doshea wrote on 2024-04-03, 08:22:
I've seen Jo22 mention Gupta SQLWindows a few time but I'd never seen it mentioned elsewhere until I was just having a look at this "Windows Shopping" brochure from Microsoft from 1988 which includes it and Actor.
Actor sounds pretty interesting! It says it's interactive, object-oriented, supposedly provides a smooth transition to OS/2 PM, and can link to C libraries. Also it's from Whitewater, whose Resource Toolkit product was included with some Borland products (before they wrote their own Resource Editor I presume).
I appreciate your posts in this thread Jo22, although I don't have much to add because apart from the Windows runtime in Balance of Power, the first time I ran Windows was on a 386SX/20 with 2MB of RAM which I guess is a bit too powerful and modern for this thread 😁 I have a backup of that machine including Program Manager group files, so sometime I can share a reconstructed screen shot of my desktop from December 1991, but I don't know know much of it would run on a 286.
Hi, thanks! 😁 But to be honest, my father was an SQLWindows user back then and he told me a few times about it, that's why it came to mind. 😅
Personally, with my own PC, I've started out on a 286 with MS-DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1.
I've also been using my father's old copy of Windows 2.03 to play some old Windows games gotten on shareware disks, like Klotz (a Tetris game).
Since he had a disk set of MS-DOS 3.2 and PC-DOS 3.30 (among other OSes), Windows 2 could run without much hassle.
A bit about the background story: He worked as a programmer/PC repair man back then and had a lot of programs.
But he wasn't wealthy by any means. These programs were more like tools in a toolbox, to earn money.
Curiosity was another factor, of course. As a radio amateur, he loved to tinker with all sorts of elecronics.
I think it goes without saying that back in those days, there was a lot of exchange of, err, "backup copies" going on. 😉
So he saw a lot of different stuff at friends', acquaintance's and customers' places first and later bought the programs he wanted to use.
Some programs in his possesion were merely to demonstration purposes, too.
To show what a computer can do and how well it performs (ACAD comes to mind).
And to be able to quickly help out with software in a business environment, in an emergency (PC-Tools, Novell networking stuff etc).
Things like this. I suppose that's why I got in contact with the DOS software on an early age, already.
And why I could have played around with such things as Visual Basic 1.0 or QuickBASIC 4.5..
Our national cop.right (at the time) did allow a limited number of backup copies of previously paid for media
(VHS, cassette, floppies, books etc) to be shared within family and among close friends.
That's why video cassette rental was such a big hit at the time, I assume.
A copy or two could be kept legally after returning of the rental cassette.
Provided, that Macrovisi*n wasn't trying to stop the fun.
Anyway, I'm just saying. I think most of these things wasn't my merit, so to say. I was more of an observer.
My own "collection" of software mostly consisted of shareware and public domain.
A few years later, I collected those shareware CD-ROMs, of which I still have kept quite some. ^^
PS: Thanks a lot for the brochure, too! I'm always enjoying seeing those Windows 2 screenshots!
There's something to these late 80s applications. A mixture of new concepts and traditional takes on certain things, not sure to explain.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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