Is anyone here still using a 32 bit operating system?

[eharper256]

4 hours ago, Murdoch said:

 

Genuine question- what windows 3.1 games do you think should be remastered? I researched this recently and there were comparatively few unique to 3.1 games and fewer still (if any) were major popular titles. This squared with my own recollection from the time. Also skimming through the list, at a guess a minimum of 75% of them were made by companies that no longer exist. So not only do you have games that weren't that popular but getting the relevant rights and permissions might be difficult to impossible. The business case doesn't add up.

Simtower? That's literally the only game I remember having to boot Windows 3.1 up for instead of it working through DOS.

There was a psuedo-reimaging called Project Highrise, but it wasn't very good, added way too much complexity to an otherwise simple but fun building game.

[HavoX]

6 hours ago, Murdoch said:

 

Genuine question- what windows 3.1 games do you think should be remastered?

Why, Odell Down Under, of course. :-D

[invictius]

"I use something else" - arm?  16 bit? :D

[LexiMax]

20 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

In other words, don't expect Night Dive Studios, Piko Interactive or Ziggurat Interactive to re-release any Windows 3.1-era PC games via OTVDM on GOG or Steam, anytime soon. 

 

Kex Engine remasters actually make the old code (or are reverse-engineered versions of said code) work with modern API's.

[Kabal9955]

16 bits.

[MFG38]

9 hours ago, Kyle07 said:

Is there even a 32bit version?

 

To my knowledge, no - Win11 is the first 64-bit-only Windows OS from what I recall hearing at one point. Which wouldn't be surprising given the system requirements. I could be mistaken, though.

[Murdoch]

3 hours ago, MFG38 said:

 

To my knowledge, no - Win11 is the first 64-bit-only Windows OS from what I recall hearing at one point. Which wouldn't be surprising given the system requirements. I could be mistaken, though.

 

No you are correct. It can still run 32bit software though.

[Murdoch]

On 6/24/2023 at 9:34 AM, TasAcri said:

Even if you want to use a program or device driver that for some reason doesn't work in a 64bit OS, there's always the solution of virtualization.VMware, Virtual PC, etc. You can even do 16bit stuff while you are at it. No need to compromise your main OS.

 

Agreed. The only reason I didn't move him on was it was dedicated solely to one task and i wasn't sure the software would work on newer systems. Imaged it to an ssd then upgraded it to Windows 10 which tends to like being shifted to other computers better. I usually have older machines around i could put the drive in for him. Backed up the completed image for him too.

[leejacksonaudio]

Using Windows 11 on both my systems with great success, although I am taking advantage of Stardock Software's Start11 menu manipulation software to let me roll the menu interface back to the Windows 7 look and feel. That's the one area I don't like about Win11.

[Martin Howe]

If it wasn't for DEC's idiocy in 1991 (3rd paragraph), Mac users at least could have had 64 bit desktop computers in the mid 90s; IBM PowerPC might not have existed, and boxes of Nintendo kit could well be marked 'Powered by DIGITAL microprocessor technology" (instead of IBM). Turning down Apple's request for AXP chips to use in what became the PowerMac series must have been one of the worst business decisions in history. So yeah, we finally have a mostly 64 bit desktop world - thirty years after we should have :(

 

And after a lot of fuss, I finally got to run DooM on Alpha AXP - thirty years too late :P

 

[DooMAD]

I was using a 64-bit Win7 (sticking with 7 because 8, 10 and 11 suck by comparison).  But that machine sadly blew up, so had to revert to an older 32-bit Win7 machine.  I've encountered a few occasions where it's prevented me from doing stuff because the game or program doesn't support 32-bit, but nothing major.  Then again, it helps that my taste in games is somewhat antiquated.  Most of the stuff I play is at least a decade old.

Edited June 25, 2023 by DooMAD

[Danfun64]

Not counting the old windows 9x laptop my family has that doesn't really see much use.....

 

my main laptop is 64-bit (running Windows 11 Pro). My android phone, on the other hand, appears to use a 32-bit OS with 64-bit hardware, and the thing came out last year (samsung galaxy a13). I am a little worried about its longevity, even by low end phone standards, as the 64-bit transition continues. AFAIK, the very next phone in the line (samsung galaxy a14) is true 64-bit.

[Dark Pulse]

I think I got off the 32-bit yoke when I upgraded from WinXP to Win7, probably back around 2008-ish?

[Azuris]

64 bit since 2009, but i have two 32 bit systems here.

And i often use a preset Dosbox with Win 3.11, not sure if that counts ;)

[Professor Hastig]

On 6/23/2023 at 10:54 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

And because NTVDM and the 16-bit Windows on Windows subsystems were discontinued by Microsoft with the release of Windows 11, no one is interested in re-releasing any Windows 3.1-era PC games on digital distribution platforms like GOG or Steam via OTVDM anytime soon.

 

In other words, don't expect Night Dive Studios, Piko Interactive or Ziggurat Interactive to re-release any Windows 3.1-era PC games via OTVDM on GOG or Steam, anytime soon.

 

A bit late - but what the hell are you talking about?

None of this remastering has any relevance on the discussion. A remaster is to port the game code to a different platform or to a more modern incarnation of the original plarform, meaning that none of the original limitations still apply, disregarding the issues from poor original coding, of course, because one point of a remaster is to fix these issues.

 

Aside from that, is this ancient stuff really valuable enough to cut oneself off from modern software? I haven't been using 16 bit software for almost 20 years by now.

 

[gabriel_64]

My PC stats

 

device name    DESKTOP-UTS584I
Processor    Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual  CPU  E2140  @ 1.60GHz   1.60 GHz
RAM installed    1,50 GB
system type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

 

Edition    Windows 10 Home
Version    22H2
Installed in    ‎27/‎09/‎2021
compilation of SO    19045.3086
Experience    Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19041.1000.0

Edited June 27, 2023 by gabriel_64

[Murdoch]

11 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

A bit late - but what the hell are you talking about?

None of this remastering has any relevance on the discussion. A remaster is to port the game code to a different platform or to a more modern incarnation of the original plarform, meaning that none of the original limitations still apply, disregarding the issues from poor original coding, of course, because one point of a remaster is to fix these issues.

 

Sheldon is obsessed with 16 bit and 32 bit, and seems to think the industry moving on from it is a great crime in spite of plenty of emulation and virtualisation options available for anyone wanting to run software from the era. He also refuses to clarify just why this is the case. He just shows up, says "OMG support for old thing being dropped!".

[Herr Dethnout]

13 hours ago, gabriel_64 said:

My PC stats

My boy here with te Pentium Dual CPU supremacy B)

 

Seriously, what a good cpu, although mine is more powerful (2.6 ghz), is a low end beast even to this day.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Herr Dethnout

[Murdoch]

13 hours ago, gabriel_64 said:

My PC stats

 

device name    DESKTOP-UTS584I
Processor    Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual  CPU  E2140  @ 1.60GHz   1.60 GHz
RAM installed    1,50 GB
system type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

 

Edition    Windows 10 Home
Version    22H2
Installed in    ‎27/‎09/‎2021
compilation of SO    19045.3086
Experience    Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19041.1000.0

 

In most places RAM is pretty dirt cheap. Talk to a computer tech in your area. If they are anything like me they have a stack of the stuff from old machines. Might be willing to do you a deal. I honestly don't know how you function with so little RAM.

[PsychEyeball]

Stayed in 32-bit land until 2012, where I was doing music with lots of VSTs in a way that they would drain all my RAM and make my music composing software crash. Upgraded the RAM from 2 GB to 8 GB... only to learn I could only use half of it due to 32 bit limitations!

 

Once came the time to do some spring cleaning on the PC and reformat everything, I reinstalled Windows 7 in 64-bit mode and never looked back. By this time, every company and their mom were making 64-bit drivers so everything went without a hitch.

[Taw Tu'lki]

Me. Have an old PC from 2003.

[HavoX]

On 6/25/2023 at 12:52 AM, leejacksonaudio said:

Using Windows 11 on both my systems with great success, although I am taking advantage of Stardock Software's Start11 menu manipulation software to let me roll the menu interface back to the Windows 7 look and feel. That's the one area I don't like about Win11.

@leejacksonaudio I have a question. Did you have any problems with Windows Update while using Start11?

 

Let me explain. I recently had a botched update that rendered my PC useless. My brother had a look at it, and he determined it was an issue with explorer.exe causing a crash loop. (I was lucky I didn't lose anything!)

After I did some further investigation, I discovered that ExplorerPatcher was the possible culprit. Either way, I got rid of it and OpenShell, and bought Start11 during the Steam Summer Sale. (OpenShell can't be run with Start11 anyway.)

Edited July 6, 2023 by HavoX

[leejacksonaudio]

8 hours ago, HavoX said:

Did you have any problems with Windows Update while using Start11?

No, never.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

Using a Macbook, I actually think 32bit is something of a luxury over here. I tend to find quite a few cool software only to find out you have to roll back to a very old OSX version to use them.

[Murdoch]

8 hours ago, HavoX said:

After I did some further investigation, I discovered that ExplorerPatcher was the possible culprit.

 

No possible about it. Explorer Patcher was unquestionably the culprit. I was using it on my customer's computers but had to stop when probably a dozen or so had that exact problem.

[HavoX]

^ Confirmed. I updated my PC with the June updates and no issues. I will NEVER use that POS again.

[Murdoch]

7 minutes ago, HavoX said:

^ Confirmed. I updated my PC with the June updates and no issues. I will NEVER use that POS again.

 

I do not necessarily think Explorer Patcher is directly to blame. My understanding of how it works is that all of the interface files from past versions of Windows are still there, and it is hacking things to tell Windows to use those instead of the new Windows 11 ones. When the updates happen, sometimes that hack gets partially broken, causing the repeated crashing behaviour. So it's less about incompetence on the Explorer Patcher developers but more just the sheer nature of this kind of hack causing problems.

[prfunky]

On 6/24/2023 at 3:47 AM, Murdoch said:

 

Genuine question- what windows 3.1 games do you think should be remastered? I researched this recently and there were comparatively few unique to 3.1 games and fewer still (if any) were major popular titles. This squared with my own recollection from the time. Also skimming through the list, at a guess a minimum of 75% of them were made by companies that no longer exist. So not only do you have games that weren't that popular but getting the relevant rights and permissions might be difficult to impossible. The business case doesn't add up.

 

I can't see a case for wanting to run any Windows 3.x games. The OS was dog-slow for running

games. DirectDraw/DirectX' dawn on Windows 95 was a welcomed change! In Win 3.x days, we

just ran DOS games with 32-bit extenders (Hi Doom!).

 

And cuz everybody else is doing this:

=============================

OS: Xubuntu 22.04.2 LTS x86_64
Kernel: 5.15.0-60-generic
Uptime: 39 days, 10 hours, 16 mins
Packages: 2560 (dpkg), 4 (flatpak), 17 (snap)
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 1366x768
DE: Xfce
WM: Xfwm4
WM Theme: Piranha Magenta
Theme: Green Forest [GTK2/3]
Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3]
Terminal: xfce4-terminal
Terminal Font: Monospace 14
CPU: AMD Athlon 5350 APU with Radeon R3 (4) @ 2.050GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon HD 8400 / R3 Series
Memory: 4499MiB / 7379MiB

[Murdoch]

48 minutes ago, prfunky said:

I can't see a case for wanting to run any Windows 3.x games. The OS was dog-slow for running

games. DirectDraw/DirectX' dawn on Windows 95 was a welcomed change! In Win 3.x days, we

just ran DOS games with 32-bit extenders (Hi Doom!).

 

Yes I don't remember going out of my way for any Windows 3.1 specific games. And the built in ones like Minesweeper never commanded my attention for long. As you say, it simply wasn't a platform designed with games in mind. Unfortunately any time I ask Sheldon about stuff like this he never responds. He gets all upset about support for legacy things getting dropped, even though there's plenty of options to keep it going via emulation and virtualisation, and then never explains exactly why this thing about computing that's been happening since day 0 bothers him so much.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Murdoch

[indigotyrian]

1 hour ago, prfunky said:

I can't see a case for wanting to run any Windows 3.x games. The OS was dog-slow for running

games. DirectDraw/DirectX' dawn on Windows 95 was a welcomed change! In Win 3.x days, we

just ran DOS games with 32-bit extenders (Hi Doom!).

 

Lol yeah, the mid-90s even with the release of Windows 95 were this period of time where lots of people were running Windows 3.1 but also lots of people were still running DOS for the performance boost, and as a result a lot of IBM/Compatible games just didn't really run well on either.