Extended thoughts Substack post anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-microsoft-windows-2x Topics covered: Did Microsoft copy the Macintosh with Windows 2x? IBM and the 386 Windows 2x bundle deals with OEM’s When did Compaq start working with Microsoft on Windows/386? Windows/386 Preemptive Multitasking Who All Worked on Windows 2x? Why was the 286 considered crippled?

@Bethos1247-Arne

4 ай бұрын

the ungodly amount of work put into your content ... thank you!

My dude not only do you have a PRIMARY source, you're correcting some of the secondary sources. You put so much work into this. Thank you.

@danny8bit

6 ай бұрын

Popcorn deployed! BTW, see quite possibly the most enthusiastic tech demo _in history_ , of OS/2 2.1 by IBM's David Barnes: Google inexplicably won't allow me to include a link to YT video, but search for 1993 hal os/2, and skip ahead to 38:52

@danny8bit

6 ай бұрын

Popcorn deployed! WTFF! My reply was DELETED, where _bizarrely_ Google doesn't want you to see EPIC OS 2 tech demo (search for 1993 hal 2, and skip ahead to 38:52).

@kilgoar

6 ай бұрын

This is so dumb. He speculated about possible corrections, presuming everyone involved acted rationally, in a story about people acting irrationally

@jourdanfarmer

6 ай бұрын

@@kilgoarhe’s also pointing out incongruities between sources and curating the strongest historical record of this topic to date

@kilgoar

6 ай бұрын

going over sources is doing historiography. in this case it is a pointless exercise. if you want definitive dates the way to go about getting them is doing actual history and consulting the records, not extrapolating on top of secondhand sources. @@jourdanfarmer

I’m going to be honest, I thought this part 2 was never going to come out. I should have never doubted you. This is awesome

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

So glad you enjoyed it! It definitely took a lot longer to make than I originally expected…and that was WITH splitting the script in two….since I was originally planning to cover Windows 3.0 in this part as well.

@TuNnL

5 ай бұрын

​@@AnotherBoringTopicI, too, never thought part 2 would see the light of day, but it gave me time to finish the IBM PC series as well as your documentary on OS/2. What an amazing in-depth collection of reports you have here! As a former professional journalist, I can say this is very thorough and meticulous research and well cross-checked for discrepancies. Thank you for you time and effort on these in-depth videos. 🖥️

@KreateInRealLife

5 ай бұрын

This video is so worthless; talking about corporate meetings & IBM-cards. Give me a break. Hundreds, if not a thousand great things happening as a result of Windows, cultural, cash flow, retail service, client accessibility, is all missing from this video b/c this guy is so slow in narration.

@philp3512

5 ай бұрын

​@@KreateInRealLife Sorry your attention span can't go more than five minutes without a martial arts fight scene, a car chase, or an explosion, but those of us who are history and business buffs appreciate, and can comprehend, the details. And those of us that know the history realize that it wasn't until Windows 3.0 and higher that Windows really became the mainstream idiom for graphical computing for IBM and IBM-clones...and if you had made it to the end of the video (I know, I'm taking quite the leap, here) you'd have realized Windows 3.0 wasn't even covered in this video.

@steve-852

5 ай бұрын

@@KreateInRealLife juvenile comment

I know these are a chore to put together, but it is worth it. You put together the best tech documentaries period. Your research, and production are appreciated beyond what I can express here. Thank you for your work!

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for compliment, glad you are enjoying the videos!

@nickwallette6201

6 ай бұрын

Agreed -- it's pretty rare for these to be much more than a regurgitation of oft-repeated theories and cargo cult. When someone goes to the trouble to source new information, and plot out a timeline to find factual errors, it's something special. If I had one criticism, it's the annotations. I think YT'ers tend to lean way too heavily on supplemental on-screen text, _while continuing to narrate over them,_ which makes the viewer choose whether to follow the flow of dialog, or read the annotation. The animated effects don't help -- it's 5 seconds of on-screen time, where only 1 second of it contains fully readable text. That's not long enough to read some of it at all, much less with split attention (audio vs. text.) "Just pause, then!" would be OK if it happened once or twice in a video, but like I said, it gets used a lot ... which means you have to be there, finger on the pause button, ready to catch the pop-up every few minutes. That can be really distracting. Anyway, just food for thought. It's a small gripe relative to the quality of the presentation, but maybe it helps to understand the impact of various tools available to the editor.

@JohnR436

4 ай бұрын

100% this

Great coverage. As a graduate in 1986, working in PC graphics device driver development, I lived through these developments. Without knowing the back story!

@greenrocket23

5 ай бұрын

It must be nice, finally having an explanation for what happened back then in the PC world. I wish I could live long enough to have some answers for what is happening currently.

@ElectronFieldPulse

4 ай бұрын

So is that just converting the raw data you get from the OS into bits readable by the video card? Or the other way around? Just taking raw bits and making something useful out of it?

Oh man I've been waiting ages for this

@barryschalkwijk9388

6 ай бұрын

same

@dontcrydoomer4787

6 ай бұрын

same

@corepunch

3 ай бұрын

It's gonna be a long year waiting for a 3.0 video

As someone who has been reading Infoworld for fun over the past few years (i'm at July 1988 right now) and who has seen each episode of The Computer Chronicles multiple times, I was happy to come across this well-written and edited video. I will make one comment about the "shrink wrapped Windows/386" situation: I worked in a video store through college for five years in the mid-90s, spending my days unwrapping new tapes, shrink wrapping the covers with a cardboard stuffer put inside so that the cover could be put on the shelf for display, and re-shrink wrapping used tapes to be put out for sale. Because of this, I don't trust the validity of shrink wrapped items being new/unused at all (especially ones where you can see the melt line along the edges of the item, as you see in the photo). In this case I think it is best to stick with the contemporary date of Jan. 1988 as the real release date. I'm now looking forward to going back and watching your OS/2 and PC clone videos. Keep up the good work!

I remember my friend's dad being a 'windows programmer' back in the late 80s. He saw it as a huge opportunity and used to tell us about it every chance he could.

This is a proper documentary. Wow. This was worth the wait. Please do not be discouraged by the views! This is amazing!

Excellent video and a big THANK YOU. I remember being told "a year in the computer field is like dog years, aka 7 years anywhere else." My career rode the wave of developments of Win 3.1/3.11 (networking), Win 9x (Internet), Win XP/7/8/10/11 (IT security). Keep up the great work!!

In 1991 I taught an Intro to Desktop Publishing class at the University of Maryland. The classroom was in an auditorium-sized room with 35 low-end PS/2 machines running Windows 2x and PageMaker. I was an expert on PageMaker for the Mac and found that PageMaker for Windows was from the Stone Age. The OS couldn’t handle the wide variety of fonts the Mac could. The only variance for fonts on PM for Winows 2x were single generic versions for serif and sans-serif fonts. You had to print out the page in order to see how things worked out. I doubt if there were any serious commercial publishers using PM on Windows 2x.

1:59:32 GEOS is the most underrated PC gui of all time. It was everything Windows should have been. It was MUCH, MUCH faster and used less RAM. One of the most common applications of the early-mid 90s used the geos runtime, AOL for DOS. My cousin actually a bought a PC in 1993 or 94 that came with GEOS as the main windows like OS.

@SMLP

6 ай бұрын

I remember getting my hands on an old PC (I think it was a Tandy) and getting GEOS running on it… It really was a brilliant GUI for the time.

@judewestburner

5 ай бұрын

It was crazy fast but I get the vibe that came at a price. The price being it's written in assembly which makes it almost unmovable to other platforms. I don't know know about software development on Geos but I imagine it wasn't straight forward either.

@tarstarkusz

5 ай бұрын

@@judewestburner Windows was written in assembly as well. C was not that common in the era on desktop PCs. I remember early Linux distros were slow as all hell. X was unusable.

@judewestburner

5 ай бұрын

I can't fully back it up but I think Windows is mostly written in C. Obv there's some assembly in the and probably early days moreso, but it was always with the thought of being portable. Certainly by the time NT was thing that's true but that's a good 7-8 years after this

@judewestburner

5 ай бұрын

And I completely agree with you on Linux and X

HMA gave you 64K - 16 bytes of extra memory. The 8086/8088 architecture used 16 bit segment registers, shifted by 4 bits, added to 16 bit pointers to give 20 bit addresses allowing 1M access. The trick was that segment FFFF with any pointer above 000F would wrap-around to 00000 on systems that had 20 address lines, like the 86/88, but would continue on to 100000 for those that had 21+ address lines, like the 286+ processors. There was one caveat though in that IBM was aware that this issue could cause bugs for 86/88 code that relied on the wrap-around and added circuitry that could enable/disable this called the A20 gate. HIMEM.SYS was the driver you loaded in DOS to disable the wrap-around.

@tech34756

5 ай бұрын

Ironically, IBM's workaround would byte MS in the butt on the OG Xbox, as it was used as one of several exploits to hack the system.

@herberttlbd

5 ай бұрын

​@@tech34756 Yep. Intel had to incorporate the gate circuitry from IBM's hack into the processor when on-chip caching was introduced. If you physically shorted the pin to active the A20 gate on the XBox then the 21st address line would always be zero and the processor would start executing code at the address of the flash ROM instead of the secure ROM. Unfortunately for MS, one of the tasks of the secure ROM was to re-secure itself before transferring control to the secondary boot-loader which wouldn't happen allowing people to get a dump of the ROM.

I think this is the best channel for computer (science) history. Keep up the good work!

I'm more excited about the next part of this than I am for Deadpool 3!

another boring topic uploaded so my day is not boring anymore

Excellent presentation. And, unlike so many KZread presenters, you are an excellent speaker. A pleasure to listen to. Thank you.

@AnotherBoringTopic

5 ай бұрын

Appreciate the compliment, glad you enjoyed the video!

@bigvrocks2480

3 ай бұрын

@@AnotherBoringTopic lol This popped up my KZread and I thought I'd give it a minute or two and after 20 minutes I had to bookmark and subscribe because I found your presentation so compelling and informative! TY

Here comes another excellent docu. Well done!

Unbelievable to amount of research you did for this and your ability to present the information in a coherent interesting manner. This is awesome. Clearly a labour of love.

I was so excited to see this pop up on my notifications. Been waiting for a while on part 2. Excellent job!

If part one was 30 minutes and part two was 2 hours, then if current trends continue then part three should be *EIGHT HOURS LONG!!!* And I would watch every minute of it.

Oh for the love of all that is good and right... please not another year before the next installment! Just came across this documentary and need more!😆 Very well done!

Amazing work! Can't imagine all the research and editing required to produce this second masterpiece. Thank you so much!

What an amazing episode. The breadth and depth of your coverage is impressive. Thank you very much!

This video was definitely worth the wait. Amazing research!! 🎉🎉

This is one of the best documentaries that I've seen on KZread. Love the attention to detail and pacing is great.

A joy to watch. That’s it. Thank you for putting so much effort into doing this series, it really pays off. Well paced, with the right amount of detail and background. Anxiously waiting for the next entry…

Need to get part 2 in my watch list, so glad you're back 😁

This was an excellent piece. The amount of research you put into it is really stunning. And it’s fantastic that you are corresponding with actual participants in the events and recording that for posterity. Thank you so much for your effort!

Looking forward to the next episode. Really well-made! I enjoyed watching this 2 hr video very much.

Man, thanks for all this work. I look forward to your videos for months.

I was waiting for this since I have seen part one of this! Thank you! Its awesome!

This is so freekin' good!! A mammoth documentary! Amazing work. One of my favourite things on the subject already.

Thank you! Been anxiously waiting for part two!

Great job on the video. Looking forward to the next in the series.

Fantastic and really entertaining video, love it. I was there for all of this happening in real time but without the inside information. Searched for Part 3 but of course not there as part 2 only 3 weeks and given the amount of effort this part 2 must have taken I am not surprised. Well done!

The videos you put out, is simply THE BEST tech documentaries i have ever seen! Thank you, for your time and dedication, that you so clearly put into making these videos!

I just finished reading the "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" as cited in many parts of the video, and with corrected informations through it. A very complete and detailed video. Hats off to you, sir

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Awesome, glad you enjoyed it!

I just rewatched the first one last night and then this is posted today, i couldn't be happier 🥰

I’ve had my fingers crossed waiting on this video. I love your stories and info.

Your videos are incredible, they never disappoint. Thank you so much (and the original research is just incredible, finding a primary source and correcting books.. wow).

This video is so insanely well put together and sourced

This is awesome, thank you. Really looking forward to the next ones!!

Another very well researched and presented topic. Tech was my thing and I remember all this - now 65, I lived through it all. Thank you so much for another excellent production.

I can't wait for the next episode. Great work, thank you Sir!

Windows 1 video = 2023 Windows 2 video = 2024 Windows 95 video - I'll be dead and decomposed.

@GeomancerHT

6 ай бұрын

More like "feature films" at this 2+ hours mark

@dismuter_yt

6 ай бұрын

We're only at Windows 11, Windows 95 won't come out for a very long time

@Kobold666

6 ай бұрын

Plot twist: XP. Hasta la Vista!

@rgi9509

6 ай бұрын

It will probably go faster. He said that the OS/2 vid had to come out first. Now I see why he did that before this.

@ron.owensby

3 ай бұрын

@@dismuter_yt Windows 95 came out along time ago... Like last century, right sfter Windows 3.x

Very insightful and thought provoking to a computer user with no actual background at just how everything came into being. As a matter of fact, in the late 50's, a neighbor, Mr. Kipp, whose family, lived near five houses from us, in Buffalo, NY and had to live during the week in Rochester, NY (worked for Sperry-Rand, I believe) to learn how to run a new computer 'system' back then. After his training was completed, the family had to move as the system he was trained for, had become obsolete, in the time he was training for it. He had to move to find new employment. His kids, Jim & Brenda, never heard from again... Late 50's/early 60's, quite surreal for a little kid! Thanks ABT!

2 Hours of great narration! thank you!

It was definitely worth the wait a year for the second part

The level of research, effort, time….. Sir I tilt my hat in your general direction. Thank you for the work.

What an amazing piece of work. Thank you so much. Can’t wait for the next episode. And hope other people here or maybe Gates himself sometime can help fill out some of the blanks :) Have you asked him for an interview?

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

It would be a great to get a chance to interview Gates about this period(although I’d probably want to wait until I had done the preliminary research for the RoW scripts up through Windows 98, just so that I had a full set of interview questions ready to go), but what I’d really like to do first is get access to Microsoft’s email archives from the 1980s and 1990s. Microsoft heavily utilized email almost from the beginning of the company, and being able to access those archives would undoubtedly answer many questions and clear up a lot of confusion about things that the participants themselves may no longer remember any details of.

@davidtarp8547

6 ай бұрын

@@AnotherBoringTopic Ahh that would be great. The also have an archive in Redmond as I remember from my time working at MS.

Jesus what a well done documentary. This is gold! It’s gold Jerry! Gold!

This is a great video, and I can only echo the sentiments of the other comments on how well researched this is. Looking forward to Part 3 as that's where my personal journey with PCs really began. A journey that became my job, continues to provide endless opportunities for advancement and to learn and grow. You've gained a new subscriber here.

I love the depth that you are willing to go into. This is great.

I love that the Apple II GS is right on the same page as Windows/386, and the Compaq 386

This channel should be way bigger than it is! Great content, and research, I feel like I’m watching a book.

Thank you for your hard work on this history. I enjoy these series.

Amazing video, loved how extensive you were with covering the topic. The 70s and 80s were some of the most interesting decades shaping the way what we imagine what a computer is and how it's supposed to work. Hoping the next video is around the corner :D

I never knew of WIndows 2. I eat this 80's retro PC stuff up like candy. Thanks for the video!

I was eagerly waiting for this video. good work

Ditto the other comments - will start this later, but been waiting ages for this - well done!

Wow, the amount of work you have put in!! Another great video, thank you!!

I believe MS must have had the separate Windows Runtime well into the Windows 3 era as well. I remember having a demo disk for Excel that I got from calling MS from an ad in a magazine and it used its own version of Windows separate from the one I had installed on my PC. My family didn't get a PC until 1992 and it came with DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1, and so I assume that demo was contemporaneous with that version of Windows. Also, these videos are so well done.

@TheTytan007

6 ай бұрын

There was a thing in the 90s called Modular Windows and it might have been exactly what you described

Unironically excited for 2025 when the Windows 3.x video comes out 👀👀👀👀

I'm so glad this is finally here! Thank you for all your hard work.

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

I absolutely love your videos. Not only are they insanely well researched, but my wife thinks they're the most boring things in the world! She's wrong, of course. All that time and effort you put into these are totally worth the look on her face when I cue up "The Rise of Microsoft Windows Part 2: Windows 2x" on film night.

@AnotherBoringTopic

5 ай бұрын

😂

Thank you for putting in the work to make these so informative

@AnotherBoringTopic

2 ай бұрын

Glad you are enjoying them!

Thanks for this. More of these long detailed vids pleasseeee. Better than most books

So glad this day came. Thanks for the upload.

Thank you for this, your effort is well worth it and appreciated!

You put so much work into this. Thanks! I wish you had reused the animated Windows 1 & 2 startup (you know, where the interlaced logo slides together) instead of just the final frame. Nostalgia hit! No matter. Thanks again 😊

Amazing video! Made my day! Cant wait for the windows 3.0 video :)

Not me being fully invested and dying with anticipation for part 3. With all due respect: hurry up!! 🤣

@AnotherBoringTopic

4 ай бұрын

I’m very glad you are enjoying the videos! So far as part 3 goes…the script rough draft is all done but I’m unsure as to when I’ll get to the final draft. I still have a lot of reading/researching to do unfortunately. Because otherwise it would only be an hour long, and what’s the point in such a short video? 😜

OMG. I cant wait for Part 3 long. This is so good stuff.

Probably the best documentary I’ve seen. Thank you.

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

Your videos are top notch and spot on! I am excited for the next installment! Спасибо мой друг!

Steve Ballmer doing the Windows 1 commercial at the very beginning reminds me of Glenn from Superstore

Wow great video, this part is often overlooked

I’ve enjoyed pt 1&2. Looking forward to pt 3!

Best news all day that this video dropped! I was hoping it would come at some point. I know these are labors of love, but they are fantastic and greatly appreciated! Which reminds me to check if you have a Patreon or similar... Keep it up!

Man, I wish I had been born early enough to have lived through this weird gold rush of an era, to have been apart of it somehow.

It's a shame you don't have at least an order of magnitude more subscribers. These documentaries are *excellent!*

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for the kind words, glad you are enjoying the content! The channel has almost 20x the subscribers it had a year ago so I can’t complain :)

45 Min in, I gotta take a stretch and come back, excellent so far

Very educational, already waiting for part 3. I started using computers with the 486DX2/66 cpu with msdos 6.22 and win 3.11. Wow the hardware changed so much.

lol I just watched that episode of CC the other day. great vid!

Nice work. Please do a part 3

subbed and can't wait for part 3.

Really enjoying these so far keep them up. So much is said about Windows 95 onward hardly a peep about the first 3 versions.

I'm rarely complementing things. But the amount of valuable, thorough, and well-presented information that is this consistently delivered on this channel is just unbelievable. Good fucking job.

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Appreciate the compliment, glad you are enjoying the videos!

This work is very important. Thank you for your dedication.

@AnotherBoringTopic

2 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for the kind words, glad you are enjoying the videos!

dang this is what a year of work does. truly incredible my man.

@AnotherBoringTopic

5 ай бұрын

Appreciate the compliment, glad you enjoyed it!

Damn I look forward to videos by this guy. Such high quality.

Terrific video! Thank you for all the effort!

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

I'm really enjoying this series, I'm more than hyped for the next entry (windows 3 through 3.11?).Thank you for this research and outstanding video.

@AnotherBoringTopic

6 ай бұрын

I’m very glad to hear you are enjoying the series, thank you for the kind words! Part 3 only covers Windows 3.0, and since the story is quite a bit less convoluted, the current rough draft of the script probably only runs about an hour. However I haven’t done a final pass on the script yet and it’s probably safe to assume that the final draft will be longer, but most likely not two hours long (I probably just jinxed myself). I haven’t decided yet when I’ll start focusing on it though, but it probably won’t be until after I get a couple other tech history videos out.

@cocusar

6 ай бұрын

@@AnotherBoringTopic I mean, a two hour video would be very nice, but an hour is fine as well. I don't know the history behind windows 3.0, but I will definitely enjoy it. Would be cool for an upcoming windows 95 video to have Dave Plummer as one of the guest, considering you were able to get in touch with Tandy. Oh man, I should stop hyping myself.

@x_voxelle_x

5 ай бұрын

@@cocusar Plummer actually runs his own YT channel called Dave's Garage, and recently interviewed Raymond Chen about events that happened in early MS. @AnotherBoringTopic getting them both on for a special would be very interesting to watch. E: Dave Cutler too, forgot to mention.

I certainly learned some new appreciation for win 2 in this video. My only real knowledge of the difference between win 1 and win 2 up until now was that 2.0 supported tiling windows and himem. I dont think i had heard of windows/386 at all

Wow. The amount of work that went into this is amazing.

This channel is awesome

Love these videos!

Awesome!!! Been waiting for this!

Looking forward to the next installment!