Post #5,154
8/14/01 4:27:34 PM
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No.
Microchannel wasn't the issue.
It was about the same time as the OS/2 release - because OS/2 was coming out on the PS/2.
IBM needed to make OS/2 run on the 286, because of the installed base.
Microsoft said "Screw 'em. Make em upgrade". Etc.
Ought to read "Barbarians Led By Bill Gates" - they talk about what was going on at the time, the fact somebody hacked Windows into protected mode in 2 weeks, then pitched to Gates, and so they started work on Windows 3.0....
So it was a lot of things, but mainly it was the OS/2 issues. Microsoft decided they'd rather own the OS, than share it with IBM. (Started out apparently believing that Windows would be a stepping stone to the later OS/2, and then just saying that as they stabbed IBM in the back)
Addison
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Post #5,165
8/14/01 4:55:05 PM
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Bingo.
Windows 3.0 had really started to take off with non-techie users, despite being a POS otherwise. They wanted the whole enchilada in preference to sharing one with IBM. Market share, market control!
Alex
Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not certain about the universe.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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Post #5,413
8/16/01 10:39:01 AM
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Revisionist History
Very unlikely. As for protected mode Windows being hacked together in 3 weeks, I very much doubt it. In those days one had to allow for expanded memory, which followed a baroque memory-paging standard call "LIM" (Lotus-Intel-Microsoft). Nothing using this standard for memory management could possibly be hacked together in 3 weeks. It took me 2 weeks just to understand how it worked in all details. To this day EMM386 in Win 9x will allocate expanded memory pages unless you explicitly tell it not to. And this is just one issue, alongside that of DOS boxes and hardware management.
Window 3.x was far from a POS. Once finished in v. 3.11, it was at least as stable as the competing cooperative tasking OS from Apple. The handsprings necessary to run big programs on small memory footprints was a technical marvel. It's become a sort of mantra to blame MS for all kinds of techinical mistakes. In fact most of Microsoft's OSes were competently, if very conservatively, realized. Microsoft is not evil because of Windows, they are evil in spite of it.
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Post #5,418
8/16/01 10:54:27 AM
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Not hardly.
As for protected mode Windows being hacked together in 3 weeks, I very much doubt it.
You can doubt it, but that's what they did.
It worked well enough for Bill to play with it and decide to go ahead full bore with the implementation.
In fact, the guy who did it was up late coding furiously, slept through the meeting, and when he went in found Gates had crashed it playing with it.
But the damage was done.
In case you doubt it go read "Barbiarians Led By Bill Gates" - where someone who was THERE says that's exactly what happened.
Addison
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Post #5,428
8/16/01 12:40:24 PM
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I guess you don't remember, the slow as molasses
performance, the machine lock-ups, fiddling with .ini files, the re-bootings, etc. I'll grant you some of that was caused by the applications. Version 3.1 was an improvement.
Running in DOS was preferable to me.
Alex
Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not certain about the universe.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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Post #5,480
8/16/01 5:42:15 PM
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But I Do Remember
..and most of that stuff was caused by a tasking model that relied on well-formed applications to run smoothly - and writing well-formed applications was a very gnarly task under Win16. Since individual applications could direct the "OS" (I do hesitate to call it that), one bad apple could easily spoil the whole bunch, girl.
If you stuck to reliable apps, installed cleanly per machine, and kept up with update levels, Windows 3.11 could be a more or less reliable system, with far more capability than DOS - and impossible to overvalue improvements in the handling of displays and printers. For the latter reason alone it qualifies as something more than a POS.
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Post #5,497
8/16/01 8:51:47 PM
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Win 3.1 was very stable
If you had well behaved programs and was picky on tweaking it Win 3.1 was extremely stable. I much prefered that to Win95.
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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Post #5,570
8/17/01 4:07:41 AM
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"very stable"?
I actually experienced more problems with 3.1 than I did with 3.0 on my home computer. Whatever you may think, in *my* experience, 3.0 was fine and I cussed 3.1 at every opportunity.
Of course, at work we were still using dumb Wyse terminals connected to Unix boxes. :=)
French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
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Post #5,586
8/17/01 8:18:30 AM
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Strange definition of 'stable'
I used to do my Windows development on OS/2 because Windows was too flaky to develop in
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #5,605
8/17/01 10:22:14 AM
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Managed a bunch of small networks
using netware as a file server win3.1 as the client and once set up ran without problems unless it was hardware failure. The management was draconian, use only the apps for work and do not put anything else on it. One net went for over 2 years without a problem and that was win3.1 and a WinNt 3.5 server.
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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Post #5,410
8/16/01 10:27:01 AM
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Ironically,
..in this case, MS was right. IBM stuck to the 286 more out of conservatism and lack of vision regarding processor development than loyalty to the "installed base", which was DOS. If DOS compatibility were the key issue, as it was for Microsoft, they would have got on the 386 wagon, with its virtual 8086 mode, then and there. IBM far overesitmated the longevity of the 286. They may have been basing their projections of the life cycles of big iron equipment and so failed to understand how rapidly PC hardware would evolve.
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Post #5,454
8/16/01 3:30:08 PM
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The brain-dead mode switch problem I recall well..
Don't remember how many cycles (lots) were consumed, nor the frequency with which the mode change was needed in practical OS but - do recall enough discussions of The Problem then -
Such that in usual 20/20 -- we have to ask! How Could IBM have so doggedly pursued development, in the face of an obviously fatally flawed device? *D'Oh!*
Chance. Dumbth. - the real 'movers and shakers' of our world of illusions!
A.
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