Windows1 (1985) PC XT Hercules

[ChrisGreaves]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnudvJbAgI0
Cheers and Comisserations
Chris

[John Gray]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...
(Neither, apparently, are commiserations...!)

[ChrisGreaves]

(Neither, apparently, are commiserations...!)

Fair crack of the whip, mate. My eyes were watering up at the sound of those 51/4" floppies juddering in and out. Too, I had caught a glimpse of the Mouse. And I was anticipating a 1200-baud hookup down the line.
Cheers, Chris

[BobH]

I have that os on 5-1/4" floppies. I think it is on about 6 disks.

[ChrisGreaves]

I have that os on 5-1/4" floppies. I think it is on about 6 disks.

Hi Bob. Six disks? Even at 1.2Mb that would be only (loads Excel2003 ...) 7.2Mb.
Nowadays Windows is measured in how many minutes it takes to download an ISO.

Did you ever install it on a system?

My first Windiws version was, I think, 3.0, came on four 3½ inch floppies. I did install it on my custom-built (for me) Compaq portable look-alike (I had it built with 4GB RAM, one 5" drive and one 3" drive). I remember loading it and not being impressed.
At the time I had a DOS shareware program that organized and ran a variety of programs; it could have been used as a proof-of-concept for a Windows proposal.
I do remember uninstalling the stuff, because I could not see that it improved my work at all, which was centered around DOS Lotus 2.1 and Mike Wallace's PCWrite.
Cheers
Chris

[BobH]

Howdy, Chris!

Yes, I did try to run it on my 8086 IBM PC. Even with dual floppy drives and a 5 kb (yes, kilobytes) hard drive on a card, it was near impossible to run. I had a monochrome monitor. Win 1 had no graphics and required swapping floppies so often that I abandoned it after the second attempt to run it.

[rettingr]

Oh, the good old days... I, like mentioned prior, started on Win3.1 and when we were converting to Windows95 at work found an old copy of those miserable 5 1/4 floppies to clean out. Windows 1.02 if I remember right. While rebuilding several computers with Windows 95, I had an IBM 8088 that was still functional and decided to give a whirl. It loaded and worked, but wasn't good for much of anything. A good mentor of mine went back and taught me DOS so I could learn to fix the problems with Windows in most versions. The best computer learning I ever did in my past and served the best purpose of anything. Loading a computer with DOS and being able to use it for functional work was amazing. Now I can't get along without my iPad. :-(

[ChrisGreaves]

... It loaded and worked, but wasn't good for much of anything.

Hi rettingr. Yes, that 1.x version looks more like a proof of concept than anything, but there again, so did the first horseless carriages compared to today's automobiles.

... Loading a computer with DOS and being able to use it for functional work was amazing.

There is much truth in this, too, if we adopt the concept that "Computers are good at doing boring and repetitive tasks". Finding the appropriate tool to get the computer to perform a boring and repetitive task is more important than restricting onseself to a single tool (for example, Windows' mouse).

I continue to be amazed at the number of people who insist on using a mouse to drag a copy of a file into, say, a hundred folders, one copy at a time, convinced that that they are engaged in productive work, when the DOS "FOR %a IN " command can do the job in five seconds.

Cheers, Chris