Windows turns 35: a visual history - From Windows 1.0 to Windows 10 (Flashback: Nov 20, 1985)

The Verge ^ | Nov 20, 2020 | Tom Warren

[TianaHighrider]

I just saw it was 98 I was thinking of. Says that came on 38 disks. Seemed like a lot more, laf. Especially when you had to start all over from disk one every time it “glitched”. Would be an all night job.

[Rurudyne]

Actually, my dad bought one of those but at that age I had my head too far up my ass to even care.

[rolling_stone]

well my friends mom let her son, my friend drive it an we went for a joy ride down the freeway..all i could say was hang on..

[Salamander]

Vaguely.

I loved Win2K Pro.

Stable as heck.

I still have copies of WinMe!, Vista and Win95 that came with STILL functional Panasonic Toughbooks.

Couple weeks ago I found one of the really tough Toughbooks that wouldn’t turn on, in a thrift shop for $5.
Brought it home, took out the battery and held the power button and it booted right up.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

My memory isn’t what it used to be but many years ago I was taking a college course on computing and the professor brought in a copy of IBM Windows. He said that Gates at first tried to release it through IBM but it didn’t work out so Microsoft was born. His mother was friends with the CEO of IBM so it was a foot in the door, but when I did a search for IBM Windows I couldn’t find any results. Perhaps I dreamed it.

[dinodino]

Yep. My first hard drive was 10MB.

[McGruff]

I still have a Dell Windows XP PC that was running fine until stored it in my basement. Maybe I’ll bring it back up and see if it still runs.

[dayglored]

Glad you enjoyed the article (I did too). We hobbyists were where it all started, a decade before Windows 1.0. My first couple years were with a HEX keypad and 7-segment displays, hand-entering my hand-assembled machine code. I still remember that A9 was the 6502’s LDA# (load accumulator immediate)... But don’t ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday, LOL.

[dayglored]

Quite true that pre-Win95 Windows was just an application that ran over MS-DOS. In fact I never considered the DOS family (up and including 98 and ME) to be real operating systems, even though the later ones reduced their dependence on the DOS sub-layer considerably.

IMO the NT family were the “real” operating systems.

Although arguably (and many original Microsoft engineers would agree), Microsoft’s true “serious” operating system was XENIX, I.e. UNIX.

[dayglored]

That was some “Roll Out”. Good lord, that’s a heck of a setup!

[Olog-hai]

Think they’re giving too much credit to Gates and not enough to the Xerox GUI system (Alto) that Windows is a clone of, which included the mouse.

[dayglored]

I would agree that your memory, as well as the story that professor told, are pretty much at odds with the historical facts.

Microsoft was born to produce BASIC for the ALTAIR computer in 1975-76. The company bought XENIX (UNIX) and sold that as an operating system. Then IBM approached Microsoft to produce a CP/M-like operating system for the new IBM-PC (1981). Microsoft bought QDOS from Seattle Computers, rebranded it as MS-DOS, and licensed it to IBM as PC-DOS. It wasn’t until after the Apple Macintosh came out in 1984 that Microsoft recognized the value of a graphical environment, so they produced Windows in 1985. They eventually sold XENIX to concentrate on Windows, and worked with IBM to produce OS/2, ....

... and the story goes on from there...

[dayglored]

Xerox PARC was indeed the start of nearly everything we know of as graphical user interfaces and environments. Apple stole from them, Microsoft stole from them, Microsoft stole from Apple, and on and on.

[Bob434]

lol yeah, there seemed to be quite a number of them-

[Bob434]

if that’s the case- i must have started with 98 because i don’t remember any floppies- I do remember a CD though- and remember upgrading ot 98 SE later, but for some reason i have a vague memory of 95- but not of floppies- but my memory aint what it used to be so it coulda been 98 that we started with

[SPDSHDW]

Lot of games are starting to use win10 only software, I’m debating whether I want to play those games enough to go away from 7 which I’ve used for at least 10 years

[Abby4116]

I remember OS/2. Could not get it to load properly on my 286 Packard Bell. Think I still have it stashed away. Went from Win 3.1 to 95 etc. with no problems.

Yes, I did use Windows 1 but it was easier to just use DOS.

[Viking2002]

'I remember having fun editing my autoexec.bat'

I hope there weren't children in the room. LOL! Man, this is giving me flashbacks. I started on an old IBM 286 clone that had to boot off of 5.25" floppies. Made a 20 year+ living in IT out of it.

[dfwgator]

I remember having fun editing my autoexec.bat

Reminds me of the old joke, "What do you get when you cross Lee Iacocca with a vampire? autoexec.bat"

[Pocketdoor]

XP was the best. It came out relatively soon after ME did. My friend and I renamed it Extra Profits.