Old MS-DOS & WIN Software - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

13 Dec 2005

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Subject: Re: Old MS-DOS & WIN Software
   From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
   Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:26:47 +0000
     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>

Madcrow Maxwell wrote:
  Well, IMHO, Win95 was rather close to a real
multitasking system, at
 least for Win32 programs. Maybe not as good as Linux or even NT, but
 it got the job done and got it done significantly better than 3.x 
My main problem with it was that it tended to disintegrate over time and 
eventually would need a reinstall as functionality would start to break and 
free disk space would mysteriously vanish... 
That was a FAT problem with crashes and power fails.  Also some apps that
allocate space and never return it.  FYI: the worst offenders were MS apps!

There are patches that can be applied and last version (b) was better.
But in the end FAT is not robust.

...
 All modern OSes (MS-based and otherwise) seem to suffer
from that, but Win95 
was the worst.

  And before people go bashing 95 anymore, I want
to go on record as
 saying it's one of the few M$ products I actually like. It runs well
 on even a 486 with only 8 MB of RAM 
Not for program development it doesn't. Been there, done that! I can believe 
it works well enough for WP and the like though. 
The environment descrived is too small.  While a 486/66 is fine "ve found that 
16mb or better 32mb of was more effective than faster cpu.

...
 I'd say it was the point where the downward spiral
of ever-increasing 
application bloat started though. I don't remember Win 3.x apps or even apps 
on other platforms being as colossal as the typical Win95 app was, and it's 
all gradually got worse since then.  I'm not sure whether Win95 itself is the 
root cause of that or not - probably not, but it's strange that it happened 
around that time period. 
Bigger OS and fancier apps with inefficient compilers that drag truckloads
along for the ride needed or not contribute.  Whats scary is when I see apps
written in script languages that compile to some intermediate form that isn't
native then we know it's convenience rather than efficientcy.

Allison

...
 cheers

Jules 