Comments on: A trip down memory lane?

A trip down memory lane?

Phire — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:12:40 -0800

Welcome (back) to Windows 3.1. "Michaelv.org is coded in JavaScript and strict XHTML 1.0, with AJAX functionality provided through PHP. It has been tested for compatibility in Firefox and IE. Firefox 2 or 3 is highly recommended, but the site is almost entirely functional in IE 6, 7, or 8. Media Player does not work in IE as IE lacks the ability to dynamically instantiate ."

By: askmehow

askmehow — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:17:48 -0800

Wow, that's really impressive. I think there's a bug in minesweeper though. some of the squares that were labelled '1' had 2 mines next to them.

By: The Lurkers Support Me in Email

The Lurkers Support Me in Email — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:23:02 -0800

The attention to detail is amazing. You know what really brought the nostalgia back? rivets.bmp, that's what. (Although I don't know if Win3.1 would have supported some of those high-resolution, true-color background wallpapers...)

By: zarq

zarq — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:23:39 -0800

A few easter eggs within: He's left some files for each program to read, (file -> open) and in the case of media player each "file" will open a Youtube video, such as this one: StarTrek.avi.

By: notnamed

notnamed — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:27:45 -0800

Some of the text files are just... strange. Very impressive for not using Flash or other plugin media though (except for the media player).

By: empath

empath — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:32:01 -0800

In ten years, you'll be playing Crysis in Javascript on your phone.

By: i less than three nsima

i less than three nsima — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:37:49 -0800

OMG! Angel dance! 3-2-1 Contact, anyone? Media Player -> Open: "angel.avi"

By: zarq

zarq — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:38:41 -0800

The rest of the vids: angle.avi: Angle Dance downpray.avi: Down in the River to Pray (This is the version used in O' Brother Where Art Thou. martha.avi: A photomontage set to Aqua's Barbie Girl featuring Martha Stewart and Richard Nixon. obriens.avi: O'Classic Sesame O'Street - O'Grover the Fast Food O'Waiter schools.avi: John Stossel's Stupid in America (20/20) takedown.avi: An America's Most Wanted clip, I think. voice.avi: Celtic Woman - The Voice - sung by Lisa Kelly There's a subfolder with clips from 20/20 on Ron Paul from 2007 as well.

By: JohnFredra

JohnFredra — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:49:08 -0800

3-2-1 Contact, anyone? Square One, dude! :) mathman mathman mathman

By: bpm140

bpm140 — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:57:47 -0800

I'm surprised with that level of detail that it doesn't serve content from archive.org if available.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:59:52 -0800

(Although I don't know if Win3.1 would have supported some of those high-resolution, true-color background wallpapers...) It would have been fine if you had the right video card and drivers. If you want to run windows 3.1 for real you should be able to on the open source virtual machine system Virtualbox. Here are some Instructions

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:08:07 -0800

Heh, heh, you can open Internet Explorer and visit the site again recursively.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:29:12 -0800

It would have been fine if you had the right video card and drivers. Heh, that reminds me of the days when a TI34020 was the shit.

By: Fupped Duck

Fupped Duck — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:40:26 -0800

runs faster than XP native

By: joedan

joedan — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:40:54 -0800

You know what really brought the nostalgia back? rivets.bmp, that's what. Damn, so true.

By: webmutant

webmutant — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:45:43 -0800

Thanks for this. I just fullscreened it on my friend's computer while he was out at the store.

By: neckro23

neckro23 — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:55:27 -0800

His Minesweeper implementation is buggy, since you can lose on the first try. I am such a nerd, both for knowing and for checking.

By: aubilenon

aubilenon — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:03:34 -0800

By: Jon_Evil

Jon_Evil — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:08:51 -0800

the palmtree.txt is a joke, but I don't get it. I think it has something to do with "dashing" and "strode" but i have no idea.

By: zixyer

zixyer — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:14:43 -0800

It's referring to the legend of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and then not lying about.

By: zarq

zarq — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:16:32 -0800

Thanks for this. I just fullscreened it on my friend's computer while he was out at the store. That's hilarious. :D

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:29:21 -0800

Hey, the Internet Browser won't let me download Netscape 1.1.

By: Mitrovarr

Mitrovarr — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:38:59 -0800

Heh. You know, the idea that people used to function with DOS doesn't really surprise me. You can get a lot done with a command line interface, if you know how. However, I still fail to understand how anyone ever functioned with Windows 3.1. Come to think of it, it's nothing short of astonishing that internet service providers of that day and age were able to sell a service that most people used through an analog modem, a kludged-together IP stack, and one of those old primitive browsers. The idea that people were able to figure out how to make all of that work, interoperate, and keep it working for minutes at a time is amazing. The idea that anyone, anywhere, managed to use something like that for actual work is nothing short of miraculous.

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:51:30 -0800

His minesweeper implementation also doesn't let you click right and left buttons simultaneously on a number space that already has all it's mines flagged to reveal all the adjacent unflagged spaces. So it's totally worthless. Aha! I knew it was missing something? How else could you get sub 60 second times on intermediate... I just couldn't remember the feature :)

By: Phire

Phire — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:00:41 -0800

Chuckles: "How else could you get sub 60 second times on intermediate... I just couldn't remember the feature :)" I've stumbled on that feature a few times before, but I don't really understand how it works or what it does. I do, however, know how to get sub 60 second times on intermediate - don't flag the mines. If you click around where the mines should be and keep a mental map of which spaces you've already examined and decided to avoid, you avoid the 40 clicks required to actually flag the mines, which shaves off a good 10-15 seconds off your time. Why yes, I spend too much time on my computer.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:33:48 -0800

Btw, did anyone else start out by opening a DOS prompt and trying DOS commands? 'DIR' was the only one that worked for me :)

By: Pinback

Pinback — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:00:50 -0800

How else could you get sub 60 second times on intermediate... You could also always edit the winmine.ini file, or use the "xyzzy" reveal tricks, or esc + left+right mouse buttons to freeze time. No, they don't work here. Yes, I did try ;-) (No Trumpet Winsock or similar? FAIL! The Win3.x line didn't get it's own TCP/IP stack until after Win3.11 was released…)

By: FumarMata

FumarMata — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:26:07 -0800

why do we need to revive this nightmare again?

By: bystander

bystander — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:26:27 -0800

I see I wasn't the only one who immediately dropped down to a DOS prompt.

By: aubilenon

aubilenon — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:32:37 -0800

bystander: It drove me insane how backspace navigated back from the DOS prompt.

By: litleozy

litleozy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:19:12 -0800

Open Internet Browser --> Internet Browser ---> http://www.michaelv.org/ ---> Open Internet Browser --> Internet Browser ---> http://www.michaelv.org/ ---> Open Internet Browser --> Internet Browser ---> http://www.michaelv.org/ ---> Open Internet Browser --> Internet Browser ---> http://www.michaelv.org/ ---> Open Internet Browser --> Internet Browser ---> http://www.michaelv.org/ ---> Open Internet Browser --> Internet Browser ---> http://www.michaelv.org/ help

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:35:56 -0800

There's a subfolder with clips from 20/20 on Ron Paul from 2007 as well. Very cool implementation but libertarian types just can't help themselves with the Ron Paul stuff can they?

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:47:35 -0800

run on the 8088

By: tapeguy

tapeguy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:38:01 -0800

The idea that people were able to figure out how to make all of that work, interoperate, and keep it working for minutes at a time is amazing. The idea that anyone, anywhere, managed to use something like that for actual work is nothing short of miraculous. Hopefully people will be saying this in 20 years' time about Windows 7 / Snow Leopard / your current OS of choice.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:45:36 -0800

Very cool implementation but libertarian types just can't help themselves ~~with the Ron Paul stuff~~ can they? FTFY

By: hangashore

hangashore — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:14:14 -0800

Unfortunately you can't change the colour scheme, because the first thing I wanted to see was Hot Dog Stand.

By: gwint

gwint — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:15:31 -0800

I listed a bunch of other Javascript emulations here.

By: not_that_epiphanius

not_that_epiphanius — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:27:55 -0800

don't flag the mines You can flag the mines? Now you tell me.

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:17:46 -0800

The idea that people were able to figure out how to make all of that work, interoperate, and keep it working for minutes at a time is amazing. The idea that anyone, anywhere, managed to use something like that for actual work is nothing short of miraculous. And then a recreation of it years later can still suck time out of my Monday morning...

By: Bezbozhnik

Bezbozhnik — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:39:45 -0800

don't flag the mines Unfortunately, this implementation doesn't let you win without flagging the mines, unlike real Windows 3.1.

By: Hardcore Poser

Hardcore Poser — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:46:03 -0800

The conclusion from the 'Girls Described Through Mathematics' link:

You can have no girls (be single) or one girl (married). The beauty of the equation is that it prevents illegal polygamy (GIRLS>1 will not work).

I love how math geeks try to cover all their bases, however hypothetical those bases may be.

By: Chinese Jet Pilot

Chinese Jet Pilot — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:23:21 -0800

What an exceptional and pointless project this is. It's my new destination for playing Minesweeper. I would like to add that I still run Windows 3.1 on a Packard Bell 486SX laptop for X-10 home automation. I have intended to replace it for years, but the thing won't die.

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:41:51 -0800

Ohmigod Win 3.x sucked so much. I had forgotten just how pointless and bizarre the whole "manager" paradigm was. And now, thinking back, mostly what I remember is how incredibly buggy, crash-prone and unreliable all the commercial desktop stuff was at the time. Mac OS 6 and Win 3.x were both labor-destroying, die-o-matic abominations. Good riddance.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:41:11 -0800

And now, thinking back, mostly what I remember is how incredibly buggy, crash-prone and unreliable all the commercial desktop stuff was at the time. Mac OS 6 and Win 3.x were both labor-destroying, die-o-matic abominations. Good riddance. Win 3.1 was contemporary with System 7, and the difference between them really was night and day. On a System 7 mac, you could produce a newspaper with very little difference from how you'd do it today: Quark XPress, Photoshop, Illustrator, Postscript, Adobe Type Manager, all these were already mature apps on the Mac at this point. On Windows ... well, you could play Solitaire or marvel at the mess Word for Windows was making of your Mac Word (already on version 5) documents. The only thing that sucked about the Mac then (and right up until OS X) was that one crashed app and the whole system was buggered. But the apps were pretty solid. I used Quark XPress 3 right up until 2008, on Mac OS 9. It wasn't by choice, but it wasn't anything like trying the same on Windows tech of the same vintage would have been. Aside from the lack of browser and speed of the hardware, it definitely got the job done.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:46:37 -0800

There's a second bug in the minesweeper game - windows minesweeper will never let you hit a mine on the first click. This one does. Also, implement Windows 1 - I wager it would actually be harder.

By: Mr. Bad Example

Mr. Bad Example — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:22:49 -0800

The only thing that sucked about the Mac then (and right up until OS X) was that one crashed app and the whole system was buggered. [nerdery]This happened for the same reason as in Windows 3.1--they both used what's called cooperative multitasking. It's sort of a "talking stick" kind of system--a given program takes control of the computer and runs for a little while, then voluntarily yields to the next program, which runs for another while, then it yields...and so on. Done fast enough, it gives the illusion that all your programs are running at once. The problem comes when one of those programs crashes. It keels over and dies without ever handing control of the computer over to the next program waiting in line, leaving everything else in the computer standing around in limbo. (The effect is something like a hacky sack group in which the person with the ball suddenly falls off a cliff.) More robust operating systems (Unix, Windows 95 and up, OS X, etc.) use pre-emptive multitasking, in which the computer itself doles out small amounts of running time to programs, and--depending on the program and system--will ignore, suspend, or outright kill any misbehaving programs without letting them affect the rest of the system. [/nerdery] And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pound myself in the head with a hammer until I stop channeling the IT guy I used to be...

By: mjg123

mjg123 — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:42:42 -0800

(The effect is something like a hacky sack group in which the person with the ball suddenly falls off a cliff.) posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:22 AM on January 25 [+] [!] You are deliberatly aiming at the eponysterical, aren't you?

By: jamaro

jamaro — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:57:20 -0800

But the apps were pretty solid. I used Quark XPress 3 right up until 2008, on Mac OS 9. I still do this. When I switched my production machines to OS X, I decided I was no longer going to support Quark files. However, I have one client, a small book publisher, whose entire catalog is .qxd. Although I offered to convert & tweak all of her files at no charge, she begged me to continue doing her jobs in Quark because her printer, some random tiny shop in China or Bolivia or whereever, only accepts .qxd files and yadda yadda whatever cakes. Buying Quark for OSX would have cost me something like $1K for a new seat and I wasn't about to do that considering how little Quark had done to actually improve their product from ~1997 so the far cheaper alternative was to keep one mac, a G3, frozen in time with OS9, Quark 3.1 and a beige Wacom tablet. It's under my desk right now. I fire it up every few months, crank out a few books and turn it back off. Works surprisingly well.

By: Night_owl

Night_owl — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:59:12 -0800

Wow. Childhood returns. Now if I can just find those old 5 1/4 inch floppies, I can play all those old games again!

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:21:06 -0800

format c: doesn't work