Windows Computing In The Late 90's (Part 1)

That Dead Zone Called The Late 90's

For many computer historians, the late 90's seems like a dead zone where nothing much happens. On one hand, their were some very major events that played out, like the rise of 3D accelerated gaming, the Internet, and multimedia in the form of online content and the MP3. But, when it comes to general, everyday computing, the late 90's is seen as a dull era (along with portions of the 2000's and 2010's). Compared to the rise of the IBM Compatibles, the 386 and then other alternative 32-bit architectures and various operating systems, it doesn't seem as much happened during that time, outside of gaming and the Internet anyway. 

Why is the late 90's in computing viewed in that manner? With the transition from DOS and Windows that occurred in the early 90's, standards weren't fully established yet. The software ecosystem was like the Wild West. Their was such a rich ecosystem of various programs. Multimedia programs where everywhere. In fact, their were various office suites. Their was Microsoft Office, along with Lotus SmartSuite and Borland's Office, which was later absorbed into Corel and rebranded as Corel Office. Their were various image editors and viewers. Their were different web-browsers. Their was a rich selection of productivity software. 

Within a year of the release of Windows 95, the software ecosystem felt much less diversified. Most graphics designers settled on Adobe Photoshop. Most office workers settled on Microsoft Office. Most of these users were using Outlook for email communication as well. While Corel Office and Lotus Smartsuite were still around, they received the fraction of the attention of that of MS Office. 

Their wasn't much to say about Microsoft Office. Office 95 was released, followed by Office 97. While the user interface now confirmed to the Win9x aesthetic and gone 32-bit, their wasn't much to say about Office other than that repugnant "Clippy" that is now confined in digital purgatory where he belongs. I don't why tech enthusiast back in the day viewed "Clippy" as a positive development. That paperclip was an annoying nuisance that got in the way of your work without offering anything of value. 

Their wasn't that much to say about Windows 98 either. Released in June 1998, Windows 98 was basically Windows 95 with extra crap. Many of the "features" that were a touted for Win98 were released with Windows 95 as part of the OSR 2.5 service release. This included USB support, FAT32 support that allowed partitions up to 32GB (remember when PC users thought that you could never fill up that much space!), and integration with Internet Explorer (why in the Hell would people welcome this for exactly!?). In fact, the beta builds of Windows 98 was essentially Windows 95 with well.....extra crap. Hardly anything to get excited about. On May 1999, Windows 98 Second Edition was released, which was basically Windows 98 First Edition with well.....even more extra crap. Well, there's more too it than that. There are things about SE that actually are of merit. There were more drivers, an improved WDM (Windows Driver Manager) system, along with improved USB support. However, if your like me, and you built dozens of various virtual machine configurations, you can't tell apart FE or SE apart. It's practically the same thing. As one can tell, their is growing contempt from yours truly about how I view the late 90's when it comes to computing.

The Windows Explorer Blues

A reason for this contempt is that when you go through middle and high-school using computers that took awhile to boot only to be loaded into dull-looking desktops that were configured using WinClass, one realizes how much conformity sucks. Coming home from school after using Windows 98 only to go to your home PC running Windows 98 to do some assignments only reminded you of your work. Truly depressing.

During the days of Windows 3.1, many OEM's loaded alternative desktop shells to differentiate their computers from each other. However, the Windows 95 agreement stipulated that OEM's couldn't replace the shell. Thus Windows desktops everywhere looked much more uniform. This look just wasn't restricted to Windows 95 either. Windows NT 4, released a year later in 1996, adopted Windows Explorer as well. 

Now, having a uniformed look was vital for Windows to gain mass acceptance. I applaud Microsoft for taking this idea for the forefront (at least on the PC anyway. Mac users have already enjoyed a unified look since 1984. Yet it always bugs me when people credit Microsoft for something of Apple's doing). Windows 95 was a breath of fresh air compared to 3.1. It was also light-weight and unimposing. However, the general feel of Windows 98 distorted that look with all of its IE "integration" with absurdly big buttons and boring desktop icons and colors. (Again, I wonder if people were on drugs when they talk about IE's integration into Windows as a positive things). Windows Explorer lost its appeal with Windows 98. 

While there is general displeasure over Windows ME, the general-look/color scheme/icon choices of ME was an vast improvement over 98 (it was the same theme in Windows 2000, which I personally regard as one of the greatest version of Windows ever released), and could be reincorporated into 98 as well since the color themes/themes were largely interchangeable between Windows, especially with the Plus! pack installed. It was just "business as usual" with the default look with Windows 98. MacOS also had a unified desktop, but was also much more visually appealing look to it.  "Why could it be like a Mac?" chants in the heads of those looking at the slight revamped, but yet, boring Windows 98 Explorer desktop. 

However, it has to be noted that Microsoft was actually in a very good spot at this time compared to Apple. How people perceive Apple today was how many viewed Microsoft back around 1996/1997. Microsoft was seen as the cool kids on the block (Before starting there unholy war on Netscape). 

In retrospect, many had a largely negative view of Apple around that same time. This was right before Steve Jobs's comeback. Apple was seen as this tech company that made extremely overpriced crap for rich brats. Now granted, Apple products still carry a premium now, but they are far more accessible now than they were during the 90's. There products, while technically competent and could hold its own against the PC's of the time (especially the PowerPC-based systems), Apple products generally lacked appeal (except for those slick-looking Powerbooks from the mid-90's. That was the only time Apple made a notebook as appealing and elegant as an IBM Thinkpad). 

The company had been horribly mismanaged with Apple nearly imploded on itself in 1996. After coming back, Jobs knew that in order to put his vision into action, he needed money that Apple didn't have. Thus, Jobs sought a $150 million bail-out from Microsoft. While Apple was rapidly recovering, the company was still largely rebuilding itself thru the remainder of the 90's. 

The late 90's was the only time in history that Microsoft had better offerings compared to Apple.  As much as I have crapped on Windows 98, it had preemptive multitasking, memory management and protection features, along with multithreading; MacOS 8.0/8.1 had none of those features. Mac OS X was still many years away. Windows NT had all of that plus a lot more that made it very attractive in a server environment or on a ultra high-end workstation. Network administrators would shudder at the idea of MacOS 8.1 being used as a server platform in an room populated by workstations running Windows NT, Sun Solaris, DEC Ultrix, SCO UNIXware, and this up-and-coming powerhouse of an OS called Linux.  

Windows Explorer is often seen as simultaneously both the best and worst thing to ever happen to Microsoft. For the first time, Microsoft rereleased a desktop shell that was just as intuitive as the Macintosh Finder. Not only that, but combined with the improved stability of Windows 95, Windows machines now tended to be just as acclaimed as their Macintosh equivalents. Explorer was successful. In fact, it was too successful. Windows Explorer was so intuitive that it would doom future efforts to try to revamp the interface. This was witnessed first with Vista and then Windows 8 with that "Metro/Modern" crap.

It seems that Win98 was the first release of Windows that people simply "tolerated". It didn't have the glowing feel to it like Win95 did. Gamers didn't love Windows either. They loved the games that ran ON Windows, but not the system itself. Windows was simply the middleman that allowed gamers to play there games. Students and office workers only tolerated Windows as well. 

It didn't help that with the standardization around the Microsoft products, one started to see the rise of the Microsoft "monoculture". This was where the vast majority of PC users generally used the same operating system, same office suite, same email client, and in time, the same web-browser. Many, applauded the monoculture as it would make computers easier to use because all the applications looked the same. While I agree that having similar looking programs do make the computer easier to use, was it in the consumer's best interest to have the makers of the OS dominate the application market and web-browser market-share as well, thus "forcing" conformity on there own terms? Should one company have THAT much control? I'm against monopolies, regardless of whether they are sanctioned by the government (AT&T pre-1982) or by the marketplace (Microsoft). Eventually, the idea of the Microsoft monoculture being a good thing was discredited when the worst case scenario in PC security started to unfold in the early 2000's. However, that is a story for a different time.

Gaming

In fact, the rise of 3D acceleration in the home setting is the most exciting and worthwhile event that came during this relatively quite period. With 3D acceleration came games like Quake III, Unreal Tournament, and Half-Life. 

Not only that but their were true benefits of running Win98 as well, especially on the latest computers running the Pentium II processors and equipped with the newest 3D accelerators like the 3DFX Voodoo. The days of WinG were gone. DirectX has supplemented it as the graphics subsystem of Windows. Early versions of DirectX were not that well received. It didn't matter how good a graphics subsystem or its programming API was as long as they were always going to be held back by the hardware that they ran on.  

The reason that DOS games persisted thru Windows 95 was that the graphical overhead of the GUI choked resources that could have been used for games. However, once computers with more powerful processors and more RAM became common, that overhead wasn't a problem anymore. This was also around the time that the first 3D accelerators came along. In time, the 3DFX with it's Glide programming API, which was a subset of the OpenGL graphics language, would become the choice for game developers to exploit. 

While their were DOS games that used the 3DFX Voodoo, the support would be much greater by the time of Windows 98 release. A strong argument could be made that the best games ever released on the PC were from this time. Following up with Quake 1 and 2, id Software released Quake 3 which would redefine multiplayer experience. Unreal Tournament showed that one could have quick-action, addictive deathmatches that could last hours on-end. I was playing Halo a year before it was released, and it was called Unreal Tournament Game-Of-The-Year Edition 99. Half-Life demonstrated that an FPS could have an captivating  story. The idea of an FPS just being a mindless shooter was gone as one would play one of the most epic gaming characters ever: Gordon Freeman! 

Even the non-FPS's of this time were very memorable. Driver brought awesome 70's car chases to your desktop while Carmageddon II would further paint the roads red with people's blood. If one wants to experience arcade-style racing with the joys of the 3DFX, one couldn't go wrong with either NFS Hot Pursuit or Test Drive 5. NASCAR Legends is a must for those who want to relive the glory days of NASCAR. Jane's USAF Simulator would bring real-world military flight simulation to those who wanted more than what Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator could have provided. SWAT2 was a must for those who wanted a police tactical simulator. The awesome games was neverending. 

One thing to note is that even though DirectX supported the 3DFX Voodoo, it did so using its own API and not Glide. For modern PC emulators that provide 3DFX support, they usually do this by passing the Glide calls to there modern OpenGL/DirectX equivalents. As such, older DirectX will not be able to utilize Glide, even if that game ran on the 3DFX Voodoo back in the day. 

While DirectX and Glide did the same thing (providing access to the GPU via a API), the way they approached the same hardware was different from each other, thus leading to compatibility issues with later GPU's and API updates down the road.

In retrospect, Windows 98 was an important release. Whenever I boot into a Windows 98 VM, a do get a nostalgic buzz. The games are the best memories behind Windows 98. So many hours of Half-Life and Unreal have been spent on the family PC, a desktop computer with a AMD-K6 processor running at 400MHz, Cirrus Logic SVGA adapter, 3DFX Voodoo 2 accelerator, 64MB's of RAM, and running Windows 98SE. This is what I think when it comes to Windows 98. That is the machine that I would eventually want to recreate in VM form. I applaud the modders who have been able to keep it running on new hardware configurations. That is true dedication.  I've learned that Rudolph Loew, a developer who made many patches for running Windows 9x on newer hardware, passed away a few years ago. I look at the work that he done and think "Holy Crap, was there anything that he CAN'T do!". Go to the R. Loew Electronics Consulting website to see the patches he made to get Windows 98 working with newer hardware.

Windows 98 wasn't that bad. It was just another standard release in the Window 9x line, that all. They were largely the same in varying ways. The fact was that despite my general disdain, Windows 98 was still a important part of my own story with computers anyway. It needs to be remembered. If I truly thought that Windows 98 wasn't worth it, than I wouldn't have built several worthwhile VM configurations around it! 

Windows 95 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95

Windows 98 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98

FAT32 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32

Internet Explorer 4 (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_4

Internet Explorer is EVIL! (Toastytech) : http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html

Internet Explorer is Evil: The story (Toastytech) : http://toastytech.com/evil/ieisevilstory.html

Office Assistant (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant

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

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

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

Dege's stuffs (dgVoodoo) : http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/ReadmeGlide/

Zeus Software (nGlide) : https://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

Rudolph Loew (Obituary) : https://kraussfuneralhome.com/tribute/details/858/Rudolph-Loew/obituary.html

R. Loew Electronics Consulting : https://rloewelectronics.com/

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

My Thoughts Close Of The Election : Religion and Politics

Image
  One of the most toxic things that anyone can do is mix religion and politics together. Why Do People Mix Politics And Religion Together? Even on a good day, politics is a very divisive topics. In theory, a political discussion shouldn't be charged. However, when people feel that there preferred party can do no wrong and assumes a us-vs.-them mentality, then a rational discussion flies out the window. You can only imagine how things get during an election year.  However, one of the most toxic things that anyone can do is mix religion and politics together. When this occurs, the object of worship changes. Instead of God, people start to worship politics, and thus, there preferred leaders become there new gods. The level of devotion is still there, but the direction changes. Political ideology is passed off as quote "Biblical teaching". This party becomes quote “evil” while this other party becomes quote “the party of God”. Things become black-and-wh
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: 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 : 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

Some More Thoughts Of Greg Abbott

Image
Sometimes, one wonders whether being a Texan is more of a curse than a blessing. This is the impression one gets when living in a state run by Greg Abbott. Yes, it's going to be another one of those articles. However, I did take extra effort to try to tone down my sentiment. Anywho, it's often said that a person's true colors shows when their is deep adversity. A person will even swim or sink depending on a situation. As such, I really didn't have an opinion of Abbott pre-virus. Sure, he said a few stupid and obnoxious things before the outbreak. However, all politicians do that, so that's not anything out of the ordinary. The only thing I knew about him was that he was the governor and that was about it. After witnessing his responses to both the outbreak and the 2021 freeze, I have an opinion on him now, and its not very positive at all. Calling him an monster would be an understatement. A part of me questions whether he was the worst governor our st
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 start
Read more

2021: American Insurrection

Image
  Havoc Ensures Another year, another article. I can't really say that I'm looking forward to a new year though. Their are already a lot of troubled observations on the horizon. Many are already lighting their torches and sharpening their pitchforks. Have their already been enough drama already? At the very least, Idiocracy is trending on Google right now. I need to check that movie out. Anyone who is familiar to my blog (if you read the articles, thank you! You're epic!) knows that I'm not a fan of Biden. If I thought that he was awesome, then I wouldn't have posted articles like the following: Thought About The 2020 Election: Post-Election Blues (17 Nov, 2020) Thoughts About The 2020 Election: So Far (14 Mar, 2020) Thought About The 2020 Election: Super Tuesday (11 Mar, 2020) Thoughts About The 2020 Election: Reflections Of 2008 and 2012 (23 Mar, 2020) (which are all linked below for your viewing pleasure. I need to do some more self-promotion
Read more

WeatherStar 4000 Simulator For Windows (Part 2)

Image
  It's time to get the weather forecast, 90's style. Welcome to part two of the article examining the customization of the WeatherStar 4000 Simulator for Windows. This article is a in-depth coverage of the WeatherStar simulator offered by Taiganet. As mentioned in the previous article, the simulator can be customized in various ways. This part will cover the flavors built-into the simulator and segment customization within those flavors. The configuration of custom graphics will be covered as well. So lets dive right in! The initial program Under the Flavors sections, there are various flavor to choose one, sorted by year. A flavor is a particular presentation format that would have conformed to how the Weather Channel would have broadcast there weather segments for a particular time. For example, the "D(1991)" flavor would show the segments that the Weather Channel would have shown for 1991. These particular segments can
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