features a 50 MHz 486 with 340MB HDD and 8MB of RAM.

The fine print "(upgrade to '586 or 66 Mhz at your option)" was kind of odd: While 486DX2-66 was "ultimate" in January 1993, SBPro was nowhere "ultimate" as SB16 was released two months earlier than 486DX2-66. Not to mention the very first Pentium was released on March 22nd.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-29, 05:09:

kingcake wrote on 2023-10-29, 04:07:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-28, 03:20:

Windows 95 was just a shell for DOS

This might be the most factually incorrect thing I've seen posted on this forum. It's like saying a square is round.

Not seen a lot then.

While its a bit unkind and not true in a technical sense, it felt like it, and by many a developer it was used like it too.

I wouldn't be surprised if some users have such an opinion after seeing Win95 kept something like this:

dormcat wrote on 2023-10-29, 05:20:

The fine print "(upgrade to '586 or 66 Mhz at your option)" was kind of odd: While 486DX2-66 was "ultimate" in January 1993, SBP […]
Show full quote

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-29, 03:00:

So far the earliest I can find is from January 1993 (CGW) in a contest ad. It features a 50 MHz 486 with 340MB HDD and 8MB of RAM.

The fine print "(upgrade to '586 or 66 Mhz at your option)" was kind of odd: While 486DX2-66 was "ultimate" in January 1993, SBPro was nowhere "ultimate" as SB16 was released two months earlier than 486DX2-66. Not to mention the very first Pentium was released on March 22nd.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-29, 05:09:

kingcake wrote on 2023-10-29, 04:07:

This might be the most factually incorrect thing I've seen posted on this forum. It's like saying a square is round.

Not seen a lot then.

While its a bit unkind and not true in a technical sense, it felt like it, and by many a developer it was used like it too.

I wouldn't be surprised if some users have such an opinion after seeing Win95 kept something like this:
Win95_PM.png

Windows 3.1(3.11) was also not a dos shell.

Windows 3x & 9x weren't shells but can objectively be called DOS programs, ran from DOS, could exit back to DOS, microsoft deliberately disabled doing so to try to make windows appear more than that but that's what they were. A DOS shell on the other hand an interface to access DOS, could do that with windows but not what it was about. Could also consider DOS to be windows' boot loader that happened to be an OS itself.