
Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video) - brown9-2
http://www.winrumors.com/man-upgrades-windows-1-0-to-windows-7-via-every-other-windows-versions/
======
jacques_chester
God, the memories. I remember booting up Windows 95 for the first time -- I
was so stoked. Everything was so new and smooth and perfect.

Plus -- and this is the important thing -- PPP worked much, much better than
3.1 + trumpet winsock.

Some time around 98SE I was dual booting into BeOS, which was so damn fast it
wasn't funny. But it wasn't to be.

And I remember browbeating Red Hat 3 into connecting to the internet as well.

~~~
nailer
Weirdly enough my uncle actually knew the guy who wrote Trumpet Winsock.

He says he got burnt by piracy fairly badly: computer magazines were including
the full version of his app on their cover disks all over the world, ISPs were
handing his app to their customers, and his company was too small to stop
them.

~~~
jacques_chester
I had no idea. We ought to set up a donation drive.

edit: I was not being sarcastic. I wouldn't mind chipping a few bucks if a hat
is going around.

~~~
badmonkey0001
I thought it a good idea. His name is Peter Tattam (I did some google-leg-work
to find it). His site is at <http://petertattam.com/> .

I found his name via a report at
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.40....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.40.3115&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

If this is the guy, what should we do? Should somebody ask him what he would
like?

~~~
p_trumpet
yep. I'm still around. I live a quiet existence in not so sunny Hobart,
Tasmania. Most unusual request - still thinking about it. Donations willingly
accepted - just trying to think what kind of cool thing to provide in return
for the generous donations.

~~~
jestar_jokin
When I was studying Computing at Tas Uni back in the mid 00s, they still
mentioned Trumpet Winsock as their big success story. You should be proud of
the impression you've left.

(Though now I think about it, were they annoyed at the commercialisation of a
piece of research? Being a Uni, probably. Either way, you've left an
impression!)

------
zdw
This is a testament to how much trouble Microsoft goes through to maintain
compatibility.

I wonder whether malware from those early days would continue to run, or if
newer versions of the OS would block it.

~~~
mixmax
Much more than you would ever know..

The original version of Sim City was written for windows 3.x and included a
bug that read memory that had been freed to the system. It worked in windows
3.x, even though it shouldn't, because that particular range of memory wasn't
being used for anything else until the program was terminated.

In beta versions of windows 95 Sim City didn't work because the operating
system allocated memory differently, and Sim City would crash as expected
because of the bug in the program. Amazingly, in the final version of Win95
the original Sim City _worked_. Microsoft engineers had actually tested
backwards compatibility with Sim city, located the bug, and worked around it
in their sourcecode.

Now that's serious dedication to backwards compatibility.

~~~
ladon86
Specifically, Windows actually checked whether SimCity was running and then
allocated memory differently if it was.

Joel Spolsky talks about it in this old article:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html>

~~~
k3dz
More about Microsoft and backward compatibility is here:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html>

~~~
kenjackson
There's a blog run by Raymond Chen, one of the engineers on the backwards
compat team, which is about backwards compat and other arcane aspects of
Windows:

<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/>

------
redthrowaway
When people wonder why Windows is so big and seemingly complex, and why it
still uses stupid things like a registry, this is why. Microsoft deserves
accolades for maintaining compatibility on this scale, while still working on
just about any combination of hardware under the sun. I'm sure they would have
loved to be able to do what Apple did with OSX, but there are things you can
pull off with 3% market share that are completely out of the question with
95%.

~~~
__david__
To be fair, the original OS X was pretty backwards compatible--they ran OS 9
stuff in a virtual environment much like Windows 7 runs its older stuff. The
Intel transition is the first time that Apple has been so lax about backwards
compatibility. They dropped Classic on Intel Macs and they're about to drop
PowerPC compatibility. It's a shame--I have OS 9 Games I would love to run on
my MacBook Pro. Not to mention all the old programs I wrote.

~~~
redthrowaway
Right, but Apple didn't have to worry about the thousands of corporate clients
running Enterprise software that relied upon some specific API calls to handle
billions of dollars in business. When Apple says, "too bad, upgrade", their
customers mostly just do so. If Microsoft were to take that approach, they'd
lose billions in revenue.

My point, however, wasn't really that OSX isn't backward-compatible, but
rather that I'm sure there aren't many engineers at Microsoft who wouldn't
love to throw out the whole Windows paradigm and build something new and
better from scratch. Hell, I bet BillG himself would have loved to Embrace,
Extend, and Extinguish *nix. I think people have a tendency to view Windows'
rather bloated codebase and adherence to outdated architecture as a failure of
imagination on the part of its programmers, whereas it's really just a
practicality necessitated by their user base.

~~~
IDisposableHero
_I'm sure there aren't many engineers at Microsoft who wouldn't love to throw
out the whole Windows paradigm and build something new and better from
scratch._

They kinda did. When Windows 3.1 was a hit, the server OS was Windows NT (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT> ) NT = New Technology.

Windows 95, 98 and Me are evolutions of the Windows 3.1 codebase, and then
mercifully died. NT begat Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7

You can see that they changed a lot of OS internals for the better (writing
C++ code on win 3.1 it's trivial to lock up the whole OS, NT didn't have that
issue), and then worked hard for compatibility.

~~~
redthrowaway
While that's certainly true, the differences between NT 4.0 and 98 weren't
particularly huge. NT was certainly the better OS, and it's good that they
decided to adopt it, but it wasn't really a paradigm shift, and Windows
applications were still cross-compatible.

My intention isn't to say that Microsoft hasn't made significant positive
changes over the years, but rather that Windows would be a vastly superior
operating system if the same people responsible for it currently were able to
start from scratch. Say what you will about Microsoft, they still have some
incredible engineering talent.

------
potatolicious
Impressive, but I have to wonder how many compromises had to be made, and
advancements abandoned, to keep apps like Reversi and Dosshell all the way up
through Win7...

~~~
pragmatic
Good point, but consider all those old business apps that can continue to run
in small companies all over the world.

~~~
forensic
and big companies...

------
maayank
Brilliant.

A number of comments:

* He mentions there is no multi tasking in dosshell. I'm not 100% sure about MS-DOS 5.0, but in ver 6.0 you could switch between tasks in dosshell [EDIT: this is also true for version 5.0, you can see the option at 1:13 in his video]. To switch tasks you need to first enable it through the "Options" menu ("Enable Task Swapper") and then you can either switch tasks by the all too familiar Alt+Tab or pressing Ctrl+Esc to bring up an ancient Task Manager (then titled "Active Task List").

* I may be mistaken, but in later service packs Win2000 had much better DOS emulation... Just mentioning it because he did test XP SP2 and later versions of Win2000 may have handled Doom2 better.

This video got me to dig out my old DOS book to make sure I remember
correctly... ah, the memories :) Very interesting to see many dialogs we all
know from Windows even in DOS (i.e. the Run and Associate File extension
dialogs in dosshell)

~~~
georgieporgie
_in ver 6.0 you could switch between tasks in dosshell_

That was task swapping, not multitasking. All but the currently-executing task
were interrupted, written out to disk, and expunged from memory.

~~~
bad_user
Not completely true.

In MS-DOS you could terminate a program, but make 64K of its memory resident.
And then you could program a time interrupt handler to wake it up and do stuff
periodically.

That's how some viruses worked btw :-)

~~~
gaius
TSR, that was called, terminate and stay resident. It was a legitimate
technique, software like Sidekick used it

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick>

------
billybob
I had to turn that video off to maintain my personal pride.

I may be a nerd, but by gosh, I do NOT watch Windows installation
retrospectives for entertainment! :)

~~~
kenjackson
I wish I'd read this post earlier. I not only watched it but sent it to
friends, never thinking that this actually might not be enjoyable to everyone.

Isn't there a conference somewhere that specializes in boring topics?

~~~
verisimilitude
You might be thinking of "Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of
Understimulation":
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870339590457602...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html)

~~~
kenjackson
Yes, that's it. Maybe he can make a talk of this for the next conference.
"Observing the Installation of Every Version of Windows".

------
mildweed
Site is Farked. Youtube direct link:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14>

~~~
machrider
It's funny, I submitted this in non-blogspam form this morning and it didn't
get nearly as popular: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279618>

I wonder if it's just luck or timing or this guy using spambots to upvote his
submission.

~~~
stoney
The title is different on the two submissions. Could have been a factor?

------
nrkn
Now let's see someone do this on real hardware, upgrading the machine as they
go.

------
athom
_Microsoft first introduced Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985. Since the
introduction of Windows the operating system has dominated personal computers
ever since._

Not to be pedantic, but I don't seem to recall Windows "dominating" anything
until version 3.1 came out. At that time, you still had a lot of software
running in text mode, or firing up its own graphical environment from DOS.
Berkeley Softworks' GeoWorks was out, then, too, and looking like pretty
decent competition at the time. Windows' ultimate dominance may have been
inevitable, but I don't recall it looking that way before '92.

------
sktrdie
This gives a great deal of assurance for Windows developers. You don't have to
worry about your app not working in future versions of Windows.

~~~
jjordan
Try running a 16-bit application on Windows x64...

~~~
derleth
> Try running a 16-bit application on Windows x64...

There's no reason for this to fail: dosemu runs 16-bit code on 64-bit Linux
systems just fine. You just need to do full hardware emulation which, at this
point, is neither difficult nor prohibitively resource-intensive.

~~~
iuguy
There's actually a very specific reason for it to fail. There's an unfixable
bug in the way that the Windows emulates 16-bit BIOS calls in the 8086 mode
monitor. This is specific to Microsoft's implementation and is (if I remember
correctly) an architectural issue (and not the only one). The options are
rewrite an emulator or ditch 16-bit support in 64-bit.

I'm not saying that this is the only reason, but it is one.
Emulation/Virtualisation is different, but gets the support requirement off
Microsoft's books.

~~~
kenjackson
There's an even more specific reason. There is no 16bit support in 64bit
Windows. It's probably the biggest backwards compat kill they did for 64bit
Windows.

------
phreeza
He left out Windows ME. I guess that would be too much to ask.

~~~
Legion
The point of the video was chronicling Windows upgrades. ME wasn't an upgrade.
:)

~~~
yuhong
Me was not that much of an upgrade. It got rid of the MS-DOS mode. While it
did change a few stuff and added a few features (new shell derived from
Win2000, better ACPI/WDM/USB support, System Restore, etc...), it was still
based on the 9x codebase which was unreliable and had many limitations.

------
jessedhillon
Awesome stuff. I would have enjoyed a detour through Microsoft Bob, somewhere
around Windows 3.1 or 95.

~~~
elliottcarlson
That was my first reaction to - where's Bob?

------
jackvalentine
I'd actually have liked to see him to install more applications, perhaps
Microsoft Office (circa 1990) and upgraded them as he went along too. I wonder
if you can do Office for Windows -> Office 2010 as well.

------
alphakappa
Am I the only one that noticed that his account username in Windows 2000 was
'twatface'?

~~~
invisible
Oh, I noticed and I loled. Regardless, pretty interesting talk and at least he
has a humor with his account names.

I'm glad the XP team fixed Doom 2.

------
megaframe
It's like taking every upgrade I've ever done with Windows and condensing it
down to 9:49 (omit the various reinstalls)

~~~
warfangle
I never used the upgrade option. I'd always get a new hard drive with my
upgrade (to get OEM price) and install clean, usually using the original hard
drive as a slave. The next cycle that hard drive would become an archive on
the new slave.

I have backed up files from 1996 on my home desktop.

~~~
moe
Didn't everyone do it that way?

I tried the upgrade-option exactly once. I can't remember whether it preserved
my background color. But I do remember that all sorts of drivers got screwed,
software installs would fail with obscure error messages, and it generally was
nothing but problems until I finally wiped and re-installed.

~~~
flomo
I upgraded from NT4 -> 2000 -> XP without any major issues. AFAICT it was
mostly just a file replacement process.

The DOSWin to NT upgrade path always seemed pretty flaky though. The
demonstration cheated a bit by using a vanilla VMWare config; an actual PC
would be loaded with crappy vendor drivers and startup software which
complicated any upgrade.

~~~
warfangle
Upgrading from the NT line to further along the NT line wasn't much of a
problem IIRC. Upgrading from '95 to '98 to 2000 probably would be, if you'd
actually used the machine. Registry rot from years of use would hinder this
process.

The idea of a well-used registry from Win95 being still used in a 2000 or XP
machine makes me shiver in horror.

------
pmsaue0
He applauds MS for continually supporting their legacy software... my opinion
is that such legacy support is what continually hampers their rapid
development

~~~
brazzy
When it comes to viability as an infrastructure for business, downwards
compatibility clearly trumps rapid development. The same can be seen with
Java: having all the shiny, fashionable features the tech geek blogs are abuzz
with may be nice... but having old, boring, clunky, uncool software _that your
business depends on_ continue to work is far, far more valuable.

~~~
icarus_drowning
While this is true, there is certainly a point where backward compatibility
becomes a bit absurd. I'd personally peg it around the 15-year mark.

~~~
flomo
Absurd, and extremely profitable for the vendor which provides it. IBM
mainframes can run binaries that are nearly 45 years old for example.

------
ReadyNSet
brilliant a testament to MS software compatability

------
pbhjpbhj
Looking forward to someone doing the same sort of thing with other OSs.

~~~
shii
You can't do it with this level of preciseness in the Mac family at least.
Between OS X, probably as long as you're not on non-intel processors.

Like other commenter said, Windows/MS really goes all the way for backwards
compatibility.

~~~
jessedhillon
You can take a G3 from Mac OS 7.1.2 (version which added PowerPC support) all
the way to 10.4, which would take you from 1997 to 2005. I haven't done it,
but I've read that getting 10.4 requires some finagling to achieve, so the
last supported install you could do would be 10.3.9

~~~
flomo
IIRC the minimum OS for a G3 was actually 8.something. (Apple generally
doesn't/didn't support down-level OSes on their hardware.)

Also the settings would have only been preserved in Classic, but that's to be
expected I guess.

------
imsky
Wow, 26 years condensed into 10 minutes...

------
bengl3rt
No Windows ME? ;-)

~~~
brudgers
And more importantly no Windows NT.

This would have been the proper predecessor for Windows 2000 Professional.

Windows 2000 Professional was not part of consumer upgrade path - ME was.

Of course XP was was the successor to both.

------
simonw
Anyone know why the Windows installer takes so long? What's it doing for an
hour and a half?

~~~
sh4na
Some say it's probably due to the installer copying lots of things around,
combined with slow IO on the VM plus the installer assuming reads are going to
be slow (the source being slow CDs or floppies).

I call pish posh on that. What you're actually witnessing is The Microsoft
Minute, as explained by <http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990318>

------
zandorg
I have a VB3 (or VB4) application which uploads samples to my hardware sampler
over MIDI. But it doesn't work on XP, only 95/98. So there's a counter example
to it being totally backward compatible.

------
Someone
I look forward to the full version (starting at DOS 1.0 and with
<http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm>)

------
arrowgunz
It feels so nostalgic. I started using the Computer even since Windows 95 was
launched. I first tried installing the Windows 98 on my PC. Man, I really
appreciate this guy's patience.

~~~
bad_user
My first computer was bought in '94, so a year before the Win 95 release.

I got it with MS-DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and MS Works (forgot
which version).

------
olalonde
God I hate this in-text advertising thing.

------
stretchwithme
Quite an achievement. And we are all the richer for it when these things go
smoothly.

------
MarinaMartin
My favorite part of this experiment is that he tested with Monkey Island. Go
Guybrush!

------
Groxx
Best possible music choice. Period.

Fascinating.

