Compiling Word for Windows from OS/2 1.2

Рет қаралды 114,952

Күн бұрын

Twitter: / fossfirefighter
Discord: / discord
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In this episode of studying ancient code bases, our valliant host tortures himself through trying to compile Word for Windows 1.1a. Originally released in 1989, Word for Windows would eventually take over as the domiant word processing solution from the late 90s to today.
In 2014, Microsoft donated the source code of Word for Windows 1.1a to the Computer History Museum (computerhistory.org/) who has made it available on their website. While a few people have compiled Winword from source, no one that I could find has tried to build it using the OS/2 version of the tools. For various reasons, trying to build it under DOS is an exercise of frustration, and I strongly suspect Microsoft developed on top of OS/2 extensively for multiple reasons.
Through the course of this journey, I learned quite a bit of just how Microsoft made their software, some unusual and previously undocumented finds, and deeper mysteries. For example, did you know that Word for Windows isn't compiled to native machine language? Instead it's compiled to P-Code.
This is the second entry on preserving and compiling retro-codebases, and documenting the things I find as go along.
Music is licensed from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsound.com/. Tracks listed in the order of appearance:
- Work Undone
- Covert Affairs
- A Travellers' Gloom
- Out of Service
- Apparent Solution
- First on the Scene
- Cryptic Secrecy
- Deviation In Time
- A Healing Component
- Retrouvailles

Пікірлер: 280

@chriswareham 3 жыл бұрын

I love the way that the developers at MicroSoft had to create crude versions of Unix utilities to make their application development less painful. Perhaps the old joke about "those that don't know Unix are doomed to recreate it poorly" are true!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

actually, all of them look like direct ports of UNIX utilties. Or in short Microsoft pulled a MinGW/MSYS.

@chriswareham 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Makes sense. I briefly programmed on VMS back in the late 1990s, and there was a lot ports of BSD Unix or GNU tools installed on the systems that I worked on. The core things like compilers, debuggers and profilers were very good and available from Digital themselves but like with the DOS world it seemed that a lot of the other tools built on what had gone before in the Unix world.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@chriswareham Well, a lot comes from the source, and a lot in a Bubble IBM stuff seems to be built around Intel's devkit tools (there is a lot of "soft" similiarity). DIGITAL wrote most of their own compilers, but I think used cfront for C/C++ which made it behaviorly very similar to UNIX, and VMS was POSIX compatible, you could even use sh as an interactive shell if you like. Borland had their own implementations of Pascal, Basic and C, and they're still technically around. Watcom's big grace is they supported everyone in one single compiler package. Micorsoft had a long history of development tools going back to the 8-bit era and the ATLAR, and could be seen as the core of early MSFT.

@boliussa 3 жыл бұрын

+Chris Well, interesting point.. re the developers having e.g. some port of egrep according to this guy's findings

@ssokolow Жыл бұрын

I remember reading a post by someone at Microsoft (may have been Raymond Chen, may not have been) that Microsoft developers were using XENIX for at least some of their MS-DOS development in the early days, and, by the time MS-DOS 2.0 came out and added support for subdirectories, they were already regretting harmonizing with the utilities IBM provided for PC-DOS that used / as their option flag because it meant that they couldn't use it as the path separator.

@hisham_hm Жыл бұрын

17:13 Was there ever / will there ever be a sequel to this episode?? The cliffhanger got me on the edge of my seat!

@catsforbrains 3 жыл бұрын

The OS/2 DOS box was also dubbed the 'penalty box' since it could only run one, full screen DOS instance at a time. Thankfully by OS/2 2.0 this was vastly improved.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

What's so depressing is Microsoft had versions of OS/2 1.0 that could multitask DOS applications on a 386, and Windows/286 also showed it could be done even on a 80286. Google OS/2 Football/Sizzle. They're on my topic list at some point.

@johnkim1296 3 жыл бұрын

You are truly the Indiana Jones of Jurassic software compiling, awesome video!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you kindly. I do plan to do more of these videos, but I'm a little hesistant because their licenses aren't exactly what I call fun. Still, I'm deeply eyeing the Adobe Photoshop, or maybe some stuff on the Rogue Archive webpage.

@alexjones3035 3 жыл бұрын

Just stumbled on this through KZfaq recommendations, hell yeah do I want to see more! This is so well done and is chock full of interesting info - I had no idea that Microsoft actually had a JIT inside early versions of Word, that's awesome. Been a long time since I've so eagerly subbed to a tech channel! :)

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

It's more pure interpenetration as far as I can tell (that part of the code is shipped in object form) so Word actually runs slower on the whole because of it. While JITs were probably known at the time, I don't think they were proved practical until Java did it.

@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын

But.... why?? Was this just Microsoft hedging their bets, and going way beyond the call of duty to ensure portability between the various OSes that could become dominant at the time? Given that _just Microsoft_ was dabbling with DOS, Xenix, Windows, and OS/2 at the time, and there were Macintosh ports as well. It seems hard to fathom, in those early days, that the layer of abstraction wouldn't have caused a fair share of heartache. RAM, CPU, and storage space were all at a premium.

@TheSimoc Жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Yep, this actually finally explains why Word really felt so distinctively bloated and slow even in those golden times of efficient coding and almost nonexistent software bloat. Still, way less bloated though than modern unusably bloated Word, both absolutically and relatively to contemporary hardware.

@Reziac 3 жыл бұрын

Huh. That was unexpectedly fascinating! Looking forward to the sequels.

@lowmax4431 2 жыл бұрын

did he ever make them?

@Mitch-xo1rd 2 ай бұрын

@@lowmax4431Nope...

@stevejohnson1685 2 жыл бұрын

My favorite document editor from 1989 was "Framemaker", with which I created and edited tons of software documentation for medical device development. It had a built-in version of "Maple", a mathematical environment akin to Wolfram Alpha, used for equation editing and expression "simplification" (i.e. solving). In addition, it did an excellent job supporting structured documents (i.e. paragraphs tagged with styles, just like Word, but better implemented than any Word version I've seen then or since. Framemaker, alas, is long gone.

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

No it isn’t, Adobe still sells FrameMaker to this day.

@KixPanganiban 2 жыл бұрын

You have quickly become one of my favorite channels on KZfaq. I work as a software engineer and you don't understand how much joy it brings me to stop compiling shit, stop the painful dev workflows, call it a day, and go watch someone else do it on KZfaq 😂

@heatedpoolandbar 2 жыл бұрын

KZfaq needs more videos in 16 color. Whenever I'm doing a new GNU/Linux (usually a Debian) install, I always go for the old school text installer because it is so fun to interact with.

@lawrencedoliveiro9104 3 жыл бұрын

I remember a third-party app called Word For Word. I think it was some kind of document-translation addon for Microsoft Word. This was in the DOS days. Then when Microsoft brought out Word For Windows, naturally there was a new version of the addon, called ... wait for it ... Word For Word For Word For Windows! #IKidYouNot

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Microsoft's marketing department has had some bad spots. They're currently figuring how many X's they can put in Xbox One X

@pitust 2 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander at least one more

@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Waiting for the limited edition Xbox Series X Triple-X Edition. Everybody knows X is the coolest letter in the alphabet, by far. Suck it, Z. Like my dad used to say, the more Xes the better.

@LostieTrekieTechie 3 жыл бұрын

Fascinating stuff, Waiting for part two.

@einsteinx2 3 жыл бұрын

This was really fascinating to watch and you did a great job filling in the gaps for those like me that are no very familiar with OS/2. Subscribed immediately and looking forward to your other videos!

@stevenjlovelace 2 жыл бұрын

I love OS/2 and all of it's blandness. Even the later Warp versions give off that Steve Buscemi "Hey, fellow kids" vibe.

@gogogord 3 жыл бұрын

I used to mess around with Win 3.1 when I was very young, I am stunned at how similar it is in look and feel to OS/2!

@BritishBeachcomber Жыл бұрын

But a pain for developers using both. Similar system calls but with parameters swapped/reversed.

@user-nu5ib2ri9o 3 жыл бұрын

Awesome stuff, can't wait for the second part. Thanks!

@BrianWardPlus 2 жыл бұрын

What a great video! I really love your channel. Been watching it a ton lately.

@ihartmacz 3 жыл бұрын

I think I’ve found one of my new favorite channels on KZfaq. Thank you so much for this content!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you very much!

@NikiDaDude 3 жыл бұрын

I'm glad youtube recommended me this channel. Also it almost feels weird seing someone use the Cinnamon DE in a video, for some reason it doesn't seem to be very popular compared to Gnome or KDE.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Usability is overrated in 2021 it seems :(. Cinnamon manages to basically do what a DE needs to do, and then stay out of the way without being super fancy.

@fnjesusfreak 3 жыл бұрын

You can thank the FreeDOS project for preserving the GNUish files...which is basically how I knew about it to point it out as a possible solution. XD

@thenoble1 3 жыл бұрын

dawz is immensely cursed

@martin-ot 3 жыл бұрын

Fascinating story, and I would love to see a follow-up to this one. Any hopeful chance that we might see a part 2? Thanks for the great retro history work! 🙂

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

The answer is "eventually", but TBH, this project had a lot of behind the scenes problems (this video took nearly a month to put together) that I don't want to go into, and I've kinda shelved it for the time being.

@jonathanvanier 3 жыл бұрын

Terrific work! 👍

@jonsmith1271 3 жыл бұрын

'Knee - sh' niche ;)

@christophertstone 3 жыл бұрын

Lots of people pronounce it "nitch"; as noted in the OED www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/niche

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

Aye! And kludge rhymes with stooge, not fudge!

@MilMike 3 жыл бұрын

cant stop watching your videos! Fascinating stuff - Retro OS stuff and coding, lovely combination.

@dr.shuppet5452 3 жыл бұрын

Very nice, I'm looking forward to the followup video :)

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Follow-up has been in ... an ugly situation. I'll get there eventually but it will take awhile ...

@dr.shuppet5452 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander That tends to happen with old systems... Good luck!

@simpleprogrammingcodes3834 2 жыл бұрын

Great video. Waiting for the second part. I'd like to know more about what you found in the source code.

@zdanee Жыл бұрын

Now this brings back memories. My first PC was an IBM PS/2 sx56 386sx running OS/2 2.0, I bought it from my pocket money at a garage sale and it just so happened to come with that (it was ancient at that time I got it already). I've found a set of floppies through friends (and parents of friends) that contained a native OS/2 set of Word 5 and Excel 4 I think. I actually still have that old 386 and it's in working order too, I boot it up from time to time just for fun.

@Shiunbird 3 жыл бұрын

Epic! Top stuff!

@LaskyLabs 3 жыл бұрын

Will it build? That is the question. *Saxophones start playing.*

@jfwfreo 2 жыл бұрын

Are you ever going to publish the follow-up to this talking more about what's going on?

@anidnmeno 3 жыл бұрын

D O Z Z

@DOSdaze 3 жыл бұрын

As someone who often has to build old C projects I really enjoyed this journey... was on the edge of my seat with every little setback :) I like how you go through failed attempts; makes people like me feel a bit less stupid when I keep running into roadblocks with each step of something I'm trying to figure out. Would love to see some snippets of anything you find interesting just to see what the general style was back then. And I'm guessing Windows 10 is able to run this, assuming you're using a 32 bit version. Microsoft loves them some backward compatibility.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

It actually fails miserably on Windows 10, and almost all later versions of XP. The reasons are rather complex, but I haven't gotten back to this just yet.

@DOSdaze 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Dang, well I definitely haven't tried something this old. Looking forward to the next episode 👍

@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын

I'm always shocked when something _does_ compile, and stunned when it also _runs!_ As a Gentoo user, I live on hopes and dreams.

@kelli217 3 жыл бұрын

Well, pronouncing it 'Dawes' is still better than Loretta Swit calling it 'Dose.'

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

Any pronunciation other than “doss” is just annoying! This “dawz” nonsense is surprisingly distracting!

@typhoonf6 Жыл бұрын

I don't want to take away from your pain... But surely there are more pressing things to be concerned with 🤷‍♂️

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

@@typhoonf6 No! It’s the pressing issue of the century!

@kelli217 Жыл бұрын

@@typhoonf6 Surely. Such as correcting people's assumed priorities in internet comments?

@typhoonf6 Жыл бұрын

@@kelli217 you announce a preference for correct pronunciation, I question priority of that issue, you question the priority of my question... It's a vacuous cycle

@osmanpasha96 Жыл бұрын

Hi, thanks you an amazing video! Have you released that next video about Word lineage? I couldn't find one

@davidfrischknecht8261 3 жыл бұрын

This is the first time I've heard someone pronounce DOS with a voiced 's' instead of a voiceless 's'.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

To be honest, the voiced S is how I always remember hearing and pronouncing it. I get so many comments complaing I use a Z sound but it doesn't sound right to me.

@CordSchneider 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Considering that DOS is an acronym for Disk Operating System, the S should be provided 's' rather than 'z'.

@thenoble1 3 жыл бұрын

@@CordSchneider initialisms don't inherently take on the pronunciation of their origin words. You don't say "skuh-buh" for SCUBA or "lahhseer" for laser, right?

@lawrencedoliveiro9104 3 жыл бұрын

... or “deb-ian” instead of “dee-bian”?

@bitwize 2 жыл бұрын

It's like how I discovered the Brits called the SNES the "snezz". Makes it sound like some sort of nasal accessory.

@SirRandallDoesStuff 2 жыл бұрын

This is great history love the video. The only thing that irritated me is the way you say DOS as DOZ but other than that great video.

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

Glad it’s not just me who found it irritating!

@rickypoindexter9505 2 жыл бұрын

Did the follow up video ever get released? If so I couldn't find it. I would very much like to have those questions answered. Awesome video.

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

It didn't; I sorta keep getting sidetracked.

@SimonBuchanNz 2 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander we will forever more be tortured by the question of if Word for Windows 1.1 will run under Windows 10.

@Dorff_Meister Жыл бұрын

During my college years, I was as an co-op at IBM (alternating semesters, doing VAR support for AIX for RS6000 machines) when OS/2 Warp went gold. I'd wanted to play with OS/2 but never before had the chance. After downloading a stack of floppies, I finally found a spare PS/2 machine that was capable of running it. I got it installed. Played with it for about 30 minutes. I think I tried a few pieces of software with (at best) mixed success. It seemed neat, but I don't think I ever did anything else with it.

@spacewolfjr 3 жыл бұрын

New(?) Intro is great!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I had an intro on the previous video, but I realized it was a bit too similar to Novell's corporate logo so I changed it. I might end up doing Simpsons like couch gags though :)

@leo_lausemaus3143 Жыл бұрын

ITS REALLY WORKED LOL THANK YOU DUDE

@pschroeter1 Жыл бұрын

At the time I think I was using Word for Macintosh 3.1. Despite all the features that version missed, I have extremely pleasant memories for the interface. I just upgrade Word 2013 for the PC to 2021 and I'm just happy there were no major changes I could see.

@hexagonist23 2 жыл бұрын

the feeling when you finally get something to compile without errors is orgasmic.

@luispanaderoguardeno3306 3 жыл бұрын

Short answer about running on Windows 10 : Should if is Windows 10 32 bit version There is a video where a guy does Windows upgrades from Windows 1.0 to Windows 10 32 bit and can keep running original Windows 1.0 applications on every version of Windows. However, the 64 bit version of Windows, dropped all support to run 16 bit applications.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

It doesn't, for very specific and complex reasons. I just haven't gotten around to making the follow-up to this one.

@mikesbasement6954 Жыл бұрын

As the old joke went "OS/2 for PS/2: half an operating system for half a computer" lol

@monad_tcp 2 жыл бұрын

11:42 wow, it did had an use. the infamous ring 2 !

@flp322 2 жыл бұрын

I'm new to the channel and I've been binging your videos (found you via the pinball video, as an MJD subscriber I had to watch :D) However, I can't find the second part of this video (you mention in the end) on your channel. Did you ever manage to get it out? I'd love to see it!

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

Michael MJD actually gave me a shoutout recently in his Compaq portable video.

@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 3 жыл бұрын

MS Dawz?

@donaldklopper 3 жыл бұрын

Yeah what's with that? Is it a common pronounciation? I'm not an English native so I shouldn't complain to hard...

@davidfrischknecht8261 3 жыл бұрын

@@donaldklopper I'm a native English speaker and have never heard it pronounced with a voiced 's'.

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

@@donaldklopper it’s definitely, DEFINITELY not the correct pronunciation in English! “Doss”, not “dawz!”

@maedero05 3 жыл бұрын

Wondering about the old age of Win 3.1, OS/2, old GEOS and overcourse DOS ! OS/2 3.0 had the plus pack, have a system with OS/2 3.x never used it much until now. Hardware a great issue, exchange data, searched for upgrade to 4.x and maybe a zip or network exchange. Like those stories about old age, why an how everything evolved since. Obviously the memory issue than was the biggest hurdle to take when programming anything, well done !

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

DOS/Win16 is sorta a special case because both those environments were badly affected by limitations imposed by the 8086 and 286 processors (specifically segmentation). 386 and later doesn't have that and has in practice not changed much since say 1995 to present day. For environments that didn't have such crazy limitations such as UNIX, in many ways, it's essentially unchanged from the 1970s to modern day.

@schwalleyf 2 жыл бұрын

Just to let you. I was one of the first working with os/2 since 1.0. 1.2 had an official version of word and excel for OS/2 as well as page maker. On thing you had to know there was a Rex application with iOS/2. Banks used the OS/2 because of stability. .

@mxbunnycatter 2 жыл бұрын

I noticed the opus build said preview build in its splash screen. also; where did part 2 wander off to?

@admiralmyxtar3702 2 жыл бұрын

Damn, I really miss actually useful error messages. Heck. it even suggests what you should do to fix it (11:27). It's not a like "Uh-oh, something went wrong" or a BSoD with emoji

@deaflat1119 3 жыл бұрын

I think I had a mini-stroke every time you pronounced DOS as DOZ.

@mrt1r 3 жыл бұрын

"Can you compile and run winword in OS/2?"..."Well, technically yes if you install windows on top."

@ssl3546 8 ай бұрын

It would be great to get follow-up on this video. Doesn't have to be perfect - just want to hear those insights you got.

@BigB848484 2 жыл бұрын

13:42 - one of the people listed in the copyrights is actually my university teacher :D

@SuperSmashDolls 2 жыл бұрын

I get the feeling developing Windows applications on OS/2 is basically the PC equivalent of developing Macintosh applications in Lisa Workshop.

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

It probably was, but it was quite awhile before there was enough get up and go on an actual Macintosh to do development. I won't be surprised if Apple kept using Workshop until the Macintosh Plus or even later because early Macs were really anemic.

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

@@NCommander But the Lisa’s 68000 CPU ran several MHz slower than the one in the Mac. Equipped with the same amount of RAM and a hard disk, the Mac was almost certainly a much faster build environment than the Lisa.

@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын

@@tookitogo Did the Lisa use the same memory for video, though?

@tookitogo Жыл бұрын

@@nickwallette6201 Yes. I’ve never, ever seen mention of the Lisa having separate video memory.

@monad_tcp 2 жыл бұрын

Every company should do like Microsoft did and release the source code after 20 years, for archival, before its completely lost. We lost so many pieces of historical software already, its kind of sad.

@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын

20 years. That would mean XP is due for open-sourcing. wwhhheew... that did not feel good to contemplate.

@monad_tcp Жыл бұрын

@@nickwallette6201 XP reminds me of my teenager years. There are people born after 2000s Eew They were babies when XP was launched

@monad_tcp Жыл бұрын

We are just old bro.

@Mnxglitchz 21 күн бұрын

5:00 Presentation Manager is this way because of the infighting between IBM divisions and Microsoft. (Before anyone comments, I'm not a know all person and my sourse is a video by the youtube channel "Another Boring Topic", so please don't act like I'm a person who just argues and doesn't understand opinions or sarcasm/jokes as I'm not).

@Dorff_Meister Жыл бұрын

In my relatively limited experience, grep, fgrep, and egrep often all use the same binaries and sets the switches based on which one you ran. Or egrep and fgrep are scripts that call grep with specific switches. You MIGHT have had everything you needed, already if either of these two cases were true. Or you could have edited the script to have grep called instead but add the -E flag for egrep.

@NCommander Жыл бұрын

Tried it, didn't work. These look like they were right out of AT&T UNIX, so probably was still all seperate binaries.

@gardener_leaftail 3 жыл бұрын

I wonder if it is possible to build word on modern linux distros

@Alexagrigorieff 3 жыл бұрын

For what it's worth, the 32 and 64 bit PE (Portable Executable) executables in modern Windows still have the MS-DOS stub in the first hundred bytes, which will print "This program cannot be run in DOS mode", if started under DOS. You can link a PE file using any DOS program as a stub.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Indeed correct; the MZ binary at the start infact part of the PE specification. Even grubx64.efi on my system has "This program can't be started in DOS mode".

@dr.shuppet5452 2 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander I wonder if EFI executables also have this on Itanium. I'll have to check it tomorrow.

@0x8badf00d Жыл бұрын

@@dr.shuppet5452 Well?

@mrlint0 3 жыл бұрын

So I have a clear recallection reading about the maligned word 6 for macos, and how it was supposed to have been written in some kinda script language from the windows version. But it's much better explained by the bytecode runtime

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I actually made a slight factual error (it's noted in the writeup); Word itself is compiled to bytecode, but EL is actually the runtime for the macro language. I meant to address this in part 2 of Word, but TBH, that video has had difficulty in the scriptwriting stages so its deferred until I can manage to tackle it.

@barowt Жыл бұрын

Not about OS/2 but I was playing with 86Box last night, and found that when installing Windows 95, you can opt to load up the old style 3.11 File Manager instead of the Windows 95 desktop..

@croquagei1 2 жыл бұрын

I think one of the other technical/marketing problems with OS/2 was what incentive was there to create a native OS/2 application? With OS/2 having a Windows personality, you could run Windows 3.x programs flawlessly. So if you were a developer, why limit your market to only OS/2 users (or develop two versions) of your application when a 3.x release would work on both. Without any "killer apps" you couldn't get on Windows, why would you use OS/2?

@Ybalrid 2 жыл бұрын

I have heard Microsoft also used their own homegrown Unix (xenix?) system on a PDP-11 (called Miss Piggy), and was used by the dos development team 🤔

@hinzster 2 жыл бұрын

As a former user of OS/2 1.2 (briefly), 1.3 and 2.0 I have to admire your bravery. 1.2 was a bugfest, 1.3 was somewhat ok, but it was first with 2.0 that I (as a DOS developer) could exchange DOS for OS/2 and have a better development environment. Yes, the fact that I worked with Clipper (a dBase compiler) and Turbo-Pascal had something to do with that, Clipper was really memory-hungry, and Turbo-Pascal made funny stuff with the screen interface (direct writes if I remember correctly), and none of those were "family-mode" binaries. However, with OS/2 I finally had a better DOS than DOS, even with "three machines" running on OS/2: one to compile, one to edit and one to test the resulting program.

@dr.shuppet5452 2 жыл бұрын

Windows/386 could do that long before OS/2 2.0 was released, sadly, which was one of the reasons for the decline of OS/2.

@darrenstarr1167 2 жыл бұрын

You made a list of why OS/2 failed. It was much much simpler than that. Development tools were net readily available… meaning you couldn’t just pirate them from a BBS. So, no one developed for it.

@rursus8354 2 жыл бұрын

OS/2 3.0 was pretty nifty. I didn't run it much though.

@MrKnightmeister 2 жыл бұрын

Hey, you still planning part 2? Talk about cliffhanger!

@PeterRichardsandYoureNot 2 жыл бұрын

Was so excited to see this. We implemented a phone system voicemail system using OS/2 that also used integrated hardware with support for fax cards that allowed our company to win an industry award for most innovative product. Could not finish this though…simply because it’s DOS, as in (DOSS phonetically) not DOZ.

@nickdowse 3 жыл бұрын

Dozz

@darkfoxfurre 2 жыл бұрын

Where's the part two for this?

@johnknight9150 3 жыл бұрын

Cool channel name.

@DJohn001 Жыл бұрын

So the answers of the question at the end remain unanswered? I couldn't easily find a part 2 of compiling word.

@oubrioko 7 ай бұрын

I like how he pronounces DOS: _"daws"_ sounds cooler that way

@proxy1035 2 жыл бұрын

4:22 oof it kinda hurts to see how you set the memory to 8196kB instead of 8192kB then again the sytsem shouldn't care

@gbraadnl Жыл бұрын

4:24 it must have been those additional 4 kilobytes of memory :-P (!~8192)

@Vlad-1986 3 жыл бұрын

You are a cool guy. Wish you had more videos!

@rursus8354 2 жыл бұрын

These questions have a very distinct answer: 1. why compile Word for ... [what] ... ? 2. why should I use OS/2? The answer is: *Because I can!* _(And it is also a moral obligation to geekhood)_

@44Bigs 3 жыл бұрын

Very interesting that they would use OS/2, but looking at the abilities of DOS and pre-386 Windows at the time it makes sense. I wonder how long it took for internal Microsoft projects like this on to move to a development environment hosted on Windows (>=3.1) with something like Visual C++. Also, the bytecode thing? Wow.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

From what I can tell, a lot of MS development was initially done on mainframes, then on-top of Xenix, OS/2, and then primarily Windows NT, although some development was indeed done ontop of DOS/Win 3.1/Chicago/95.

@ciano5475 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander You can ask what it was the development toolchain to David Plummer a MS developer from the DOS era. He has a channel now kzfaq.info/love/NzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw

@rothbardfreedom 3 жыл бұрын

05:06 - This is the Way

@ivanilayakimova2526 2 жыл бұрын

Office pack 2003 is beautiful.Yes .I like 2003 version.

@pekkaylonen9611 2 жыл бұрын

So, P-code (pseudo-code) is EL meta data structures like nowadays lambda JIT code to compile inline to actual code or just a data structure for IntelliSense or class inheritance. Note, OS/2 REXX script language with VROjects add-on is still way better than nowadays Powershell. Why in programming to OS/2 you need anchor (application/process instance) and window handle , but in Windows only a window handle? Is it for console extension to GUI paradigm? More, in Windows your 0,0 location is top and left versus OS/2 bottom and left to enforce XGA graphics card usage versus VGA clones. Windows and OS/2 have opposite z-directions to make porting tedious using view port and world mapping efficiently if try to be dual software rendering compliant.

@marksmith9566 3 жыл бұрын

We had one guy at work that loved QS2 and was using version 2.0. The big win was that we were studying optical disks and One had 6 to 8 partitions. It was that way due to the maximum size limitations (DOS?) Getting that many drives working in Windows was prbblematic. There was a server mode that supported 8 total, but between the hard disk partitions and floppies, his system had too many. I liked it better yhan windows but the multitasking didn'y seem as robust as advertised. At least it didn't stop programs not primamry on screen.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

DOS 3.3 and OS/2 1.0 had a 32 MiB partition limitation. OS/2 2.x and DOS 6 tapped out at 2 GiB. I want to say OS/2 Warp was the one that finally let you go much larger but I'm not entirely sure. It is possible to get a full set of 26 (or well 24 drives + 2 floppies) to work with 9x Windows, but you need to do some precision registry edits to make it work.

@marksmith9566 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander There were cheats to make larger sectors on large didks but it wasted a lot of space for small files. That's why system disks were always on a small partition. The disk was set up fot DOS/Windows so the 32 MByre was the limitation. I always liked the optical read/write drives but big magnetic drives killed them. The only one we used long term was the WORM drives, the archive folks loved them because all revisins were tracked.

@Alexagrigorieff 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander FAT12 vs FAT16

@Kw1161 3 жыл бұрын

I still have my copy of OS\2 warp which contains a much more stable windows 3.2. I believe that OS\2 Warp failed because Windows 95 was not available because the IBM and MS partnership had failed. It made OS\2 useless for the end user for upgrades which is a shame.

@trekrich28 2 жыл бұрын

I suspect word 2.0 has 90% of what people use in word today.

@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын

I was thinking that, too. The simple toolbar looks refreshingly productive after the "where the crap is this feature I have to use every three months??" that is ... The Ribbon.

@kennytheamazing 2 жыл бұрын

Did the follow-up video to this ever come out? I can't find it...

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

Life sorta happened. I might still do it, but its on the backburner.

@kennytheamazing 2 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander No worries! I was just wondering if I missed it!

@Darkillust 2 жыл бұрын

very classic

@c128stuff Жыл бұрын

Haha.. you are pretty good at picking really torturous projects... 🙂 Love it tho.

@anidnmeno 3 жыл бұрын

5:00 there actually was!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

It took a lot of temptation not to clip in the Futurama scene "We kept it gray".

@inkstray 2 жыл бұрын

Can it be compiled for linux too? Wait so the license even prevents from releasing a patch?

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

No, since due to the custom C compiler it doesn't really match WINE's API, and the license prevents you from doing any real work with it.

@ProBloggerWorld 2 жыл бұрын

„…tortures himself through trying to compile…“: hell yes! As cool as reverse engineering assembler, which I did many years.

@martinprohn2433 Жыл бұрын

Somehow I didn't find the video where you run this (or not run this) on Windows 10. Can you maybe share a link here?

@NCommander Жыл бұрын

I never made a follow up for life reasons, but its still on the topics list. Hopefully soon.

@guiorgy Жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Hope to see it soon 👍

@ajplays-gamesandmusic4568 Жыл бұрын

Wasn't OS/2 Warp the graphical version of OS/2? I thought OS/2 was text be based (like DOS).

@YaztromoX Жыл бұрын

OS/2 1.0 was text based, but subsequent versions had a GUI. OS/2 2.1 introduced the WorkPlace Shell GUI, which was what was used in WARP 3 and WARP 4.

@trevorphillips8000 Жыл бұрын

New intro animation!!!

@BritishBeachcomber Жыл бұрын

OS/2 had an *interesting "feature".* If you put a task/thread into an infinite loop with no system calls it would *hang the whole OS.*

@briansomething5987 Жыл бұрын

Untrue. OS/2 was pre-emptively multitasked. However, it had a single GUI input (mouse/keyboard) queue, so if you had a GUI thread that never popped its requests off the input queue it would prevent other applications from ever seeing their input (until you pressed CTRL-ESC to change tasks and killed the offending program). This was fixed in later releases.

@NCommander Жыл бұрын

Half correct. This was never actually fixed, and the fix was disabled throughout the IBM days by default. (it didn't ship until Warp 4). Even then, you could still cause a deadlock in the queue, since the SIQ still existed.

@BritishBeachcomber Жыл бұрын

@@briansomething5987 OS/2 *claimed* to be pre-emptively multitasked, but that implies that a task could never hang the system. That was clearly not true.

@briansomething5987 Жыл бұрын

@@BritishBeachcomber It did not 'claim' to be preemptively multitasked, it WAS. Every thread always got its timeslice to run. A 'rogue' thread could not stop that, no matter what it was doing (or not). 'Hanging' the GUI had nothing to do with whether it was preemptively multitasked, and a 'hung' GUI is not a hung system. All non-GUI threads (for example, daemons) would continue running normally. Even the GUI threads were running normally, it was just that their messages were never presented to them. Any abuse of a global resource (for example, the input queue) will impact all users of that resource on ANY system, and has nothing to do with how that system is multitasking.