>> Well, I suppose you could rephase it that way. Either way, Windows 3.11 
>> was no "operating system". It was an MS-DOS application program.
> 
>   Being launched by another system doesn't make an OS less of an OS.
> (If that was the case then Windows XP, Linux nor basically anything
> is an OS because they all are launched by the BIOS.)
> 
>   Not that Windows 3 was a true OS by any serious definition of the meaning.

The point is that Windows 3.11 was really just a *program* that reads 
mouse input and makes a graphical display. It basically does almost 
nothing else. I could, hypothetically, sit down and throw something 
together in TurboPascal that does the same thing.

>> [I recall it used to be a Big Deal whether "extended memory" got enabled 
>> or not. I knew a guy who even had a whole book devoted to "taking your 
>> PC beyong 640KB". I don't know what the difference between "conventional 
>> memory" and "extended memory" is or was, but this "problem" seems to 
>> have entirely gone away now...]
> 
>   We are talking about 16-bit vs 32-bit Intel systems here. The 16-bit
> Intel processors couldn't handle over 1MB of memory. (Well, the 286 had
> some paging support built into it, but I don't know if any computer ever
> used it.)
> 
>   Even today 32-bit Intel processors support running in 16-bit mode, with
> all the same limitations. Back in the days of the 386 and 484 this
> presented a problem: The processor would have supported a 32-bit mode,
> but all the existing OSes and programs were 16-bit. How to get access to
> the extra memory you could install in a 386, beyond that 1MB?
> 
>   The solution was ugly, awkward and in the past now, as all modern OSes
> support fully 32-bit mode (and the best ones even 64-bit mode).

I see... So all that HIMEM.SYS crap was just a hack to convince outdated 
software to use new hardware capabilities? No wonder it never worked well...

>>>   But Windows 3 does support multitasking. Granted, it's not pre-emptive,
>>> but it's still multitasking.
> 
>> AFAIK, it supports running several applications at once. Only one of 
>> them can actually "do" anything at a time
> 
>   How exactly is that different from a regular pre-emptive multitaskin OS
> running in a single processor?

In a real multitasking OS, several programs can "do stuff" at once. 
[Obviously the hardware is being time-sliced, but that's not visible to 
the end user.]

>   It was perfectly possible to run several programs at the same time in
> Windows 3 and have them run simultaneously. Even the Windows version of
> POV-Ray was originally made for Windows 3, and it didn't lock the computer
> during renders.

Really? That's news to me. I was told that only the program that owns 
the active window can actually use the CPU.

[Clearly the "experts" I paid a lot of money to be taught by got their 
facts wrong - I must admit I haven't personally verified this 
scientifically. When a teacher tells you something works a certain way, 
you usually believe them.]

>> Well, a PC that has Windows 95 also has MS-DOS, and you can freely 
>> switch between the two...
> 
>   Well, my PC has Linux and Windows XP, and I can freely switch between
> the two. That doesn't mean one is running on top of the other.

1. You have to reboot the machine to do that.

2. It is possible to use XP without Linux. It is possible to use Linux 
without XP. It is not possible to use Windows 3.11 without MS-DOS.

>> ...whereas a PC running Windows NT4 does not, usually, have MS-DOS at 
>> all. Many people asked "where's the 'exit to DOS' button gone?" The 
>> answer being "MS-DOS is a completely several OS and you would have to 
>> reboot to exit WinNT to get to it".
> 
>   I'm not really getting your point. If I installed linux on a PC
> I wouldn't have had any "exit to DOS" button either. So what?

Windows 3.11 *requires* MS-DOS in order to function. Windows NT does 
not. (And obviously neither does Linux.)

>> Does Win9x run in protected mode? [This isn't rhetorical - I can't 
>> actually remember.]
> 
>   Yes. (Sure, it didn't use all the "protection" offered by the CPU as
> efficiently as it could.)

I wasn't sure whether it was still real-mode or not. Certainly the NT 
kernel seems a lot more stable. ;-)

>> Certainly WinNT introduced security. Win9x can be made to show a login 
>> prompt, but you can just cancel it if you don't feel like logging in. 
>> You then have unlimited access to every file on the local machine.
> 
>   Win9x was never even designed to be a multiuser OS. It's not all that
> strange, really.

Well quite.

Back when Win9x first appeared, "networks" were still these new-fangled 
things that not many people had. So why would you bother putting 
security into a system that you need physical access to anyway? [The 
Amiga also lacks any semblence of security - for the same reason.]

>> Certainly on the Amiga scene, "installing" a program usually meant 
>> putting the floppy into the drive and clicking an icon.
> 
>   Since you so much fancy that, I find it really strange that you are
> so prejudiced against the Apple Macintosh. It's exactly like that, but
> on steroids.
> 
>   You constantly complain about current Windows/Linux systems for their
> complexity and write utopistic memories about your beloved AmigaOS, but
> when someone mentions the modern equivalent of the Amiga/AmigaOS, namely
> the Apple Macintosh, you immediately start complaining about those exact
> same things which were so great in the Amiga. (Closed hardware, OS tied
> to hardware, niche market, whatnot. Just change "Mac" with "Amiga" and
> the complaints are still exactly as "valid".)

I don't recall ever complaining about the hardware being closed, or the 
OS being tied to it. [Though obviously it *is* a bit of a pitty that 
Macs come in a fixed set of configurations and cannot be changed.] 
Certainly a Mac is something I'd like to try one day. However, there are 
problems. The most obvious ones:

1. A Mac is a very expensive piece of hardware [assuming you can find 
somebody who sells them].

2. I would have to throw away all my existing software.

3. I would have to buy replacements for all [or at least some] of the 
stuff I just threw away.

4. Some software can only be found on Windoze.

Apple are quick to claim that it's "easy" to get a Mac to talk to other 
Windows PCs. But given that I have two Windows PCs and they don't want 
to talk to each other, what are the chances of them talking to a 
complete alien? ;-)

If I was going to go down this road, I'd need to know for sure that I'd 
actually be able to do something *useful* with a Mac. I played this game 
with Linux; I had both Windoze and Linux installed, but since 98% of the 
software I want to use is on Windoze, I just never actually rebooted to 
get to Linux. Eventually I got tired of Linux being catestrophically 
broken every time any item of hardware changed, so I just removed it 
completely.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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