Classic Systems Emulated: Windows 95 (Part 2)

 

DoomGuy, MP3's, MOD's, and Jennifer Anniston

Windows 95 was released to the general public on August 24, 1995 to grand fanfare. This was one of the few times in history where people stood in line for a Microsoft product! At least it was until hyper-emotional clowns screaming in a incoherent manner had the nerve to proclaim that Halo was the greatest game ever made . Never mind that I was playing Halo a few years earlier before release. It was called Unreal Tournament. (It has better graphics and controls too)

Windows 95 was heavily hyped. The promotional activity of this scale was previously unseen. Their was a flood of TV ads that blasted Start Me Up, a classic from the Rolling Stones discography. Start Me Up was the theme song for the Windows 95 launch. Comedian Jay Leno promoted it at the Windows 95 launch event with Bill Gates. Jennifer Anniston and Matthew Perry of Friends were a in a video guide promoting Microsoft's newest OS. Things can't get any more 90's than that! However, as awesome as Friends is, (and it is very awesome) my ears will fill up with blood if I ever hear the phrase "cyber sitcom" uttered again. The middle 90's was a very weird time.

The ads worked. The people were hyped. The OEM's were hyped. The transition to Windows 95 occurred very quickly. Their were many other reasons for this as will be explored in this article.




Doom was still setting PC gaming on fire by the time of the Windows 95 launch. Bill Gates wanted a native Windows 95 port of Doom. In fact, their was a time where Microsoft was so desperate for such a port that they were seriously considering buying id Software. Microsoft only relented when the developers stated that they were going to port the game to Win95 anyway, making the corporate buyout unnecessary. That should demonstrate how badly Bill wanted DoomGuy on his new platform! Who doesn't want DoomGuy on their platform! DoomGuy is awesome. He was Master Chief before Master Chief existed!

Win95 Doom was built around DirectX. DirectX was the successor to WinG that was built solely for the new OS. DirectX allowed games to access video/ 3D accelerators and audio adapters through its libraries. Games that made use of DirectX would have access to fast-paced graphics libraries within Windows. When it came to video drawing, their were two libraries to choose from: Direct3D and DirectDraw. Direct3D is the accelerated graphics libraries for GPU's. DirectDraw was the 2D graphics libraries for games running in software mode using the CPU. DirectDraw works alongside the SVGA adapter that ran in video modes conforming to the VESA video standard.

When Windows 95 was released, most home users were still using 486-equipped PC's. The overhead of Windows 95 was significant on these computers. As such, running a demanding game on top of a demanding environment resulted in slower performance compared to a game running in straight DOS mode. Because DOS had very little overhead, the game in question could use all the available resources of the PC for its taking.

However, the Pentium processors made up for the overhead imposed by Windows, along with rapidly falling memory prices. Computers with 16MB's of RAM were becoming readily available by Win95's launch. Within a year, many were demanding PC's with 24 to 32MB's of RAM. This made Windows gaming much more feasible.

Doom95 was a very competent port of the game that made very good use of the Windows environment while still providing that familiar gameplay that Doom fans expected. DirectDraw allowed many DOS games to be ported to Windows as-is. Microsoft released Flight Simulator for Windows 95. FS95 is basically a straight port of FS5.1 for MS-DOS to Windows using the DirectDraw libraries. Like Doom95 and later Quake, FS95 ran very well on most Pentium-based system.

Quake was released on 1996. The new FPS was originally released for MS-DOS. However, the game would eventually support 3D acceleration. However, it wasn't through Direct3D, but Glide. The 3DFX Voodoo held the upper hand in the early days of the 3D acceleration race. The 3DFX Voodoo was supported in Windows 95. GL-Quake became the must-play title for any Voodoo owner. Many games supported Glide, like Turok, Activision's Interstate 76, Test Drive 4, and many of the EA titles released around that time.



Applications
With the new improvements to system stability, many previously Mac-only programs were now finding their way to Windows. Adobe PhotoShop had only been on Windows for a few years prior, had been updated for the new OS. Bryce, by MetaTools, released their 3D modeling package for Win95, This program was pushing these computers to the max. Poser, a human-posing program made by Fractal Designs, which were also Mac-only up til this point; was now on Windows 95. Windows became an legitimate platform for graphics designers now. This was reinforced with native Windows programs like Paint Shop Pro by JASC.  Because Win95 had memory management and protection for 32-bit Windows applications, graphics design on Windows became a much better proposition compared to MacOS Classic, which lacked these feature (and OSX was still many years away). 

Their were decent first-party support as Microsoft updated Office for the new Windows. Office 95 supported the new features supported by Win95. Visual Studio was updated to supported Win95 as well. This was important as developers could start coding rapidly for the new environment.

Several of the major ISV's (Independent Software Vendors) were quick to release new software. Lotus Software updated SmartSuite for Win95. Applications like Lotus 123, WordPro, Freelance Graphics, and Approach supported the new GUI features offered by Win95. Star Office and Corel Office were updated as well. For those who loved bench-marking their PC's, their would be plenty of opportunity to show-off their new Pentium PC's running Microsoft latest Windows. POV-ray was updated for those who wanted to push their processors to the max.

Multimedia
Windows 95 was going to be that multimedia powerhouse. While 3.1 started the multimedia crazy, Win95 was going to take things much farther. Windows 95 supported the latest video codec out of the box. Their was native support for the MPG video standard, along with support of the Intel Indeo Codecs. These codecs were supported in the updated version of Windows Media Player. CD-ROM titles would show off the multimedia capabilities of Windows for several years. Many of the popular CD-ROM titles, like those offered by Grolier, Compton, and DK, were updated for the new OS. Apple updated QuickTime for the new Windows as well.

However, by the eve of the launch of Windows 98, MP3's started to become popular. Even though the MP3 standard had been around since the early 90's, this audio format had been largely ignored for a large chuck of the decade because decoding MP3's required serious computing power. This was something that the 486 and slower Pentium processors were not capable of. However, with newer and faster Pentium systems making their way into people's homes, MP3's started to attract a lot more attention. This coincided with both the rise of the Internet, file-sharing, and the first release of WinAMP, which occurred on April 1997. While WinAMP wasn't the first MP3 player for Windows (that honor goes to WinPlay), WinAMP made the MP3 experience much more pleasant. One could build playlist with ease. It was simple and lightweight enough to use. WinAMP made MP3's accessible to those who wanted to listen to them.  

However, why should MP3's get all the fun though? Commodore Amiga owners have been jamming for awesome tunes for many years now. It's now time for Windows users to enjoy some of those tunes as well! ModPlug Player was released for Win95. This program allowed people to listen to those awesome Amiga music files on their PC using their sound card (Probably SoundBlaster and/or compatible). Programs like Windows Media Player, WinAMP, and ModPlug reinforced the idea of Windows as a multimedia powerhouse.




The Internet
When Windows 95 was released, the major BBS providers were quick to updated their client software for the new OS. Applications like CompuServe would see the light of day on the latest Windows. However, the WWW was taking the Internet by storm. In some ways, Microsoft was ahead of the game. They made network configuration much more accessible in Win95. Configuring that new network adapter was just as simple as just a few mouse clicks. Later releases of Windows 95 included the TCP-IP protocol for those applications to make use of the Internet right away. This made Win95 the OS that OS/2 Warp wished it was: the OS for the information superhighway (which like the term "cyber sitcom", can cause ears to bleed). Where IBM dropped the ball, Microsoft picked it up and ran with it. On one hand though, the Redmond giant realized that the Internet was going to be the next big thing. At the same time, they failed to realize how important the web-browser was going to play in this new realm.

The Mosaic web browser was already falling from grace as Netscape Navigator was becoming a juggernaut. It was a very capable browser anyway, supporting the latest web standards. Bill Gates needed to respond to Netscape. Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from SpyGlass Technologies, which NCSA spun off as a separate entity to handle Mosaic's affairs. Microsoft tweaked the browser and released it as Internet Explorer 1.0 on 1996 as part of the Windows 95 Plus! pack. The Windows Plus! pack is a compilation of screensavers, games, desktop themes, and applications for Windows. The first version of Internet Explorer was a flop though, especially compared to Netscape Navigator. Microsoft would need to put in a lot of time and effort (and resorting to questionable/illegal tactics) before coming up with something that could effectively compete with Netscape.

Conclusion
Their was a lot going for Windows 95. Microsoft knew how to sell this new OS. The people were hyped. It was a must own product if you had a computer. Their was a lot going on from a technical perspective. Microsoft was about to head straight to the stratosphere. However, cost would come along the way. The company created a user interface so innovative that it seal the fate of any other designs that would come in the future. Not only that, the company attempts to reign in on the OEM's and abuse its monopoly position would result with a showdown with the DOJ (Department of Justice). Microsoft would cause a lot of ill will that would persist for a long time. Within time, Microsoft would become a victim of its own success as corporate Karma would reign in on the giant. This will be explored in part 4. However, the next article will focus on Windows 95 runs under various emulators. Happy computing!

Articles Of Interest
Remembering the Windows 95 launch: A triumph of marketing (Mashable) : https://mashable.com/2015/08/24/remembering-windows-95-launch/
PCEM - https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ 
Wikipedia - Windows 95: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95
Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 for Windows (The Kixmiller Pigeon) : https://rkixmiller.dudaone.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-version-95
Flight Simulator for Windows 95 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Flight_Simulator_for_Windows_95
Doom95 (Famdom) : https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom95

Wikipedia : Doom (1993 Video Game) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)

DirectX (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

Direct3D (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D

DirectDraw (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectDraw

Quake (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_(video_game)

Glide (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glide_(API)

3DFX (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive


Indeo (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeo

Moving Picture Experts Group (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Picture_Experts_Group

MPEG1 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1

QuickTime (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime

Cinepak (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinepak

ActiveMovie (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveMovie

MP3 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

WinPlay3 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinPlay3

WinAMP (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winamp

ModPlug Player (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ModPlug_Player

ModPlug Central : https://www.modplug.com/#/


Internet protocol suite (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

CompuServe (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe

Mosaic (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)

Spyglass, Inc.(Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc

Netscape Navigator (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator

Internet Explorer 1 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Internet_Explorer_1

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WeatherStar 4000 Simulator For Windows (Part 1)

Image
  It's time to get the weather forecast, 90's style. A couple of months ago, I reviewed the WeatherStar 4000+ simulator for web-browsers. This simulator, created by Mike Battaglia, is a open-source, on-line simulator of the WeatherStar 4000 hardware used by The Weather Channel during the 1990's. This simulator ran without issue on both Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7 (Home PC) and Firefox on Windows 10 (Dell Optiplex).  It also runs great under Chrome on my Android devices as well. I use the online simulator when I'm on the road.  Now, I'm going to look into the WeatherStar 4000 simulator for Windows offered by Taiganet. This simulator offers a lot of features and can be customized in various ways. When I'm home, I use this program most of the time. Now, there is one notable hardware requirement. First, to run the Windows (and Mac OSX/Linux ports as well) simulator, you will need a computer that supports OpenGL 3.3. My home computer ha...
Read more

Classic Systems Emulated: Windows 95 (Part 1)

Image
  Start Me Up! Windows 95 (Chicago Beta Build 189 released September 1994) running under PCEM What would eventually become Windows 95 was affected by several turn of events that occurred during its development. Windows 95, code-named Chicago, had been several years in the making. Microsoft had already been planning the next version of Windows right after they got 3.1 out the door on March 1992. What would determine the course of the new OS? DOS Compatibility for one as it was still deemed essential at that point. One has to remember that even though Windows 3.0 had been the most successful version of Windows to date, the GUI in general was still a novelty at that point. Most used Windows 3.0 for simple task like typing list, letters, or playing solitaire. Most PC users who needed to work on major projects were still running DOS applications like WordPerfect or Lotus 123. However, the transition to GUI's would begin in earnest.  The 486 processor ...
Read more

Classic Systems Emulated: Windows 3.1 OEMS

Image
  The OEM's Want In On The Action The PC Market of the early 90's was a very competitive one. As such, having a easy-to-use environment was a must for these companies pushing there hardware. Hardware has caught up to software, and as such, it was now time to push the command prompt out of the way for the GUI. Several of these companies spotted opportunities to make  deals with Microsoft to pre-install Windows on there computers. This phenomenon didn't start with 3.1 though. Even in the late 80's, both Compaq and IBM often preinstalled Windows 386 for corporate customers that brought there 386 systems. Windows 3.0 was bundled with a lot of systems too. It was preinstalled on the IBM PS/1 budget PC's and various Tandy models. It came with the Amstrad MegaPC and various other PC's offered by ZDS (Zenith Data Systems) as well.  The number of OEM partners grew with the Windows 3.1 release. Some of them were familiar faces, like Compa...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated :Psion Model 3a Emulated On DOSBox Windows

Image
  Psion 3a and 3c Psion Series 3c Handheld Computer (Wikipedia) Psion 3a As mentioned in the previous articles, the emulators for the Psion 3 exist only on DOSBox. I decided to take the challenge of setting up a emulated configuration. What must one do. There is already a very good guide on the internet titled "PocketBook II emulation..." which is linked below in the article. Highly recommended. Setting up a emulated Psion 3 takes a little bit of effort, but it's possible and is a good exploration of setting up a DOSBox configuration. I'm making the safe assumption that the fast majority of those reading this are using Windows systems, but DOSBox has been ported to Mac OS X and Linux as well, so this guide might work on those systems.  The first thing I did was created a folder called dosbox_psion3 (Folder naming is based on personal preference). Make the following new folders within dosbox_psion3; psion3, a, b, and m. With the f...
Read more

Classic Systems Emulated: OS/2 Version 2.0 On PCEM

Image
  The Arrival Of 32-Bit Power For The Masses The past couple of these PC articles have been very Windows-centric. This isn't a surprise as Windows 3.0 was a major release that made a very massive impact on the marketplace. Windows 3.1 sold 3 million copies in 6 weeks. 1992 was a very different time. Back then, it was possible to request a PC without an operating system. If one did want an OS, they could choose between OS/2, DOS, or the DOS+Windows combination. I've had not forgotten OS/2 in these articles. The 286 versions of OS/2 had already been covered in my articles about the IBM PS/2 family of computers. The messy IBM-Microsoft "divorce" had been covered in detail as well. To quickly recap: Microsoft didn't like the direction that IBM wanted to take OS/2. Microsoft envisioned OS/2 as being the "next-generation" OS, while IBM simply saw the OS as a tool to sell more hardware. OS/2 did terrible in the marketplace. The ...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated - Windows Mobile 5.0

Image
Working title for this post was "But Mama, That's Where The Fun Is!". Appropriate as by the middle 2000's, Windows Mobile was where all the action was at. The sky was only getting brighter for Microsoft as Palm was slowly imploding on itself. With Microsoft's mobile offerings becoming more widespread by the day, the Redmond Giant followed up with the newest version of WM, version 5.0, on May 2005. On the surface, it appears that little changed. However, the biggest change were "under the hood" with the incorporation of the .NET Compact Framework, which is basically the mobile version of .NET. Also, WM 5.0 introduced newer power-saving capabilities which often improved the battery life of devices by as much as 50%. WM backed up everything to flash memory. WinMobile would use a combination of RAM and flash memory to preserve battery life. This wasn't noticeable by the user.  As such, their is no data loss if power is lost.  Windows Media Player was upd...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated : Pocket PC 2000/2002

Image
  Windows CE On The PDA Pocket PC 2002 starting up. For the remainder of the 90's, Microsoft had a tough time gaining a foothold in the handheld market. Windows CE 2.0 was well received on the palmtop PC's. However, that market-share was small compared to there PDA counterpart that were rocking to the tune of PalmOS. The first incarnation of WinCE on the PDA seemed sparse compared to Palm. At this point, the PDA port of Windows CE was re-branded as Windows Mobile. Around this point, Microsoft's fortunes began to change. For the first time, the Palm platform had that "Oh Crap!" moment when Compaq released the iPAQ in April 2000. The PDA came with the new Windows Pocket PC 2000 operating system. This version of Windows CE was specifically geared towards PDA's in particular. The iPAQ line of PDA's became must own devices for those that wanted the latest and greatest. As how Compaq made IBM look silly in the 80's and 90's...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated :Einstein emulating the Apple Newton (Part 3)

Image
  NewtonOS Android in Action! Einstein emulating the Newton Messagepad on a Amazon Fire HD7 tablet. Einstein Seriously, did you not expect me to run a OS designed for a classic handheld device on a modern tablet!? It's interesting running Einstein on a PC, but I want to try this platform out on a handheld that was similar in form-factor to the original device. Einstein had been ported to Android as well. It's not as recent as the current builds available for iOS, MacOS, and Ubuntu Linux, but it works well enough. Running the emulator means doing a few things before hand, like loading the Android package, ROM, and other needed files. The apk file that I downloaded was "einstein.05.01.2013.apk", which can be found at a archived version of the code.Google.com page (link posted below). You will also need a ROM file named "717006" that needs to be placed in the "/sdcard/Downloads/Einstein/" directory of your Androi...
Read more

Classic Games Emulated: Revisiting NFS High Stakes Modding

Image
  Modding On The Mind! As anyone who's read my NFS:HS article or watching my uploads on YouTube, one can tell that they're two things that I'm a fan of: NFS:HS and Virtualization. I like contained environments that allow me to run beloved games from the past on far more powerful configurations. It only seemed natural for me to embark on the journey of getting NFS:HS running under VMware Player. I had a original copy of the game on CD-ROM which was installed on my guest setup. The guest configuration had two cores allocated to it, 2GB's of RAM, and 3D acceleration via my Nvidia GTX 950. The guest OS running was Windows 7 32-bit. After installing HS, I copied the patch, and started to burn rubber. After that, I duplicated the game folder so I could have two installations: one stock and another one for mod. Within the NFS:HS folder, their are various directories. The "DATA/CARS" folder has both the racing and traffic cars. The first t...
Read more

OS/2 Warp 4

Image
(Any blogpost where I don't have to cover politics is a win in my books!) OS/2 Warp 4 was a very noble endeavor. It was IBM's statement to the world to demonstrate there commitment to the OS/2 operating system. However, when it arrived in 1996, OS/2 Warp 4 was dead on arrival. A lot had happened between the launch of Warp 3 and Warp 4, with the biggest of them being the arrival of Windows 95. Microsoft, making the most of their OEM connections, started to lock OS/2 out of the OEM markets prior to the launch of Windows 95. With threats of either not receiving the latest Windows or paying much higher license fees, many OEM's relented to Microsoft's pressure. Warp 3 struggled against Windows 3.1 along with the soon-to-be-tidal wave that would be Windows 95. Not only that, Microsoft had a vendetta against Big Blue for previous acts.  Lotus 123 For OS/2 Warp 4 Faced with accusations that Microsoft incorporated OS/2 source code into Windows 3.x which would have violated the j...
Read more