Reply 20 of 22, by Jo22
- Rank
- l33t++
wrote:There was something nice about Win 3.1 now that I think about it. It was very organized and structured with those window pop ups prompts. I think maybe Win 3.1 was actually close enough to DOS where if you copy the entire Windows folder of where the game/software was installed you could transplant that to another computer and run the game without any additional missing files. If that was the case that made Win 3.1 easy to copy the installed program and then zip it archiving. 95 and 98 didn't always follow this rule and had drivers and random files all over the place.
Hey, yes, I can't disagree with that. In its own quirky way, Win 3.1 was such a friendly, little "OS". ^^
It could run atop anything DOS compatible, including other environments, like DESQView or OS/2's virtual DOS machines.
That's were its ability to run in non-virtual mode came in handy (Standard Mode using 286 protected-mode via dosx/krnl286).
As long as only standard settings were used (ex.,VGA/SVGA), then it was quite portable and could be used on different computers.
While the Windows registry already exists, it played only a minor role yet (regedit /v) and
most settings were stored in system.ini, win.ini and mapper.cfg (MIDI), making the creation of backups very easy.
Maybe this has its roots in Windows 1.x/2.x, who started out as runtime environments (see balance of power).
The internet archive also uses Window 3.x in a similar fashion, I believe (check your cache; any 7MiB file ?).
wrote:I remember going to the computer shows and seeing these massive shareware booths where you look at this paper catalog and find a list of disk titles and description and you figure out what you want and they hand you the disk. I could have picked up Space War there as it was shareware. Later on I ended up calling the guy who wrote it and wanted to buy his newest version of it. 😀 I still have that disk somewhere here in this mess all these years. Had a lot of good times on that game. He really knew how to make use of that internal PC speaker. I think it was written in assembler as most of those oldies were. Very compact and efficient coding. Later I used a hex editor and started altering code like I knew what I was doing randomly changing the bytes that I could read and the ones that were garbled. A few times it produced interesting results. I ended up with one ship looking like a Borg Cube. Interesting that VGA could emulate Monochrome on some cards but I never bothered to attempt it because I think that was the only Monochrome game that differed from the Color version. There was one Star Trek simulator game and I think it might have been shareware that was quite addicting. Then there was a bunch of Basic games that you could load and run which look awful today and quite primitive. I don't think I ever finished getting to the end of A Final Unity or maybe I did
Cool story! I remember these times, too! 😀 Though, I was younger, I'm afraid. 😊 My father and I went together to
computer shops sometimes and selected shareware titles on these computer terminals. We had to buy one of their floppies (they still had 5.25" ones!) and at the terminal,
we had to insert the floppy and typed in the number of the shareware program(s). About that StarTrek game, I once saw a similar one.
It was monochrome and had problems running on my VGA cards. I don't remember how it was called, but it had 3D vector graphics
and starbases. It was either Hercules or hi-res CGA. If you're interested, I could send you some ST games of my Freeware/Public Domain collection.
Maybe it includes the addicting one you're missing! ^^
wrote:I don't think I ever finished getting to the end of A Final Unity or maybe I did. But 25th and Judgment Rites I can recall. Those were some decent ST based game transfers and that old school theme song on Midi output. 😀 Most of my nostalgic music derived from the original classic 8 bit Mono Sound Blaster but years later I did get a Roland MT-32 to listen to the differences on those early Sierra games.
So you also have an MT-32 ? That's cool! I now have one, too! 😁
Back in the 90s, I started with a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 w/ OPL3 (the ideal OS/2 soundcard, I think).
Later I got into MIDI and got a Casio MT-540 keyboard, and wow! SQ3 sounded amazing in comparison.
About the same time, I got my first real midi module, a CM-64 (basically a CM-32L w/ PCM add-on).
And it sounded.. awful. Well, at least in SQ3. Later I found out that this had to do with a bug in the game's code:
Apparently, the Adlib tracks were played on the extended channels the CM64 had.
Thank god, I made no review of SQ3 with my CM-64. People would have stoned me, haha (*shrug*). 😅
wrote:Some really sound completely different and you got to hand it to those sound designers who managed to do what they could with that one note internal PC speaker in the early days.
Yeah, they did a really good job. Reminds me of the late 90s and its cell phones. People played monophonic ring tones everywhere, all the time! 😀
Sometimes I wish the PCjr./Tandy sound would had become an industry standard, though, just like the PC beeper.
I mean, the technology was there and even part of an official IBM product (the junior).
Heck, even games allowed the use of 3-voice sound independently of the graphics hardware (Sierra games had the -t switch for that). Oh well. *sigh*
But at least there's DOSBox now (and temu for Covox plugs).
Edit: Just noticed we already reached page #2, guess I talked to much again.. 😅
@SRQ I hope you don't mind that we went a bit off-topic here. I apologize for that, it's your thread, after all. 🙁
Attachments
"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
//My video channel//