I wonder if this is still a thing.

Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/str … d-egg-problems/

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-07, 00:33:

I wonder if this is still a thing.

Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/str … d-egg-problems/

Interesting read. I wonder how many more games had put these type of bugs and MS fixed it themselves.

I read an article years ago, probably on That Old New Thing, that Microsoft bought out the inventory of a local computer software shop and set everything up on some tables. The team was told that they could keep any software that they could get running properly on Windows 95.

It was something to that effect.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-08-07, 05:18:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-07, 00:33:

I wonder if this is still a thing.

Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/str … d-egg-problems/

Interesting read. I wonder how many more games had put these type of bugs and MS fixed it themselves.

Not really. They keep breaking things. Even full directx games from 95 broke by xp. Eg mechwarrior 2.

myne wrote on 2022-08-09, 06:31:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-08-07, 05:18:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-07, 00:33:

I wonder if this is still a thing.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/str … d-egg-problems/

Interesting read. I wonder how many more games had put these type of bugs and MS fixed it themselves.

Not really. They keep breaking things. Even full directx games from 95 broke by xp. Eg mechwarrior 2.

Actually MS fixed many things for Mech2, but they didn't implement it. It still is present in the ....(closed source product). Testing what they made, the game can run on XP independently. It just didn't make to the main release for certain reasons.

Not releasing it is effectively the same as not doing it in the first place.

What product is it still in?

myne wrote on 2022-08-09, 09:13:

Not releasing it is effectively the same as not doing it in the first place.

What product is it still in?

The sources of XP. And the same was implemented in the MechVM as well as the released XP patch

I learned at Lemmings Forums that the CD check for Lemmings Paintball can be disabled by editing just two bytes in the executable using a hex-editor.

File name: LEMBALL.EXE
File size: 738,304 bytes
0x6238: 75 to EB
0x6239: 17 to 4C

As far as I know, the original executable is the same for all releases, so only one patch would be needed. This would eliminate the need to have the CD or mount an image to play. Everything would load from the hard drive.

I also found that running the game using compatibility mode's 640x480 allowed me to play it in full screen, even if you can't switch to a window during play.

was there any luck in making Mechwarrior 2 mercenaries 1.1 or titanium edition work on modern windows?

Deffnator wrote on 2022-09-23, 16:36:

was there any luck in making Mechwarrior 2 mercenaries 1.1 or titanium edition work on modern windows?

It works now

CDrayan wrote on 2022-09-22, 23:39:

I learned at Lemmings Forums that the CD check for Lemmings Paintball can be disabled by editing just two bytes in the executabl […]
Show full quote

I learned at Lemmings Forums that the CD check for Lemmings Paintball can be disabled by editing just two bytes in the executable using a hex-editor.

File name: LEMBALL.EXE
File size: 738,304 bytes
0x6238: 75 to EB
0x6239: 17 to 4C

As far as I know, the original executable is the same for all releases, so only one patch would be needed. This would eliminate the need to have the CD or mount an image to play. Everything would load from the hard drive.

I also found that running the game using compatibility mode's 640x480 allowed me to play it in full screen, even if you can't switch to a window during play.

I remember Lemming Paintball gave an error related to DIB processing when attempting to use real full screen mode. What OS are you on?

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-09-23, 16:41:

Deffnator wrote on 2022-09-23, 16:36:

was there any luck in making Mechwarrior 2 mercenaries 1.1 or titanium edition work on modern windows?

It works now

pcgaming wiki page for mercs wasn't updated yet with it

Deffnator wrote on 2022-09-24, 02:45:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-09-23, 16:41:

Deffnator wrote on 2022-09-23, 16:36:

was there any luck in making Mechwarrior 2 mercenaries 1.1 or titanium edition work on modern windows?

It works now

pcgaming wiki page for mercs wasn't updated yet with it

Yes I am aware of it, I added in only the MechWarrior 2 Pentium Edition. I didn't change Titanium one because I wasn't happy with the crashes that happen because of heap corruption. Even after having a custom heap patcher from DxWnd and the EmulateHeap shim it causes problems. I will add it in PCGW in a few days, the process isn't much difference though. Mercenaries works better though in my tests.

Would recommend adding The Sims 2, you just need to add DXVK (the 32-bit binary) to the EXE directory of either the base game or the newest EP installed (whatever EXE you start the game from, for instance on the complete collection this is Sims2EP9.exe), this is to fix the bug with pink fuzz appearing on the screen and shadows rendering incorrectly. It's also recommended to use the Graphics Rules Maker so the game can recognize video cards released after 2008, allow VSync on AMD Radeon cards and allow the game to run at higher quality graphics settings on Intel integrated graphics (These 2 fixes should probably apply to SimCity 4 but I have not tested that).

This works for retail DVD releases and the Origin release

What does white lists on the compatibility chart mean? Or is that too racist to ask on here? 🤷‍♂️ It shows Carmen Sandiego 1996 on a white category with no info.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-07, 00:33:

I wonder if this is still a thing.

Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/str … d-egg-problems/

Edit: I posted links to left over sources the best I could. A lot are now deleted sadly from internet rot.

Wish it was that way today. It's a long story but MS fired a bunch of PC people in the Windows 8 dev which a friend of ours that helped on XP was one of those fired. It was part of a 'MS Shakeup' that made the business news a few times. Sadly this is the only article I could find but there used to be more: https://www.wtnh.com/news/microsoft-laying-of … -sales-shakeup/ this was only JUST the beginning of their rocky road to wanting to be a smartphone company!!! 😲😲 At the time businesses and companies were pushing the 'PC in your pocket' mantra fooling the dumb and stupid.

There were several rounds of it and then they did the dumbest thing you could possibly think of. They bought out failed Nokia A PHONE COMPANY https://www.marketingweek.com/microsoft-compl … ia-acquisition/
and used those guys instead which is when Win 8 when to that metro crap. Win 8 was going to look nothing like it does now at one point it was just going to be a more user friendly Windows 7 but they went an entirely different direction after that. Beta builds of Windows 8 is a lot more like Win 7 but more stable. Since XP MS made things more and more hidden.

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=61525.01
PRINT
Topic: Recording "what you hear" using a Creative X-Fi on Vista (Read 28899 times)

As the forum thread mentioned: One of the greatest things they did and slowly crippled was 'Record What U Hear' which was enabled by default on all Windows up to Vista which with a few tweaks you could enable it like the forum thread said you had to manually enable it in a run around way: then it was entirely disabled on 7 which I THINK you could do some kind of registry hack on 7 to get it to come back but don't quote me on that, It may have been Vista that had that hack I get both confused. Anyways I was mad as a hornet's nest that day and almost threw out MS OS but I have emulators/programs that have Shanghai'd me to their OS that Linux either doesn't do or doesn't do very well.

That was just ONE of the many dumb $$$ things they did. If they had the compatibility people from back in the 9X days the transition to 64 bit would've been a lot smoother and likely not so many people would've jumped ship which is another story.

Kinda sad so many just want a computer to be a souped up video game console just to watch people's heads blow up which there is plenty of that going on in the world for real where people wonder if they will have a roof to sleep over their heads or have reliable electricity that won't be knocked out by terrorists: yet while over here we argue about gender identity politics and video game scores that teach us wrong stuff.

myne wrote on 2022-08-09, 06:31:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-08-07, 05:18:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-07, 00:33:

I wonder if this is still a thing.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/str … d-egg-problems/

Interesting read. I wonder how many more games had put these type of bugs and MS fixed it themselves.

Not really. They keep breaking things. Even full directx games from 95 broke by xp. Eg mechwarrior 2.

It's because XP got rid of the NT Kernel which had strong ties to DOS. MS was eyeing 64 bit back then actually as the very first 64 bit machines came out in 2002ish. There actually WAS a 64 bit Windows XP and like Vista there were no or few drivers so people had to toss out their old devices that wouldn't work which lead to 7 and the current hot mess of today. The 16 to 32 bit transition wasn't anywhere near as bad I wish they had used that as an example.

What ? This is not what happened at all...

Mister98XPee wrote on 2023-01-08, 18:57:

myne wrote on 2022-08-09, 06:31:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-08-07, 05:18:

Interesting read. I wonder how many more games had put these type of bugs and MS fixed it themselves.

Not really. They keep breaking things. Even full directx games from 95 broke by xp. Eg mechwarrior 2.

It's because XP got rid of the NT Kernel which had strong ties to DOS. MS was eyeing 64 bit back then actually as the very first 64 bit machines came out in 2002ish. There actually WAS a 64 bit Windows XP and like Vista there were no or few drivers so people had to toss out their old devices that wouldn't work which lead to 7 and the current hot mess of today. The 16 to 32 bit transition wasn't anywhere near as bad I wish they had used that as an example.

WTH??? Windows XP uses the NT kernel, and that kernel didn't have any real ties to DOS at all.

Mister98XPee wrote on 2023-01-08, 18:24:

What does white lists on the compatibility chart mean? Or is that too racist to ask on here? 🤷‍♂️ It shows Carmen Sandiego 1996 on a white category with no info.

It was initially filled up, but I left it blank because there were some issues with GDI on Windows. i guess I should update them with whatever I have

Mister98XPee wrote on 2023-01-08, 18:57:

myne wrote on 2022-08-09, 06:31:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-08-07, 05:18:

Interesting read. I wonder how many more games had put these type of bugs and MS fixed it themselves.

Not really. They keep breaking things. Even full directx games from 95 broke by xp. Eg mechwarrior 2.

It's because XP got rid of the NT Kernel which had strong ties to DOS. MS was eyeing 64 bit back then actually as the very first 64 bit machines came out in 2002ish. There actually WAS a 64 bit Windows XP and like Vista there were no or few drivers so people had to toss out their old devices that wouldn't work which lead to 7 and the current hot mess of today. The 16 to 32 bit transition wasn't anywhere near as bad I wish they had used that as an example.

Windows XP uses NT Kernel. You are confusing it with the 9x kernel, which instead had strong ties to DOS.