How about Open-BSD on obscure (by today's standard) platforms? Amiga as an example.
Though it is obsolete and not supported anymore, there is a port however.

Dominus wrote:

The question I replied to was what people are using NT or Windows 3.1 NOW. […]
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hyoenmadan wrote:

Dominus wrote:

I don't see any reason for NT. On Windows 3.x you can run a lot of games. Most of them run the same on Windows 9x BUT you can run Windows 3.x in Dosbox eithout any problem 😉

Errr... there are a vast world outside games, you know.

The question I replied to was what people are using NT or Windows 3.1 NOW.

Except for special cases, mostly businesses with old software, I don't see much point of running Windows 3.1 or NT (I assumed the old NT (<= 4) , not the modern one) these days.
Do you? Can you name one (except for the act of being able to run something and special business cases) or is being condescending all you have?

I know, you asked hyoenmadan, not me, but I use Win 3.1 for a dedicated MOD4WIN player I made from an old
set-top box. For some reasons, it can't run properly on 98 (didn't try XP/2k yet) and the display drivers for that
chipset won't work. So I had to use Win 3.1 and a patched SVGA driver (for VESA VBE support).

HighTreason wrote:

Every time Windows XP started up, all I could see in my head was this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZCgbGgA-_8

I hate that show! Probably explains why there are so many millennials acting retarded on Facefook. Nah, I think people were always that stupid, it's just that they now have an easily accessible platform to be so in public. Facebook has strong links to Jeremy Kyle and so far as I know, Jerry Springer was around, and did well, long before Fecebook was ever conceived.

Hahaha. 😁 I fully agree. My little sister absolutely loved that show, while I almost lost my sanity.
Was forced to watch this every morning before school. The only funny character was "Noo-Noo", that crazy perv vacuum cleaner. 😄

HighTreason wrote:

While we're on that subject, I may as well point out common knowledge and add the obligatory information; Windows XP appears to contain code from DOS 5.0 in its VDM (Virtual DOS Machine) - Windows 9X and ME use versions 7 and 8 respectively. Also, what was the damn point in the DOS Startup disk option for floppies in XP? It wasn't like most people could use it to do anything as they would have been running an NTFS file system which could not be accessed..

You're right, MS stopped to add features from later versions of DOS into NT. It was pretty much frozen at the level of NT 3.x.
For example, when you open a command prompt in 9x, it includes the path of the folder you've opened.
In XP or NT in general, you always have your default path shown.
One positive thing is, that the NTVDM itself got a few minor improvments. For example, since XP you now have got SB 2.0 emulation.
Great, isn't it ? In the year 2001 the Win NT line finally got the audio capabilities of a computer from 1991.
And the DOS Startup disk option also existed in Win 2000, but in a different spot.
They moved it to the floppy format section to mimic Win 9x.
This remebers me of something that happend to me some time ago..:
When I visited some local computer company, they had issues with some of their machines (newer hardware revisions).
They tried to install some special software, but there was some compatibility problem related to the mainboard (no PC).
So I camet up with the idea of an BIOS update. There was only one problem.. The BIOS utility required a DOS diskette!
Boy, were they angry! The couldn't believe it ("Why can't this be done from Windows??").
Then they desperately tried to get hold on a computer with a floppy drive and the ability to create such a disk.
After some time I asked them why they don't use that machine in the corner.. They said it would have got XP installed and couldn't do it.
I remember how these computer experts were shocked, when I told them that XP can indeed create bootable disks and it worked.
The funny thing is, it was an internship week (or how it is called) and I was supossed to learn, not them! 😀

HighTreason wrote:

I seem to think it was NT only and undoubtedly CE. - ha, "CE ME NT".

Good one! 🤣

Sutekh94 wrote:

I know there was a PowerPC version of NT 4, possibly 3.51 as well.

Yes, and the necessary files can be found on the normal x86 CD-ROM, too.
But getting a matching computer is even more difficult.. 🙁
Btw, OS/2 Warp 4 was also developed for PowerPC. Some of its improvements were later included in the x86 version.
The GRIDD system or DIVE were one of them, I think.

Edit: Sorry, several typos. My English isn't good today.

Stiletto wrote:

The fact that this forum thread exists at all is rather hilarious to me, no offense to notsofossil but VOGONS exists primarily because things were so different between NT 4 / Win2K / WinXP and DOS / Win9x that people needed to make all sorts of compatibility patches, shims, locate obscure registry settings, create wrappers and emulators and all sorts of stuff just to get old DOS games and old Win9x games to work in "new systems" - new operating systems, which at the time were Windows 2000 and Windows XP, NT-based operating systems.

This is WHY the "DOS" and "Windows" subforums exist - not to make threads about getting a DOS game running on your old MSDOS PC, nor a Win9x game running in Win9x, but to get them running in Win2K and up. Trading the advice, knowledge, tricks and tips to run them natively. Early on this was prior to emulators, prior to virtual machines that could do the job. So the question was how to run them natively. Back in the day we even played around with NT 4 compatibility fixes. Ask DosFreak, he helped make the old lists at ntcompatible.com before/while he made his own.

I always knew they were different, but I didn't know in what ways. I've never been very successful in explaining to people why Windows 9x and NT are completely different.

This thread has been fantastic though, thanks for all the replies.

dr_st wrote:

Yes, Vista is NT6, Win7 is 6.1, Win8 is 6.2, Win8.1 is 6.3, and Win10 used to be 6.4 in the early betas, before they changed it to 10.0. The numbering scheme is pretty arbitrary.

And while I learned about some interesting nuances about the differences between 9x and NT in this thread, the biggest thing it did for me is make me want to install WIndows ME on my Thinkpad A31p. 😀

Windows ME is a fantastic OS, you're gonna love it. Very good for 9x gaming on hardware with no OPL2/OPL3 support.

brostenen wrote:

Another difference that I was taught in school in 1995, was that NT was not only more stable, it offered true sequrity over Win9X.
Yeah.... Win-9X was not even a true multitasking OS, it's an taskmanager system instead. Our teacher laughed at Win9X compared to NT and Os/2. NT 3 and 4 series can run on HPFS and Os/2 can run on NTFS.

Though NT 3/4 had support for HPFS,ie read/write, it was totally another thing running those OSs on that file system reliably is another matter. IIRC There was a patched pinball.sys file which allowed W2k to access HPFS partitions as well. I had NT 4 running on HPFS but it wasn't pretty at all, lots of error messages. Also in my limited experience I've never seen any reports of getting OS/2 to run on NTFS. Certainly OS/2 v3 or v4 don't support it out of the box.

Edit-Read only support mentioned at this link- http://www.dsteiner.com/products/software/os2/ntfs.htm

notsofossil wrote:

Windows ME is a fantastic OS, you're gonna love it. Very good for 9x gaming on hardware with no OPL2/OPL3 support.

Uh

I've used ME for years (on retail month 1, before all the "me sucks" memes were widespread) and I wouldn't oversell it like that, and OPL2 support has nothing to do with its instability. I've had an all PCI machine crap out on Me before (with all WDM drivers too).

And when Win2000 came out I was already concerned if there would ever be a DOS emulator in the vein of ZSNES/Bleem! to get around the 'no sound' issues in ntvdm, which was a very farfetched idea at the time given the fastest CPU was a P3 800.

Jo22 wrote:

One positive thing is, that the NTVDM itself got a few minor improvments. For example, since XP you now have got SB 2.0 emulation.

leileilol wrote:

And when Win2000 came out I was already concerned if there would ever be a DOS emulator in the vein of ZSNES/Bleem! to get around the 'no sound' issues in ntvdm, which was a very farfetched idea at the time given the fastest CPU was a P3 800.

I thought the lack of sound in the NTVDM was the entire purpose of VDMSound.

I wasn't very optimistic for VDM-based solutions when Quake can't start.

leileilol wrote:

I've used ME for years (on retail month 1, before all the "me sucks" memes were widespread) and I wouldn't oversell it like that, and OPL2 support has nothing to do with its instability. I've had an all PCI machine crap out on Me before (with all WDM drivers too).

Retail version? I'm strictly using Windows ME OEM, it is absolutely fantastic.

I said no OPL2/OPL3 for the people who like using Real Mode MS-DOS in Win95/98. Because Windows ME doesn't normally offer Real Mode MS-DOS, its best strength is 32-bit Windows games.

notsofossil wrote:

Retail version? I'm strictly using Windows ME OEM, it is absolutely fantastic.

As if the contents of the book changes because of the color of the cover.

I guess, everything can be considered absolutely fantastic, if you focus on the positive things, and overlook the faults. 😀

They are VERY different. The only real similarity they have is support for some common APIs.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Though NT 3/4 had support for HPFS,ie read/write, it was totally another thing running those OSs on that file system reliably is another matter. IIRC There was a patched pinball.sys file which allowed W2k to access HPFS partitions as well. I had NT 4 running on HPFS but it wasn't pretty at all, lots of error messages. Also in my limited experience I've never seen any reports of getting OS/2 to run on NTFS. Certainly OS/2 v3 or v4 don't support it out of the box.

Edit-Read only support mentioned at this link- http://www.dsteiner.com/products/software/os2/ntfs.htm

Basically speaking, our teacher lied to us back in 1995, whenever he stated that? I have never seen it either my self.
Learning false information, on a 5 year long IT-Education, that's the way to go then. 😢 😢 😢
What makes it even more un-graspable, was that it was the (at that time) highest IT education in Denmark.
What a pleasant discovery to make today.... Hmmm.... Well... He falsely accused us of downloading porn, when all we did
was to download a copy of McAfee trial back then. So yeah... I guess they have chosen a wrong person for maintaining
the Unix system (Vax system) and the Intranet throughout the entire school. What a douchebag.

Just to add to this education thing.... I have never had the ability of finishing that education.
It was way out of my league. Way too hardcore for me, so I dropped out.

brostenen wrote:

hardcore

See, so there was porn involved!

I wish.... naa. No fun thinking about that fat swetty bastard, bending over the teachers table, while smoking his 60-a-day filterless cigarettes. 🤣

That man had some serious health problems. His skin was all grey, and he had big black lines under the eyes. He caughed all the time and looked like canser was just around the corner. Allmost like a living dead.

Nope. No porn included there, unless we speak of the usual calenders on the wall.

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition).

It's a flash demo, which not only makes fun of Win Me, but also of Clippy and his friends.
So that demo is pretty much the whole Win9x experience in a nutshell..
I hope you've got a good sense of humour. Haha. 😉

Check it out here:
http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/

Jo22 wrote:

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition). […]
Show full quote

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition).

It's a flash demo, which not only makes fun of Win Me, but also of Clippy and his friends.
So that demo is pretty much the whole Win9x experience in a nutshell..
I hope you've got a good sense of humour. Haha. 😉

Check it out here:
http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/

That flash demo is very silly, but in the nearly 20 years I've used Windows 9x in one form or another, I've never had Windows be that broken, ever. Seriously, I have a laptop with Windows ME sitting right next to me and it's working perfectly. More often than not, corruption in Windows 9x is strictly a PEBCAK issue.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PEBCAK

notsofossil wrote:

Jo22 wrote:

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition). […]
Show full quote

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition).

It's a flash demo, which not only makes fun of Win Me, but also of Clippy and his friends.
So that demo is pretty much the whole Win9x experience in a nutshell..
I hope you've got a good sense of humour. Haha. 😉

Check it out here:
http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/

That flash demo is very silly, but in the nearly 20 years I've used Windows 9x in one form or another, I've never had Windows be that broken, ever. Seriously, I have a laptop with Windows ME sitting right next to me and it's working perfectly. More often than not, corruption in Windows 9x is strictly a PEBCAK issue.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PEBCAK

Then you are one of the lucky few I guess.... People did choose to revert back to 98SE back then, because of various issues.
One of them being, that once it was installed, it ran good. When a driver needed to get updated, it would crash horrible.
When that driver was updated on an Win98SE installation, it would make the system better. Yeah....

As an example... My parents had this Compaq Presario 7000-line machine. (P3-933, GF2-GTS, SB-Live)
This machine was an, as far as I remember, 815 chipset based machine.
They have never ever had any issues with that, and it has been running ME all the time. Still running good as of today.

On the other hand... I had some serious problems with Win-ME, that made me run away really fast and never looking back.
I had an Gigabyte GA-5AX based machine, with an K6-II-500, TNT2 and an SB-128 soundcard.
On that machine, it ran without any issues, though without drivers installed.
Once I tempted to update the drivers with the right ones, it simply became unstable, blue screen and lockup's.
This machine ran well with 95, 98, 98-SE, 2000, XP, Linux and Os/2. Yes... WinME was the only one that had any issues.
And the issues was so bad, that it made the whole machine utterly unuseable.

WinME is a good OS. No doubt about that. It's ok. The only thing one need to worry about, are the hardware.
In order to run WinME issue-less, the hardware need to be the right one. And beware of updating drivers.
It really need to shine, on the drivers that are build in. Otherwise there might be some issues. Minor to serious ones.

EDIT
"PEBCAK".... Never knew that it was called that in the English language.
In Denmark, it has a slightly different name and a different aproach to the error that exists.
Here we are calling it (directly translated) "Error-40".
Error-40 is that error, wich are to be located/sitting 40 centimeters from the screen.

I do remember WinME getting a bad start almost right from the start, it also got quite a lot of bad press.

At first I was reluctant to use it, but since I couldn't get a hold of 98SE and 98FE was unbearable, I decided to give it a shot and I can remember only 2 instances where ME gave trouble. One was hardware related and the other was a Windows that suddenly wouldn't make it to the desktop. All other rigs simply ran pretty much fine once set up.

notsofossil wrote:

More often than not, corruption in Windows 9x is strictly a PEBCAK issue.

There's that one nasty, stupid problem where Explorer would keep freezing up with the last version of IE6. And I'm still not completely unconvinced that it can start to get unstable with 512 MB of RAM installed.

Just read this article on Ars - very relevant to this discussion

http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technolo … cross-platform/

notsofossil wrote:

Jo22 wrote:

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition). […]
Show full quote

This thread somehow reminds me of an old Windows Me parody, Windows RG (Really Good Edition).

It's a flash demo, which not only makes fun of Win Me, but also of Clippy and his friends.
So that demo is pretty much the whole Win9x experience in a nutshell..
I hope you've got a good sense of humour. Haha. 😉

Check it out here:
http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/

That flash demo is very silly, but in the nearly 20 years I've used Windows 9x in one form or another, I've never had Windows be that broken, ever. Seriously, I have a laptop with Windows ME sitting right next to me and it's working perfectly. More often than not, corruption in Windows 9x is strictly a PEBCAK issue.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PEBCAK

Yep, that demo is a silly parody for sure! 😀
However, there's some truth within. Win9x is a strange beast in several ways, I think.

For example, the original release of Win95 worked like a charm on my dad's 386 (40MHz, 16MB RAM),
eventhough it is a fact it was buggy and still was in beta stage when released.
Remember, some of the Netscape guys even defined Win95 as a "set of poorly debugged device drivers" for a reason.

Also, Windows 98SE, which is considered to be the most stable release and is beloved by so many people here (including me),
constantly crashes in my virtual machines (VirtualBox) and on my real hardware (GA586S). I've already mentioned some of this here.
I don't know why it does this and I'm not saying it does this always - it runs very well in Virtual PC on my Mac and on my Compaq laptop (Armada series).

But the real irony is, that Windows ME, which is often hated and said to be unstable, runs just fine in
VirtualBox and on my real hardware (GA586S).

Of course, these are just examples, but my point is: I don't think it's always an users fault.
There's a lot more going on. And yes, there are indeed a lot of DAUs out there.

Btw, this is similar to malware infections. A lot of people think they won't need anti-virus software if
they just browse the web carefully and don't open suspicious e-mails.
But the truth is, you can get a drive-by download anytime without doing anything wrong.

brassicGamer wrote:

Just read this article on Ars - very relevant to this discussion

http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technolo … cross-platform/

Thank you! That's quite fitting! I've found something similar a while ago (link), but it's not as good as yours.
Especially the adoption of the Win32 API as a platform was interesting to read.
There also was a similar discussion in an old issue of byte magazine whether OS/2 should switch to the Win32 API because of this or not.
The only thing I can't stand is the authors excessive use of the word "Windows 95".
They say this somewhat often, it gives me the shivers. It always reminds me of that mod file (cry-w95.xm) I can't get out of my head. 😐

Edit: I've found it! In case someone is interested, the article about OS/2 and Win32 was called "Why IBM Should License Win32" and can be read in Byte magazine, issue of September '94, page 278.