On Tue, 18 Nov 2025, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: Windows 3.00 was the last version that could run on 5150/5160 (PC/XT) (below a 80286) In Windows 3.10, the setup porgram demanded some RAM above !M (A20 being used to get that high memory chunk) In August 1991 (tenth anniversary of 5150 (PC) reloease), Windows 3.11 beta copies were given out at the Microsoft Developers Conference. Bill Gate was a no-show, because he was in NYC on national TV being interviewed about the PC anniversary I was dropped from the beta program when I declared that SCANDISK was a disaster, and would eventually require a recall of DOS 6.00, When they did the "FREE" "Stepup" from 6.00 to 6.20, they let it continue to be blamed on the disk compression, although SCANDISK was actually the cause of the specific problems that warranted the replacemnt. Details available on request. STAC Electonics ("Stacker"?) had previously been in negotiations and technology information sharing, to be included in 6.00. Some usual unreliable sources claimed that STAC had demanded a royalty for inclusion of HALF the DOS price! When the deal collapsed, STAC sued Microsoft for infringement, because Microsoft hade kept some of the STAC code; Microsoft counter-sued, because STAC had started using some of the code from Microsoft. BOTH suits won! But Stac was awarded more than twice the damages that Microsoft was; Bill Gates said, "I'm having a bad day." (What I might say if I couldn't find the $20 bill) Microsoft released DOS 6.21 (same, but with no compression software provided) Then Microsoft wrote or commissioned a non-infringing compression, and released 6.22 (same, with non-infringing compression) I'm not sure whether Windows 95 could run on 80286; but most later versions required 80386[SX] or above. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 7:38 PM Michael Mulhern via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: I wasn't a MS customer at the time (in 1985, I was full-on into DEC minicomputers at work - literally zero PCs - and Commodore + old DEC at home). Some time in the 90s, I came across a boxed set of Windows 1 that I still have for hysterical raisins. I do confess to using Win 3.1 at work in 1995 (different companies entirely), specifically WfW 3.11 to be able to use TCP/IP to talk to all the UNIX and Linux machines. Having tried Windows 1, I can see why Windows didn't really catch on until Windows 3.x. -ethan

Yeah our windows manager sad that Win XP was the version that had everything converted to run on 32 bit. Prior to XP, there were some utilities and drainage vers that were still 16 bit. Sent from my iPhone