Comment by molticrystal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by molticrystal | Hacker News Reader

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>It's an old citation but here's the snippet:

Really old citation, 1995...

>There was an article a couple of years ago about taking binaries from either windows 1...

The below article seems to go more indepth and was written in 2020, might even be the one you were thinking of:

https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/05/10/1753203

>As previously noted, Windows 95 dropped support for 1.x and 2.x binaries. The same however was not true for Windows NT, which modern versions of Windows are based upon. However, running 16-bit applications is complicated by the fact that NTVDM is not available on 64-bit installations.

>After letting NTVDM install, a second attempt shows, yes, it is possible to run Windows 1.x applications on Windows 10 [32-bit].

>FONTTEST also worked without issue, although the TrueType fonts from Windows 3.1 had disappeared.

There's even a way to run 16-bit Windows binaries on 64-bit Windows now.

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm

Oh neat, I might need to try this on Wolfenstein 3D.

Oh my gosh. That screenshot of the Calculator alone brought back memories from my childhood.

"As previously noted, Windows 95 dropped support for 1.x and 2.x binaries. The same however was not true for Windows NT, which modern versions of Windows are based upon."

No way. I'll need major citations on that. Wikipedia for one, firmly disagrees as does every book I've read on that history.

edit: I quoted it and still misread it. I thought it said windows nt was based on windows 1&2.

Which part are you objecting to?

I object to NT natively supporting 16 bit apps. I think they dropped that in Win7 or before. Of course with VMs everything is possible but it's no longer built-in.

Windows NT is 3.1 and above

Eh, not quite. 3.1 ran on DOS, there was an NT 3.1 (separate OS) that was NT. NT and legacy Windows ran in parallel for a while, up through Windows 2000/Windows ME. That ended with Windows XP, the first consumer Windows NT release.

32 bit Windows NT supported 16 bit Windows apps (and DOS) right until 32 bit Windows was dropped with Windows 11. 64 bit Windows has never supported them. As 64 bit Windows became commonly installed around Windows 7, you might get the impression it was dropped then, but it was still around if you really wanted it.

I misread it. I thought it said windows nt is based on windows 1 and 2. carry on

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