CrystalMark Retro benchmark extends support all the way back to Windows 95
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They really were the daddy of optical drives at that point; expensive but absolutely worth it.
It was sad to see them become just a brand on generic tat.
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With proper driver. Multiple options. Not linking any because I haven't tried them yet. (Usually I just use smaller flash driver and FAT32)
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This benchmark is variant of classical CrystalMark and DOES show various things (flying CPUs, wireframes,...) during OpenGL tests. Seems your driver has borked OpenGL support. (Not surprising considering it is VooDoo3 GPU which AFAIK never properly supported full OpenGl)
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Dave Cutler joined Microsoft in 1988 and led Windows NT from its inception* to its 1993 launch. It was a full multiprocessing, multi-CPU OS from launch and even supported multiple CPU architectures at that point.
* well, depending on to what extent you view it as rising from the ashes of Microsoft's contributions to OS/2, I guess. But, regardless, he didn't suddenly fly in for NT 4.0 and 4.0 wasn't especially different from 3.1 and 3.5 architecturally in terms of process management.
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I’d say “ah the nostalgia”, but to be honest the speed boost I experienced going from a single to a quad core, even on an old HDD, during the early days of the intel Core era, reminds me of how slow those single core processors were and how much better our experiences would’ve been if intel had cared one bit about usability and moved to dual cores early on.
it just makes sense to have a 2nd thread capable of chewing through user facing tasks if a windows program gets bogged down in the background.
it just makes sense to have a 2nd thread capable of chewing through user facing tasks if a windows program gets bogged down in the background.
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Unfortunately intel never made multi cpu architectures available to consumers for decades, despite the huge usability improvement they provided. Nothing like watching your entire computer become unresponsive because of one silly program getting hung up. No task manager for you until this program finally finishes after 5 minutes.
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ZOMG, that's the MDK benchmark! Those triangly bits rotated, and it supported MMX
I absolutely loved the vibe of that game, there hasn't been anything quite like it since then. MDK2 was also fun, but much more conventional... although the toast-gun made me ROTFLMAOASTC.
I still wish we could see a faithful MDK3 somehow
This level looked like ray tracing to me decades before it was consumer ready lol
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I'm going to be that guy and say I was disappointed in the knee-jerk reactions of "don't ever connect it to the internet!" in the earlier linked Jul 10, 2023 article by Cunningham, as well as here. Firstly, I think 99% of people setting up vintage Windoze 32-bit machines at this point are technically competent, by necessity, and don't need noob treatment. Secondly modern malware is very unlikely to work. Is there still malware targeting, for example old factory machines like CNCs? Yes, but it's not likely to hurt the Retro-gamer, and if it's not 24/7 connected, the chance of it infecting other machines is also very low. Are there black hats targeting Win 95 and Win 3.11 machines? IDK- I'd like to see some evidence from the "wild". Basically I'd like to see evidence for retro-machine infection from someone other than a clickbait YouTuber. These incidents will no longer be large companies wanting to hide security breeches, so there should be at least stories, which might even be very entertaining to hear. As for now I consider "don't ever connect!" to be along the same lines as advice you'd get from some teenager newly hired for the Geek Squad. And if you take the time to downvote this, why don't you answer me with a post, too?
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I understand where you're coming from. I really do. And I agree that most people with the expertise to even build a retro system and get it connected to a network in the first place probably don't need this advice, but...
I WILL say that connecting a retro machine to your network means it is on your network. Some of us still use SMB1 on our internal networks just for our retro machines (MS-DOS/Win 31-ME). I specifically block that machine entirely from the outside at the firewall on my network as well as the SMB1 TCP/UDP ports because it is a vulnerability I am very aware of.
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I stand corrected. Xenix, released in 1980, did indeed pre-date DOS 4.0 by six years.
Although -AFAIK- Xenix was merely a licensed implementation of System 7 Unix and not actually something Microsoft created on their own, so it's arguably not a "Microsoft OS". I'm not sure how much work -if any- Microsoft actually put into the code. But this is picking nits on nits, so I'll grant your correction unchallenged.
Still, given that it was sold for Z80/x86 processors (i386 support wasn't available in Xenix until after Microsoft sold their rights to SCO), I have to wonder what sort of multitasking it actually used. It wouldn't be impossible to have pre-emptive multitasking on hardware without standardized memory management and protection... but it would be a lot harder.
This being Ars, there's probably somebody here more familiar with the codebase that can set us straight. Just wait for it. ;-)
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I'd love that as well, who knows, maybe a new generation of game devs will be inspired at some print to at least make a spiritual successor...
This level looked like ray tracing to me decades before it was consumer ready lol
The reflections level! That's the first that pops to mind for me too, it was so striking with that era's technology, especially considering software rendering! Dud you know they had different designers for each level? That's part of why they look so different and creative... Oh, and they wrote their own programming language aimed at both programmers and artists, to allow them to work better together.
Truly ahead of its time, that Kurt fella...
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Of course, level 4 "Shakespeare Cliff Refinery" was using some clever tricks for the illusion, such mirrored texture mapping and an invisible pane so you couldn't walk through the inverted geometry. But 1997? At my age? My mind was blown, "How are they doing that?!". The mirror level stood out to me for years.
I'd really love to see someone pick up the series, assuming they love and understand it
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