Virtual PC Museum 2007

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

barryd — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:43:46 GMT

Ah yes. I have an MS-DOS 6.22 VPC. And I really can't think *why* I have it.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

tims — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:55:17 GMT

In a nice appendix to this entry, there's a Channel 9 interview I recently recorded with one of the original Windows 3.1 shell developers (who coincidentally happens now to be the Product Unit Manager for WPF) that went live about ten minutes ago here: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=284474

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Max — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:51:10 GMT

I have my collection of VMs, too. But I lacks Windows 1. I programmed for it many years ago. I envy you very much!

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Sven Groot — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:16:58 GMT

You don't need a VM to run the really old versions of Windows, you can actually run them in DOSBox too: http://www.ookii.org/misc/win31.jpg

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Ivolved — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:52:35 GMT

Dude, either you got a really late start or you're really young! Of course "really late" is relative. I was typing BASIC programs from the back of Family Computing (later called Family and Home Office Computing, and now Home Office Computing) when I was 8 on a Tandy 1000. It was a top of the line computer with a whopping 256K of memory.

On the other hand I have a co-worker who never used the computer for anything more than standard office applications but is now hands down one of the most knowledgeable data architects I know.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

tims — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:20:37 GMT

I'll opt for the "really young" choice :)

But of course, the reality is simply that my computing background predates the PC - I didn't talk about the plethora of machines I started on that ranged from the Commodore PET to the Sinclair ZX81 to VAX/VMS. That gives me an idea for another post that I'll write up in a day or two...

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Ryan — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:40:02 GMT

The first thing I did when I found Virtual PC was install DOS and Windows 3.1. I looked around for Norton Desktop but I could not find the install disks. I liked that shell. I think the earliest version of Windows I have used was 2.0 on a 286.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Vlad — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:17:23 GMT

Can you guys share your VM's?

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Jason Tadros — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:24:50 GMT

Any chance of getting a download of your clasic images? I hate to try and find my 3.1 disks anytime soon.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Scott Hanselman — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 04:02:28 GMT

Ya, +1 to getting those images. ;)

Virtual PC Tips and Hardware Assisted Virtualization

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 04:07:28 GMT

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

tims — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 05:50:38 GMT

Sure, you can have the images. Which format would you like - JPEG or PNG? :-)

Seriously, much though I'd like to share these out with the world, they remain the copyrighted intellectual property of my employer, which might not be overjoyed if I unilaterally decided to make them available.

That said, there's plenty of copies of some of these early versions available on eBay, often at pretty cheap prices. A search for completed listings of Windows 3.1 revealed a number of copies that have gone for under $10 in the last few days alone, including several new factory-sealed copies!

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Mark — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:16:45 GMT

What settings did you use to install Windows 1.0?

I've installed DOS 6.22 into a blank VM, and then installed Windows 1.0 on top of that. But no matter what settings I chose for the Windows 1.0 display (EGA, etc), I can't seem to get it to run. It just displays garbage on the screen.

Are there any special tricks (VM settings, DOS version, Windows install settings, etc)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mark.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Dan — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:35:32 GMT

You are my kind of guy. I collect old OS and beta OS's myself and love VPC for that reason.

I used to have NT5 Beta1 on my msdn subscription and lost the CD in a move. It's IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND. Nobody sells old msdn on ebay for some reason.

Anyway great article. Enjoy!

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

tims — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:05:10 GMT

Mark, some of the oldest versions of Windows aren't able to handle more than a tiny amount of memory (it turns out, nobody thought to test Windows/286 on a machine with 2GB of installed RAM :-)

For Windows 1.03, I installed on MS-DOS 5.0. I know this isn't historically accurate, but I didn't have any earlier MS-DOS versions available to me at the time that would boot from floppy. I set the memory allocation to 4MB. It's not glitch-free - for instance, the opening splash screen is slightly corrupted because of CGA emulation issues, but it does run.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Mark — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:25:16 GMT

Thanks tims.

I don't suppose you remember which graphics card you said you had when you installed Windows 1.0?

Mark.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

tims — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 09:15:51 GMT

Sorry - not a clue. It was several years ago when I built that VPC. Looking at the display, I'm going to estimate that it's EGA (640x350x16), but I could be way off.

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

Jason Arnold — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 23:49:55 GMT

When I installed the first windows we had it was for a demo on our Tandy machines at Radio Shack. The Tandy TGA (like EGA) wasn't supported, but the first VGA monitors we had were. This probably because they were monochrome 640x350x2... Good times.

BTW, I too do this, I got all the old OSs I could find; including DOS 2.11 running Tandy Deskmate. Yes, I still have all the original installation diskettes :)

re: Virtual PC Museum 2007

jack hunt — Mon, 07 May 2007 02:29:09 GMT

hi, i was wondering if you could give me some insight into how to create floppy images from files already on my computer, as i have windows 3.1, but in folder, i.e. folder1, folder2, folder3. etc.

thanx