doshea wrote on 2023-06-26, 09:37:
It turns out that the version of Delphi linked in my original post is 1.0, whereas they later released a 1.02, but not as a patch - it was something they would mail to you directly. It's a bit rude to only give away the buggy(ier) version for free!
I remember these times from back then when my dad was working as a developer.
It was in the early 90s, when Beta testing for Windows 95 (Chicago) was still a phenomenon in IT.
Back then, the Windows world was pretty much still 16-Bit and so were databases and compilers.
Windows 3.x was still in the focus and allowed certain 32-Bit things (Windows 3.1 386 Enhanced-Mode kernal could use 'secret' WinMem32 API, Watcom had its Win386 Extender for Windows 3.0/3.1).
In those days, it wasn't uncommon to make phone calls and use fax machines.
Listings for certain API functions weren't being documented properly and you as a developer had to call another developer by phone.
In those times, you could call a company like Microsoft support and even get a real human being on the phone!
If you were lucky, they'd sent you a diskette with some files back or you would get a fax printout - on thermal paper.
You'd then read the printout and type in a FOO.H or FOO.C by hand and save it.
If you had a modem and, say, a CompuServe account, you could also receive an E-mail, of course.
Some CompuServe forums (GO something) also had files and topics about for a problem.
Calling a BBS (mailbox) was also possible, of course. Many companies had their own ones, along with a Sysop to call.
Unless the BBS in question was located in France or the US, then you were screwed as an European developer.
The phone calls into a foreign country were stellar, back then.
But you weren't a serious developer if you hadn't any subscription for service providers to any of these X.25 networks, anyway.
The years 1993-1995, in which Delphi 1.x was current, were quite chaotic in this regards, maybe.
Maybe Borland burried Delphi 1.x directly after Delphi 2 was ready and Windows 95 next door.
Delphi 2.x is intetesting in so far, because the compiler -at the heart- was still compatible with Windows 3.1+Win32s.
So perhaps it was already in development during the Windows NT 3.x days, when Delphi 1.x was current.
There was parallel development of Delphi 1 and 2, so to say.
And once Delphi 2 was ready, Delphi 1 was being burried and forgotten by Borland.
The patch to 1.02 was perhaps only known to internal developers at Borland, which still were tweaking/fixing Delphi 1 for Windows 95 compatibility.
But once Delphi 2/Windows 95 were available, it became superfluous, being only handed out on request.
Edit: I'm speaking under correction, of course. I was very young back then.
But Internet as such was very uncommon here in good old Europe.
We were more familiar with Minitel, Genie and such online-services.
Participating international E-mail correspondence was the #1 reason for us to have a CompuServe subscription.
(The CS mail addresses were still widely numeric back then, I remember. Like they were in the 80s.)
But originally, we had no CompuServe login in Europe.
So we had to use another service connect to CompuServe at the time.
WinCIM software even has a huge list of foreign networks for that purpose (see configuration dialog).
Of course, AOL also was an option. But it was very late by comparison.
It also had more of a consumer image.
Edit: The CD-ROM of Delphi 2 that I bought a while ago does ship with a free copy of Delphi 1.0 - for 16-Bit development.
So I suppose that Borland really gave up on Delphi 1+Windows 95 after Delphi 2 way out.
Delphi 1 nolonger was supposed to utilize the latest 16-Bit APIs introduced to Windows 95,
as it used to be during the Beta phase.
Edit: My apologies for the long post, I got carried away. 😅
That being said, there were a few 16-Bit NE applications that require Windows 95.
They used old 16-Bit, segmented code but wouldn't run on Windows 3.1x anymore.
So yeah, Windows 95 was a weird transitional time.
Edit: It's perhaps old coffee, err, news, but one popular method of checking for Windows 95 was by using the Win16 API call for version check.
Windows 95 would report itself as 3.95.
So Windows 95-enhanced Windows 3.1x applications would check the minor value for that.
Another, cleaner method would have been to use PlatformID function (available via Win16, too ?).
It has numeric values for Windows 3.1, Win32s, Windows 9x, Windows NT. And later on, Windows CE.
Funnily, it had rarely been used ever since its introduction.
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