

What did Windows 3.1 do when you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del? - omnibrain
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2014/09/12/10557431.aspx

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PopsiclePete
Pre-NT Windows is a joy to read about.

It's like they got a bunch of CS 101 students, gave all of them _one_
computer, and 4 months, to design an OS from scratch, but without access to a
UNIX book.

The fact that it somehow survived long enough to be replaced by NT is one of
the Great Computing Miracles of the 20th century.

~~~
barrkel
It is not credible that a bunch of CS 101 students could have implemented
Windows, given the market constraints it was operating under, in 4 months.

16-bit Windows was a compromise; trying to maximize compatibility with DOS, to
the point of supporting exiting back out to it, preserving TSRs and other
state, in a severely memory constrained environment.

You shouldn't be wondering how it survived, because survival wasn't its
remarkable achievement. You should be asking why it was better than DOS, which
is what it was competing with, and what it had to live beside and stay
compatible with. And why OS/2 didn't succeed.

~~~
yuhong
Though note that OS/2 1.x and 2.x are two very different things.

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c0nsumer
What I find most amazing about Windows is how -- in the vast majority of
circumstances -- modern versions will still run programs written for 3.1 (et
al).

If there's one thing MS can be relied on, it's backwards compatibility for
applications.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Not on 64 bit Windows, but for 32 bit, you'd probably be correct.

~~~
yuhong
They finally disabled NTVDM by default in Win8.

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AshleysBrain
Reading about the baroque complexity of old technologies certainly makes me
glad we don't have to deal with it any more!

