MS Windows 1.0 - 35 years of history

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

 

"The PC revolution started off life 35 years ago this week. Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985, to succeed MS-DOS. It was a huge milestone that paved the way for the modern versions of Windows we use today. While Windows 10 doesn’t look anything like Windows 1.0, it still has many of its original fundamentals like scroll bars, drop-down menus, icons, dialog boxes, and apps like Notepad and MS paint."

 

https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/19/9759874/microsoft-windows-35-years-old-visual-history

 

I remember the cloth-bound boxes.

(I expect my watch has greater power than these early devices.) 

Old (Downunder) Tone

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone

[Sheep]

We've come a long way!

[jwhess]

I started out with Commodore CBM.  Then I switched to PCs and used MS-DOS (starting with version 2.0)  Later my computer business customers began to ask for Windows so I started installing it (began with Win 2.0). I don't ever remember using Win 1.x  of any kind.  I went to a comer company auction in Cleveland Ohio where a major builder was going out of business.  I bought a couple of hundred Win 2.0 disks for about $2 a piece  I used them for a couple of years.

 

My most popular installs were Win 3.1 and MS-DOS 6.2 (I closed my store about the time Win 95 came along).

[Sheep]

My start in Windows was Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.2. (Before that was a Commodore 64.) And I couldn't stop at that! I immediately upgraded to Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. (I think that's the way they were numbered.) I had Windows 95 for a short time, and today I still have an old computer running Windows 98! (Please don't tell anybody.)

 

IMO, the best of them was Windows 7. It was so stable I didn't want to update to Windows 10. But of course, as of January 2020 I didn't have much choice.

 

I've heard rumours that Windows 10 is going to be the last version of Windows, whatever that means. Every six months or so a new update for Windows 10 almost makes a whole new OS out of it! That's good for a power user perhaps, but given that these updates sometimes disable must-have features of Windows, I'd rather have an OS that remains the way it is for a few years. (How is Microsoft going to survive financially if no new versions of Windows are ever going to come out?)

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

The business I was with, we flew to the US and bought 10 PC's. Stuffed them full of cards and brought thrm back to Oz. There was no standard OS. It was an optional (lol) extra. There was a choice of 3. Digital Research had upgraded their CP/M from 8 bit to CP/M86. IBM favored the UCSD-P system, and a late slap-dash system bought from Texas Instruments by a lad called Bill Gates, was added and called PC-Dos.
The UCSD P-system was also available for the IBM dedicated DisplayWrite.
We also brought back a copy CP/M86 to run on the IBM DisplayWrite down-under. This caused quite a stir. The IBM PC only had the 8088 CPU, whereas the IBM DisplayWrite had the 8086.
IBM treated the PC as a toy. If you wanted a 'proper' computer there was their System 23. It ran the 8-bit Intel 8085. Back then, there was a standard test to check and compare PC performance. I ran it on the DisplayWrite (came in 1st), the PC (2nd) and the IBM System 23. It took over 20 minutes. I stopped it half way through because I thought it was broken, or I got the code wrong and sent it in a loop... (and this was their prime system) lol

Old (Downunder) Tone

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I have an oId hp PC. Cannot upgrade to win 10. Sad.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mykyl]

I have had a number of computers over the years. An 8086 with mda gfx and 20mb hd was my first pc. 5 and a quarter inch floppy drive. The ram expansion was probably a foot long for 512kb of ram if I remember right. SO I had a massive 640kb ram or something. lol. Too long ago. I loved trying to free as much base memory as possible by loading drivers in a different order etc.  I remember doing something to it as I was new to pc and dos and it would not boot. Someone I knew from my band life at the time came round to fix it by typing in the command SYS C. Stuck in my mind and pushed me to learn dos. He ended up as the producer of some of the biggest selling games in gaming history. I won't mention them here as this is a public area of the forum. 

I have also had Amigas, 5xA500, 2xA600, 3xA1200 and 1xA4000. Atari St's, Atari STM, STFM, STE. Amstrad cpc464 and 6128. BBC Micro, Acorn Electron. Spectrum. iMac, MacBook, MacBook Air etc etc. Wasted far too much money over the years. It was all fun though.

I don't remember Windows 1 either mind you. Windows 3.0 is really the first version I remember. I toyed with os2 for a bit as well.

 

Anyone remember buying 3.5 inch floppies and drilling a hole in them to get the full 1.44mb capacity. Risky for your data but I never lost anything. It was cheaper to buy the lower capacity disks.

 

Things really have changed in a short period of time. Lots of memories.