Topics on this page:
Backbround Information
Preliminary Research
Gathering Up The Pieces
The First Attempt
Conclusion
DJE Systems Links
Our first entry into the world of Windows/95 comes almost as Windows/98 is about to be foisted upon an unsuspecting public. There are still a LOT(!) of problems with Win/95 (and Win/98, but that will be another story - maybe later this year (1998)). We'd been stung personally by one of the big ones - the fact that Windows/95 will corrupt the boot sector of any diskette you attempt to use as the target of a move or copy operation (only "fatal" for DOS-format, non-DOS boot floppies, not harmful to DOS or Win/9x). We'd heard of other problems, as well.
We still use MS-DOS V6.20 + WFW V3.11 as our everyday machine and also as our development system for the website and the BBS. It's DOS/Win, but hey - it works well enough. Coming from a background in IAS and RSTS/E (DEC PDP-11 o.s.'es), we found "8.3" moderately liberal compared to RSTS/E's 9.3 and IAS's 6.3. So, "long filenames" were hardly a necessity, until we started looking at FreeBSD and Linux. (Mostly Linux.)
We first encountered Win/95 on a jobsite. It was an OpenVMS shop using Xyplex bridge routers. The Xyplex gear boots from a DOS-format diskette. When we attempted to use Win/95's Explorer to copy files to/from the Xyplex boot diskettes, we found that the diskettes were no longer bootable.
This was traced both to a boot sector corruption which, at the time, we blamed on Explorer instead of Win/95 itself, and to a "feature" of Win/95: Control-Drag in Windows/9x Explorer DOES NOT copy the file, as it did in Win 3.x; instead it creates a "link" (.LNK) file which "points to" the original file. Even if you Control-Drag a file to the A: drive, you still will find only a .LNK file on the diskette, and not the file itself. You must use the "Send To" option on the Windows Explorer "File" menu.
When our first Win/95 PC came into the house, we began to discover more about Win/95 from a non-technical user's point of view, namely that of the boss's fiance. A startling awakening awaited us, little did we know.
While browsing various documents on the 'net about Windows/95 and /98, it became apparent that upgrading our already expanded '486 would take more than we were led to believe by the Windows/95 resource kit and the slim booklet that can with Windows/95.
In the first place, we're using On-Track Disk Manager to allow the use of a 1.6 GB Samsung disk. Our old-style BIOS doesn't handle this. Trouble with the older Disk Manager (Dynamic Drive Overlay) is that Win/95 doesn't get along with it. After browsing the On-Track site, we found that we could get a moderately priced update that might get us around this one.
The alternative to updating the Dynamic Drive Overlay would be to update the Phoenix BIOS to newer version that lets you twiddle the disk parameters and use the entire disk without help from other software (like the Dynamic Drive Overlay). The technique is called LBA (Logical Block Addressing). You specify 16 or 32 heads and 63 sectors, then adjust the number of cylinders to match the actual disk capacity. This has other repercussions, but other benefits as well, such as converting the machine to a flash BIOS. Definitely an option we'll look at.
Another problem is that all of our existing Windows software (including Netscape Navigator) is 16-bit software. So, we'll be shelling out buku-bux to upgrade everything as we go along. Navigator (even Nav-Gold) is a freebie (sort of), and finding a 32-bit V3 binary is going to be rather a challenge at this late date. You don't want the later versions of Navigator or Communicator as these do not give you the same degree of control over "cookies"; hence, any personal information you have entrusted to the browser can be extracted by any web site. Reflection/2 or /4 will be bit pricey, that's for sure. We'll need a new version of Eudora - that won't be too bad. We'll need to get the Win/95 version of the AOL client (maybe - we may just drop that because all we get on that service is junk mail anyway).
We're planning to keep WFW V3.11 around; so, we should be able to use the old CompuServe client to get their V4 software for Win/95.
We've all seen Win/95 boot up - the "clouds" background and the big Windows/95 title (the startup logo, LOGO.SYS), then you're put into the GUI right away. When you "exit" Win/95, the system shuts everything down (or so it seems).
Well, that's fine for many folks. Our needs, however, include having a DOS environment as well as Windows. We also plan to keep our older Windows around for a while.
So, after the install, we'll need to tweak the system in a major way. We found a lot of good notes on these topics on the Web.
We've got the BIOS upgrade in-house. That's a project unto itself!
We have the Win/95 CD-ROM from before the days of IE Integration. We'll probably need the SP-1 update (already have it).
We found a Navigator-3 book that came with a CD-ROM which includes a binary for Win/95 (including Navigator Gold).
...has not yet been made as of August, 1998 - still finding more problems in '95. Maybe this will need to wait until we can make the jump directly to '98 (minus Internet Explorer and the related desktop motif, of course).
Preliminary ...
A Microsoft-only future is arguably inpalatable, and inappropriate from a practical viewpoint as well. We're still looking for a Linux or BSD solution that will provide an alternative. Perhaps Wabi on Caldera's OpenLinux will prove promising.
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