# Upgrading Windows 1.0 to 7



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

I admit, I'd never seen any of the Windows 1.0 or 2.0 setup, I started with DOS 3.1, but didn't get into Windows until late, with 3.1.

It's an interesting journey.


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## MikeW (May 16, 2002)

Well that was fun. Too bad I didn't get to hear the Jungle theme when '95 booted up.


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

:lol: @ XP username


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

Hey, why no ME? :lol:

I think 2.0 was the first version I had. Got it free with something and tried it out but removed it because it was taking up disk space. Back them HHD's were measured in MB's and 20MB was huge.

Went all in with 3.1. But yesterday, I bought my first Mac.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

The original Windows was kind of DOS in color..:lol:

I remember buying it and it came with a mouse.. because DOS users had no experience with a mouse.

Most don't realize that Solitaire was included with Windows to teach DOS users how to use a mouse.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

I think I still have a copy of Windows 386 around somewhere. It came on three 5.25" floppies. 

Never got it to install properly, because it insisted I have MS DOS, and my 386 computer came with DR DOS, which was way superior to the Microsoft version it was based on, and I saw no reason to downgrade so I could run a primitive GUI when DR DOS already offered multi-tasking of a sort (as much as could be expected on a system with 1MB of RAM). That's right folks, ONE megabyte! (which seemed like a lot at the time).


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Herdfan said:


> Hey, why no ME? :lol:
> 
> I think 2.0 was the first version I had. Got it free with something and tried it out but removed it because it was taking up disk space. Back them HHD's were measured in MB's and 20MB was huge.
> 
> Went all in with 3.1. But yesterday, I bought my first Mac.


And you (or at least I did) had to manually park them.

I was thinking maybe he couldn't get it from MSDN, but I just looked and I can't get anything under Windows 3.1 from there, other than DOS 6.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

LarryFlowers said:


> Most don't realize that Solitaire was included with Windows to teach DOS users how to use a mouse.


I thought Minesweeper was. You actually had a use for the right button there.


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

LarryFlowers said:


> The original Windows was kind of DOS in color..:lol:
> 
> *I remember buying it and it came with a mouse.. because DOS users had no experience with a mouse.*
> 
> Most don't realize that Solitaire was included with Windows to teach DOS users how to use a mouse.


Not true. MS-DOS 4.0 and later had a mouse driver. See the Wikipedia article on MS-DOS.

Yes and when I was teaching basic computer classes at the local community college in the 90's I had the students play solitaire so they could learn to use the mouse. (Your tax dollars at work )


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## jerry downing (Mar 7, 2004)

This is the oldest that I have DOS 3.3 on 5 inch floppies. I have most everything in between. I have upgraded the operating system, software and hardware from this to WIN 7 over several years. I do not have Windows ME nor BOB. (Does anyone remember BOB?)


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

4HiMarks said:


> I thought Minesweeper was. You actually had a use for the right button there.


Minesweeper is also the only thing I can think of that has a use for both buttons at the same time. It didn't use click and drag like Solitaire did though.


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## houskamp (Sep 14, 2006)

still have copies of dos 6.21, win3.1, win98se running in virtual machine on win7.. lets me play some old games


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## Davenlr (Sep 16, 2006)

How many of you used Desqview to multitask DOS before Windows?


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

houskamp said:


> still have copies of dos 6.21, win3.1, win98se running in virtual machine on win7.. lets me play some old games


Back in the day when it actually took some work to get a game to work...doh, need to find 20k more (conventional) RAM. When you had to understand IRQs (though I never understood why my soundblaster defaulted to 7, not 5.)


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Davenlr said:


> How many of you used Desqview to multitask DOS before Windows?


Never used it, but I was a fan of QEMM.


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## Davenlr (Sep 16, 2006)

dpeters11 said:


> Never used it, but I was a fan of QEMM.


Yea, I had to use that also. I ran 4 copies of PCBoard BBS software on a 486, using Desqview and QEMM. Worked real well. Then when Windows 3.1 came out, I used that with 4 Dos windows, and it worked pretty well, but crashed more often than Desqview. Then the internet showed up, and no one wanted to call BBS's anymore


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## Drucifer (Feb 12, 2009)

dpeters11 said:


> I admit, I'd never seen any of the Windows 1.0 or 2.0 setup, I started with DOS 3.1, but didn't get into Windows until late, with 3.1.
> 
> It's an interesting journey.


Got you beat. Started with Windows 286 (v2.1)


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## Drucifer (Feb 12, 2009)

Davenlr said:


> How many of you used _Desqview_ to multitask DOS before Windows?


I do.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Davenlr said:


> Yea, I had to use that also. I ran 4 copies of PCBoard BBS software on a 486, using Desqview and QEMM. Worked real well. Then when Windows 3.1 came out, I used that with 4 Dos windows, and it worked pretty well, but crashed more often than Desqview. Then the internet showed up, and no one wanted to call BBS's anymore


I still have fond memories of my local BBS's. We had cookouts and everything. I do miss them.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

Davenlr said:


> How many of you used Desqview to multitask DOS before Windows?


It was the ONLY way to run a DOS-based BBS...


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## Scott Kocourek (Jun 13, 2009)

Davenlr said:


> How many of you used Desqview to multitask DOS before Windows?


I thoufht we had something called DeskMate although I could be wrong.


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

Nice trip down memory lane...

My first computer in 1983 came with MS-DOS 1.25 on a single 5 1/4-inch floppy. I also could boot the computer using CP/M 1.6, also on a floppy disk. I still have the disks for no disk drive for this size -- I doubt if they'd still work anyway.

EDLIN and DEBUG are still installed on my XP desktop. I didn't put them there -- they came with Windows!


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

Anyone know what he was running Virtual Machine on? A mac or linux machine?


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Davenlr said:


> How many of you used Desqview to multitask DOS before Windows?


I did - on an AST Premium 386SX/16.

And I was an absolute GURU on how to best use 386 EMM emulators - Especially QEMM386 and it's shadowing ROMs etc.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

machavez00 said:


> Anyone know what he was running Virtual Machine on? A mac or linux machine?


I was thinking a Windows machine myself. I use Virtualbox on my PC, quite powerful.


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## Mustang Dave (Oct 13, 2006)

scooper said:


> I did - on an AST Premium 386SX/16.
> 
> And I was an absolute GURU on how to best use 386 EMM emulators - Especially QEMM386 and it's shadowing ROMs etc.


Oh the memories of trying to make enough conventional RAM available for programs to run. Spent a lot of time in Accounting tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat files for Lotus 123 to run without running out of memory.

QEMM's stealth mode seem to make the most memory available but would make some programs crash.

One company I worked for was on token ring and those IBM cards liked a particular memory range that would have to be excluded in the config which made it a further challenge to optimize the memory.

I think MEMMAKER in one of the Dos releases (maybe 6.21?) was finally able to do a better job than QEMM at making conventional memory ram available. Oh and it was always a bit of an experiment to find out what programs could be loaded into high memory with the LOADHIGH command. A trip down memory lane indeed!


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## AttiTech (Feb 21, 2011)

First computer I ever built was a Windows 3.1 machine.


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## B Newt (Aug 12, 2007)

I started with win 3.5, didnt like it so I installed OS/2 2.1 At the time os/2 was the bomb. At least for me.


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

My first "computer" was a Heathkit terminal that I built in 1979. I logged into the University of Alaska mainframe using a 300 baud acoustically coupled modem - the kind where I set the handset of the phone onto a set of rubber cups. I wrote my term papers on it using a line editor. You typed in some control codes, the text you wanted to replace, more control codes and the text you wanted to insert. 

I built my first real computer in 82 from a kit that I ordered from the back of some magazine. It came with a bare printed circuit board and several plastic bags full of parts. It ran CP/M. Mine was the hot machine as it had 2 (yes 2!) 8" floppy drives so we could make copies of all of the software we pirated from U of A. It worked great until I put 12v on to a 5v bus. All of the smoke came out and as we all know, electronics quit working when you let the smoke out. 

Oh fun times.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Jim Parker said:


> My first "computer" was a Heathkit terminal that I built in 1979.


Unless someone here built an Altair, I think you win!


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

Heh. That's not a computer. That's a terminal.

If you're including TERMINALS, I can lay claim to having had one in our apartment in NYC hooked up to a company mainframe via a 300-baud acoustic couple as previously described. This would be 1973. Believe it or not, this thing hooked up to a standard television, using it as a (very low-res) monitor.


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## kfcrosby (Dec 17, 2006)

TV monitor????.. mine only had a thermal printer, and 300 baud? :eek2: you were really smokin! 



djlong said:


> Heh. That's not a computer. That's a terminal.
> 
> If you're including TERMINALS, I can lay claim to having had one in our apartment in NYC hooked up to a company mainframe via a 300-baud acoustic couple as previously described. This would be 1973. Believe it or not, this thing hooked up to a standard television, using it as a (very low-res) monitor.


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## jerry downing (Mar 7, 2004)

dpeters11 said:


> Unless someone here built an Altair, I think you win!


I built an Altair 8800. All I could do with it was make the lights blink.


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## Drucifer (Feb 12, 2009)

djlong said:


> Heh. That's not a computer. That's a terminal.
> 
> If you're including TERMINALS, I can lay claim to having had one in our apartment in NYC hooked up to a company mainframe via a 300-baud acoustic couple as previously described. This would be 1973. Believe it or not, this thing hooked up to a standard television, using it as a (very low-res) monitor.


A terminal was how I started too. *Chemical Bank* had this service called *'Pronto,'* It was the first home banking setup. It was also the first time my bills were organized. Somewhere in its second year Chemical drop the home terminal. In order to continue home banking their customers would need to sign on to *CheckFree*, but that required a computer. Well my bills had never been in better order in my whole life. In other words, I was hooked. So I purchased my first computer, a *Vendex Headstart II*, I think, at 47th St Photo.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I have to confess this wasn't exactly MINE. After all, I was about 11 years old in 1973. My mother worked in Manhattan and, for a brief time, she brought this contraption home. I fooled around with it for a while - learned how to take it "off-line" and basically painted the TV screen with text that made it look like the evening sports scores report 

As I recall we only had it for a couple of weeks.

The next time I had a terminal in the house would be around 1976, after we moved to NH and they were VT52 "DECscope" terminals. One of my early internships was to do data entry and program entry on those beasts.

The first ones that I could say were "mine all mine" would date from 1980 when I started working at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and, at various times, would have a VT180 "Robin" (a VT100 with a Z-80 CP/M board crammed into it), an LA36 printer, a TRS-80, an IBM 5100 (look it up, it was a piece of work!) at home 'on loan' from work.

That's one reason I didn't have an Apple ][ or a TRS-80 or even a Heathkit at home in the late 1970s - I kept bringing stuff home from work.


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