15 Years Later: Remembering Windows 95

[Nibiru2012]

From: Windows Steam Blog 8-24-2010 by Brandon LeBlanc

15 years ago today, Microsoft launched Windows 95. In 1995 I was 11 years old and in the 5th grade. At that time, I never thought that today I’d be working at Microsoft – let alone helping to tell the story of Windows. So this is a really fun and personal topic for me to recall my memories of Windows 95 – today has been a neat day.

Windows 95 was the first operating system that I ever beta tested. My dad, who worked for a technology company at the time, brought home an unbranded package of disks labeled “Chicago” from Microsoft (“Chicago” was the codename for Windows 95) a few months prior. When he brought these disks home, I desperately wanted to see “the new Windows”. My dad tried to explain to me what beta software was. I didn’t care – I wanted to see the new Windows! Eventually he caved in to my excitement and decided to install the “new” version of Windows on our family’s (translation: my dad’s) HP Vectra PC. Windows 95 introduced the Start Menu in Windows for the first time and presented a different way of using Windows over previous versions. I had grown used to Windows 3.11 at the time. I was literally stunned with excitement when I saw all the “new” Windows. My dad and I share a common interest in Windows and the PC and this was what I consider the biggest defining moment in a bond with my dad that would continue to grow as I also grew older and with each new Windows release. I also still remember seeing the Windows 95 “Start Me Up” commercials on TV and all the news segments about the people lining up to pick up their copy in stores!

Snap to (pun intended) Windows 7 today. Looking back at the launch of Windows 7 and actually being part of it myself, it is clear to me that much of the excitement seen back with Windows 95 is still alive today with Windows 7. I’ve said this numerous times before here: Windows 7 is the fastest selling version of Windows to date, and it’s also the fastest selling OS in history. And aside from people buying it, people seem to love it – our customer satisfaction is at an all-time high.

In combination with all the great PCs our OEM partners are coming out with, and of course the awesomeness that is Windows 7 – there has never been a better time to “be a PC”.

Source: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/...24/15-years-later-remembering-windows-95.aspx

 

[catilley1092]

A great real life story! When I bought my TechNet subscription, I assumed that I'd be getting those legacy OS's. But due to Sun's crying over whatever issues they had, Windows 95 through Windows 2000 was excluded from the available OS's for download. I did look on eBay for Windows 98, which offered USB support, but $50 to $100 was rather high for it.

It's a shame that Sun (now Oracle) has taken away many choices for us, but that's the way the business world works, and I have no choice but to accept it, which I have.

Cat

 

[Mychael]

Not my first ever PC but the my first ever build of a PC had Win95. Our work computer had been running '95 for a while so I learned about it there but I'd never seen or done an actual O/S installation before.
I remember how excited I was the first time I did a trial power up of the machine to see if I got lights or smoke. Then re-booting and watching the screen come alive with the Windows install.
I was tossed into problem solving straight away when I was getting "timing loop errors" on random boot ups. Turned out the Win'95 was not able to cope with the newest and fastest processor at the time and I had to install a software patch to make it stable. I kept '95 for yrs after that, till it just could not run the newer stuff anymore.

 

[TorrentG]

I was a computer kid playing around and learning to program in BASIC on Texas Instruments TI-99/4a and then the C64, in the early 80s. I was actually one of the first people to use the public internet ever, using a 300 baud modem connecting to Q-Link on the C64, which later became - you guessed it - AOL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A

http://www.qlinklives.org/

After that, I never owned a Windows PC until 98SE was released, but had used 95 in a corporate environment where I learned to hack the network and multiple other user accounts lol, using the knowledge and skill I'd gained.

It's been all fun for me since then.

 

[TrainableMan]

You poor lil yuts, I had DOS and Win 3.1 as my first PC OS at work ... before that we had mainframes and monochrome CRTs.

 

[Mychael]

Well I worked on mainframe computers in the 70's. HHD drives the size of dinner plates and punched cards and paper tape. No such thing as monitors just IBM "golf ball" typewriters for messages and command input.

 

[TrainableMan]

I only used punch cards my first year of college. After that I transferred and the new college had self-standing typewriters built like a desk which would print to the white/green bar tractor-feed paper. Never used those in an office environment though - there it was CRTs and then PCs running mainframe emulators and lotus 1-2-3, word, etc. I also remember at one work site they had a computer with dual 80mb 8" floppy drives as the OS but I don't recall much else about it, it was kept in another room and we only went in to reboot it when there were problems.

 

[Mychael]

The mainframes ran in Cobal and Fortran mainly (but I did not program) could read simple errors. We used to send data on paper tape up to Perth (we were in Melbourne). You used to load this tape reader then dial the number on a convential black bakelite phone, once you were talking to the person at the other end you'd then flick two switches on a grey box beside the phone, the swapped the phone line to data and started the tape reader.. Very slow and dropped out lots.

 

[Mychael]

The mainframes themselves only had about 256k of actual memory, they worked on first MFT (multi program fixed tasks) where you'd run whatever programs you partitioned the memory to, then when one program ended another would take it's place (if it fitted that memory partition) then later MVT (multi program variable taks) the system would roll in/roll out programs to work on them depending oh how we set their priorities. If a program was CPU idle past a time limit it would get rolled out and another would get the time (all in milli seconds of course). The trouble was a processor heavy program could grab and hold resourses to the detriment of everything else. Unscrupulous programmers would write it that way so their programs finished first. That was why we as operators had control of setting priority to a program if we saw it was a resource hog.
Of course everyone had their favourites if you were a female programmer and nice as well as cute you got preferential treatment, the uppity ones always seemed to get 'errors' in their program runs. Then there were the blokes who were one of the boys and did not look down on us operators and taught us stuff, we looked after them as well.

 

[TorrentG]

Cool stories...thanks for sharing guys!

 

[clifford_cooley]

I always enjoy reading stories about when people started using computers.

As long as the guy that refers to a starting with computers when touch screen monitors were called an abacus doesn't join in, I will be happy.

 

[Mychael]

The last system I ever worked on before I got out of the industry. Pretty much before remote terminals and mini's replaced everything. Used an operating system called MVS (multi tasking virtual storage). The best way to describe it is if you think of how a juggler can keep many balls in the air passing just a few through his hands constantly. If he ever had to try to hold them all at once he couldn't do it.
The system worked in the same way (the finer points lost on me now) but it was a bit like pageing file we are familier with now.

 

[Mychael]

The old stuff was fun (if inefficient by modern standards). There was an entire room of girls KPO'S (key punch operators) sitting at desks using typwriter keyboards which then punched the cards out. They'd work from program sheets much like conventional typists but the 'typing paper' was computer cards. We knew how to use the basic functions of a machine and could copy or repair a damaged card.

The huge reel magnetic tape was the mainstay of our data storage and we had hundreds of mag tapes on sliding shelves in a fireproof room.
The computers could not remember files in the way our PC's do so when you loaded a tape it had a BOT (begining of tape) marker and an EOT (end of tape marker). When we manually loaded the tape we had to make sure we saw a light flash to indicate the tape drive 'saw' the markers (reflective tape) otherwise it would keep on going till it ran off the end of the reel. Each tape had it's own unique file name/identifier past the BOT marker. The computer could read this and then read from or to that tape as it needed. When a program finished it would automatically re-wind all the tapes allocated to it. In one installation we had 10 tape drives and some programs might have 6 allocated to them, you'd know when a program finished as all the tapes would suddenly start re-winding.
There were only two I/O channels allocated to all hardware, that was printers, tape drives, card machines the lot. It was not uncommon to have larger programs that ran for hours or in some cases an entire shift.
If you got a tape that could not be read the program would try a certain number of times before it stopped and got an error message. We could tell it to try again and sometimes it got over the problem and sometimes not.
We sometimes could fluke it and remove the tape to another drive, taking the address card from one drive and swapping it with another so the system still thought it was useing the same drive.
One a week we did 'housekeeping' where everything was backed up.

 

[TrainableMan]

when touch screen monitors were called an abacus

I never used an abacus ... maybe an ASUS

 

[yodap]

I never used an abacus ... maybe an ASUS

I used to work for a small company called Abacus. Got us first in the yellow pages.