If you could pick any EOL operating system to revive, what would it be?

[Ampera]

Remember how Win95 was distributed on those 1.76MB (or whatever it was) floppies?

Tim

It was 1.44Mb ...

Some versions of Windows (and OS/2 ad PC-DOS) did use "1.44MB" diskettes formatted to hold 1.68MB and 1.86MB respectively. The Windows version was called DMF and the IBM version XDF. There are Wikipedia pages for both formats.

Yep, DMF used 21 sectors per track. It made copying those disks a little more difficult because the data couldn't fit on a regular 1.44MB formatted floppy disk.

 

[eugenenine]

The ones on the right are backup copies?  MS never used any brand name disks.

[Halcyon]

The ones on the right are backup copies?  MS never used any brand name disks.

Not sure. Image is from Google.

[Ampera]

The ones on the right are backup copies?  MS never used any brand name disks.

Not sure. Image is from Google.

I more want the synthesizer. Would go perfectly to replace my current soundfont setup which is very slow.

[rrinker]

 Yes, you could get Win95 on floppy, but it DID come on CD. I was a Win95 beta tester, until a few years ago I still had the various builds that got sent out. What made them interesting is they used different writable CDs for each one - the data layer reflected different colors. So on the beta forums we would talk about an issue with the yellow CD, or the blue CD. Then there was one, when we opened up the package to take the CD out, it had the distinct aroma of celery. And it wasn't just us, others commented on the same thing. I now kind of wish I had kept them, although what to do with them all would be the next question. I know some beta testers used the old beta build CDs to make CD clocks.

 Win95 on floppy was STILL less disks the Novell Netware 3.15 on floppy! Anyone remember that? I think it was up to about 40 floppies. And building a server only to have it fail to read on disk 38 was everyone's worst nightmare.

[Red Squirrel]

Floppies give me an odd nostalgic feeling.  I kept using them for longer than I probably should have.  Everyone in college had USB sticks and I still had floppies.    it's crazy how far we've come in storage tech though.  You could fit several TB in something the size of a floppy now. 

[eugenenine]

Our local college forced people ti use zip drives.  We at the computer store would then get all the complaints about the lost work.  Just when you thought something couldn't be more unreliable than a floppy zip disks came along and proved you wrong.

[Ampera]

Our local college forced people ti use zip drives.  We at the computer store would then get all the complaints about the lost work.  Just when you thought something couldn't be more unreliable than a floppy zip disks came along and proved you wrong.

I hate when schools force you to use something. Happy mine doesn't but they push and sell the ti-83 like it's the best thing ever, while HP has cheaper and better calculators.

[T3sl4co1l]

Then there was one, when we opened up the package to take the CD out, it had the distinct aroma of celery. And it wasn't just us, others commented on the same thing.

Fascinating!  Probably something like apiole,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apiole
but what they were using that for, in a CD-R, who knows!  (Solvent?  Byproduct of the resin or media?  Ran out of colors so they resorted to smells?!)

Tim

[Cerebus]

Ran out of colors so they resorted to smells?!)

"John, I've just got the new Windows 98me CD through from Microsoft's PR people.  It smells ... it smells of ... Oh GOD, hand me the waste basket. I think I'm going to..."

[Red Squirrel]

Our local college forced people ti use zip drives.  We at the computer store would then get all the complaints about the lost work.  Just when you thought something couldn't be more unreliable than a floppy zip disks came along and proved you wrong.

I hate when schools force you to use something. Happy mine doesn't but they push and sell the ti-83 like it's the best thing ever, while HP has cheaper and better calculators.

Hahaha I remember those, I thought they were a really cool concept and wanted to look into them for backups, but then I heard about the horrible failure rate, then they kind of just vanished.  USB sticks and portable hard drive/enclosures were starting to surface around that time too if I recall.   I remember buying an enclosure for a 60GB drive, I felt so cool knowing I could carry 60GB of data with me! Now they make USB sticks that are bigger than that.

[AlxDroidDev]

XP SP3 : Possibly the best Windows version ever, but 7 is great too. W2K was a game changer, so it also deserves a spot on my list. Everything else from MS is/was crap.

For sentimental reasons, I also vote for CP/M.

[Ampera]

XP SP3 : Possibly the best Windows version ever, but 7 is great too. W2K was a game changer, so it also deserves a spot on my list. Everything else from MS is/was crap.

For sentimental reasons, I also vote for CP/M.

I actually have a CP/M system laying around... Sorta...

It's the Commodore 128, with full VIC-II compatibility (NTSC only), and CGA (RGBi colour space) compatible graphics with a Z80, Bootable CP/M from disk, and I think full compatibility with CP/M programs of the time. Although I am not sure, I currently have it on my nightstand.

[eugenenine]

Our local college forced people ti use zip drives.  We at the computer store would then get all the complaints about the lost work.  Just when you thought something couldn't be more unreliable than a floppy zip disks came along and proved you wrong.

I hate when schools force you to use something. Happy mine doesn't but they push and sell the ti-83 like it's the best thing ever, while HP has cheaper and better calculators.

Daughters school forces use of chromebooks.  They don't care that you can juts run chrome on any laptop and do they same thing, we had to buy her a chromebook.

When my wife started college they did that IBM thinkpad program.  You 'rented' an IBM thinkpad for $600 a semester for four years and could then buy it for an additional $600 at the end.  They didn't even have wireless, students had to carry around a cat 5 cable (wife didn't even know what a network cable was because we've had wireless ever since Cicso bought Aeronet).  That overprices laptop sat in its bag on the couch and never moved as she used the laptop she already had for everything.

At least they are not forcing ipads on us.  My son kept coming home wanting to us to buy an ipad because his teacher was showing us all the great things it did.  I kept having to show him the prices " here look, do you want us to buy one ipad for the whole family to take turns with or would you rather each of the four of us have our own tablet for the same price".

[eugenenine]

XP SP3 : Possibly the best Windows version ever, but 7 is great too. W2K was a game changer, so it also deserves a spot on my list. Everything else from MS is/was crap.

For sentimental reasons, I also vote for CP/M.

XP?  Its was the downhill slide after 2000, 2000 was the best.  2000 IE was not integrated yet, XP was where it became the huge security/stability issue.   Imagine XP without having to reboot every day, Imagine if XP was able to use available ram instead of sawpping, imagine if XP didn't need all kinds of malware protection.  That was windows 2000.

[eugenenine]

Our local college forced people ti use zip drives.  We at the computer store would then get all the complaints about the lost work.  Just when you thought something couldn't be more unreliable than a floppy zip disks came along and proved you wrong.

I hate when schools force you to use something. Happy mine doesn't but they push and sell the ti-83 like it's the best thing ever, while HP has cheaper and better calculators.

They didn't just vanish here though, OSU kept pushing them for years.  We would have students , RA's, professors, mothers, etc all come in complaining about their lost work wanting us to recover it, etc because we sold the faulty drive.  It wasn't our fault , we only sold the products because they came in asking for it in the first place.  if it was my choice I would never have ordered them in in the first place but they didn't want to loose the whole pc sale over not special ordering the iomega stuff.

Hahaha I remember those, I thought they were a really cool concept and wanted to look into them for backups, but then I heard about the horrible failure rate, then they kind of just vanished.  USB sticks and portable hard drive/enclosures were starting to surface around that time too if I recall.   I remember buying an enclosure for a 60GB drive, I felt so cool knowing I could carry 60GB of data with me! Now they make USB sticks that are bigger than that.

I remember the HP/Ti wars too.  My college wasn't picky though so I has a 48SX

[alank2]

My gripe about MS is that they constantly change things that don't need to be changed.  Ever try to find the version in Office these days?  hint - the old reliable help about will not cut it.  It seems they change things just to be trendy and stuff you knew you have to constantly relearn to stay on the MS trendy bandwagon.  Add to that that they keep adding and adding and adding more complication and unnecessary features and code and libraries to do this and to do that and it is no wonder their OS's are extremely unwieldy, bloated, and insecure.  Security is another thing that irritates me to no end.  There is no reason that things have to be designed to be insecure with ports open for no good reason.  Open the ports that need to be opened, for those bullet proof them.  How many mechanisms does MS have for filesharing?  It feels like 15!

My answer, bring back DOS.  I loved programming DOS.  No crazy API that works differently in different versions of windows, no controls, no message loops.

[T3sl4co1l]

My answer, bring back DOS.  I loved programming DOS.  No crazy API that works differently in different versions of windows, no controls, no message loops.

As long as 640k is enough for you. Else there's EMS, XMS, HIMEM, EMM386, DOS4/GW, CWSDPMI, ... take your pick.  And that's not even with multitasking yet!

Tim

[smithnerd]

Can't promise stability yet, but an XP SP2 / 2003 revival is under way:

https://www.reactos.org/

Try a recent daily build in a VM - the ISO is <70MB. It is still raw, but getting towards being genuinely useful.

[Ampera]

Can't promise stability yet, but an XP SP2 / 2003 revival is under way:

https://www.reactos.org/

Try a recent daily build in a VM - the ISO is <70MB. It is still raw, but getting towards being genuinely useful.

I would never use XP as an Operating system day to day. Ever.

It was a painful operating system that broke if you just tried to use it. Don't forget if you ever had to reinstall it, you would be spending your ENTIRE weekend installing updates.

But I have seen ReactOS, and I have to say it has the right idea, it's just not ready yet.

[eugenenine]

I just can't believe all these young kids that never used anything prior to XP and think its decent.   

I guess I should give XP a little credit, if it wasn't for it I might not have switched to Linux.

[Ampera]

I just can't believe all these young kids that never used anything prior to XP and think its decent.   

I guess I should give XP a little credit, if it wasn't for it I might not have switched to Linux.

There's almost a sick burn in that one.

[Ian.M]

XP isn't so bad.  I've used most MS OSes except the server only stuff since DOS 2.11, including all DOS based versions of Windows from 2.0 upwards to ME, and NT family OSes from NT3.5 onwards.   Sure, 2000 is nice and more stable than XP, but if it doesn't have drivers for the peripherals and cards you need all you can do is run it in a VM.

With the XP based Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 still in extended support, reviving XP is still feasible - the sources haven't been lost and there isn't a major backlog of security holes that need patching - all it needs is for a big enough MS customer to throw enough money at the problem. e.g. if the US DOD wanted a cleaned up and secure version of XP badly enough, it could still happen.

[Red Squirrel]

My gripe about MS is that they constantly change things that don't need to be changed.  Ever try to find the version in Office these days?  hint - the old reliable help about will not cut it.  It seems they change things just to be trendy and stuff you knew you have to constantly relearn to stay on the MS trendy bandwagon.  Add to that that they keep adding and adding and adding more complication and unnecessary features and code and libraries to do this and to do that and it is no wonder their OS's are extremely unwieldy, bloated, and insecure.  Security is another thing that irritates me to no end.  There is no reason that things have to be designed to be insecure with ports open for no good reason.  Open the ports that need to be opened, for those bullet proof them.  How many mechanisms does MS have for filesharing?  It feels like 15!

My answer, bring back DOS.  I loved programming DOS.  No crazy API that works differently in different versions of windows, no controls, no message loops.

Yeah I hate that about MS, and it seems all the other companies are doing the same.  Google is getting really bad too, they change stuff like Youtube all the time and it's always for the worst.

It would be like car manufacturers randomly changing where the steering wheel is, or trying to replace it with something else.  It's a proven way, don't touch it.

As for XP I did not mind it, it was a DISASTER when it first got released though, part of the issue was that it was simply too bloated for the hardware available at the time.  It would ship on a machine that has like 265MB of ram and a single core processor.  It would be slow out of the box.  I don't know how many XP -> win2k conversions I did for people back then. 

95 was ok, I think... but I was very new to computers when I played with it.  I did use win 3.11 for a bit too.  I kinda miss that one.  I should see what it takes to install that in a VM just for fun.

[Ampera]

XP isn't so bad.  I've used most MS OSes except the server only stuff since DOS 2.11, including all DOS based versions of Windows from 2.0 upwards to ME, and NT family OSes from NT3.5 onwards.   Sure, 2000 is nice and more stable than XP, but if it doesn't have drivers for the peripherals and cards you need all you can do is run it in a VM.

With the XP based Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 still in extended support, reviving XP is still feasible - the sources haven't been lost and there isn't a major backlog of security holes that need patching - all it needs is for a big enough MS customer to throw enough money at the problem. e.g. if the US DOD wanted a cleaned up and secure version of XP badly enough, it could still happen.

The problem with XP is the sheer amount of bloat it has. It doesn't need most of the stuff it has. The advantage to Pre-XP versions of windows is that they didn't have all the pointless UI changes and uneeded features that piss away memory and CPU cycles. And XP is not secure by any stretch of the imagination. SO MANY VIRUSES are capable of killing an XP box it's not even funny, and if the DOD had any brains, they wouldn't even use Windows of any version and go for a highly specialized Unix/Linux based arrangement.

Windows 2000 is a quick and simple operating system. You can install it on just about anything and it will run fine, and drivers have NEVER been an issue for me. You won't get modern graphics support (although who knows what's there) for obvious reasons, but that's not a fair mark against Win2K, and in it's lifetime it had perfectly fine driver support. It also had perfectly fine program support with acceptable Win9x support, decent DOS support, and the LEGIONS of NT supported programs. It's also NT so you get all the fancy workstation tools you don't get in Windows XP.

Windows 2000 would be an operating system I would use on a daily basis, heck I would pay good money to use it too. It would be a return to grace for operating systems in general, and I would love to use it.