windows 95

microsoft-formally-deprecates-the-39-year-old-windows-control-panel

Microsoft formally deprecates the 39-year-old Windows Control Panel

Tech, windows 1.0, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2, windows 95, Windows NT / /

losing control —

The Settings app has taken over, but Control Panels aren’t going anywhere yet.

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  • Here’s the Keyboard control panel from Windows NT 4.0.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Aside from some updated Windows Vista-era icons, the design of the modern Keyboards panel is identical.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • The Mouse Pointers panel in Windows NT 4.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Again, Windows 11 hews remarkably close to the old NT-era design.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • The Date & Time control panel from NT 4.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Dig a couple of menus down, and you’ll find a version of Date & Time that still looks a lot like its NT counterpart.

    Andrew Cunningham

With an operating system as old as Windows, what Microsoft decides to remove is often just as (if not more) newsworthy as what it is trying to add. You may or may not care about new AI-themed MS Paint additions or the soon-to-be-reborn Recall feature, but you’ve almost certainly interacted with one of Windows’ Control Panel applets at some point in the last 39 years. And according to a note buried on Microsoft’s support site, those Control Panels’ days may be numbered (emphasis ours):

“The Control Panel is a feature that’s been part of Windows for a long time. It provides a centralized location to view and manipulate system settings and controls,” the support page explains. “Through a series of applets, you can adjust various options ranging from system time and date to hardware settings, network configurations, and more. The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.“

This won’t be news to anyone who has followed Windows’ development over the last decade. The Settings app was initially introduced in Windows 8 in 2012 as a touchscreen-friendly alternative for some of the Control Panel applets, but during the Windows 10 era it began picking up more and more Control Panel settings, and by the time Windows 11 rolled around it was full-featured enough to serve as a complete Control Panel replacement most of the time, with a handful of exceptions made for especially obscure changes (and those who simply prefer the Old Ways).

But while individual Control Panel applets have disappeared over the years—the Displays panel, the Add/Remove Programs screen, panels for deprecated features like Homegroups—Microsoft’s note suggests that the rest of the applets may disappear en masse in some future Windows update. That said, for now, there’s nothing that’s changing in Windows. Even the upcoming 24H2 update still has all the old Control Panels in it, and the gap between “deprecated” and “removed” can span years.

What’s incredible about some of the Control Panels at this point is how far back some of their designs go. You’re never more than a double-click away from some piece of UI that has been essentially exactly the same since 1996’s Windows NT 4.0, when Microsoft’s more-stable NT operating system was refreshed with the same user interface as Windows 95 (modern Windows versions descend from NT, and not 95 or 98). The Control Panel idea is even older, dating all the way back to Windows 1.0 in 1985.

Most of the current Control Panel designs and iconography settled down back in Windows Vista and Windows 7 in 2006 and 2009, which explains why so many of the panels still feature the rounded, glassy look that defines those versions of the operating system (check out the way the clock looks in our screenshots above). It’s one of the few areas of the operating system that hasn’t been spruced up for Windows 11, which is otherwise probably Microsoft’s most cohesive Windows design since 95 and NT 4.0; even old apps like Paint and Notepad have gotten facelifts, while other Windows 7-era holdovers like WordPad have been put out to pasture.

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new-windows-11-build-removes-ancient,-arbitrary-32gb-size-limit-for-fat32-disks

New Windows 11 build removes ancient, arbitrary 32GB size limit for FAT32 disks

Tech, Windows 11, windows 95, Windows NT / /

getting fat —

But the Windows NT-era disk formatting UI hasn’t been fixed yet.

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If you've formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box.

Enlarge / If you’ve formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box.

Andrew Cunningham

As we wait for this fall’s Windows 11 24H2 update to be released to the general public, work continues on other new features that could be part of other future Windows updates. A new Canary channel Windows Insider build released yesterday fixes a decades-old and arbitrary limitation that restricted new FAT32 partitions to 32GB in size, even though the filesystem itself has a maximum supported size of 2TB (and Windows can read and recognize 2TB FAT32 partitions without an issue).

For now, this limit is only being lifted for the command-line formatting tools in Windows. The disk formatting UI, which looks more or less the same now as it did when it was introduced in Windows NT 4.0 almost 30 years ago, still has the arbitrary 32GB capacity restriction.

The 32GB limit can allegedly be pinned on former Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer, who occasionally shares stories about his time working on Windows in the 1990s and early 2000s. Plummer says that he wrote the file format dialog, intending it as a “temporary” solution, and arbitrarily chose 32GB as a size limit for disks, likely because it seemed big enough at the time (Windows NT 4.0 required a whopping 110MB of disk space).

There aren’t a ton of reasons to actually use a FAT32 disk in 2024, and it’s been replaced by other filesystems for just about everything. As a filesystem for your main OS drive, it was replaced by NTFS decades ago; as a widely compatible filesystem for external drives that can be read from and written to by many operating systems, you’d probably want to use exFAT instead. FAT32 still has a 4GB limit on the size of individual files.

But if you’re formatting a disk to use with an old version of Windows, or with some older device that can only work with FAT32 disks, this tweak could make Windows a tiny bit more useful for you.

Listing image by Alpha Six

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a-few-weeks-with-the-pocket-386,-an-early-‘90s-style,-half-busted-retro-pc

A few weeks with the Pocket 386, an early-‘90s-style, half-busted retro PC

80386, book 8088, Features, intel, MS-DOS, pocket 386, Retro computing, Tech, windows 95 / /
The Pocket 386 is fun for a while, but the shortcomings and the broken stuff start to wear on you after a while.

Enlarge / The Pocket 386 is fun for a while, but the shortcomings and the broken stuff start to wear on you after a while.

Andrew Cunningham

The Book 8088 was a neat experiment, but as a clone of the original IBM PC, it was pretty limited in what it could do. Early MS-DOS apps and games worked fine, and the very first Windows versions ran… technically. Just not the later ones that could actually run Windows software.

The Pocket 386 laptop is a lot like the Book 8088, but fast-forwarded to the next huge evolution in the PC’s development. Intel’s 80386 processors not only jumped from 16-bit operation to 32-bit, but they implemented different memory modes that could take advantage of many megabytes of memory while maintaining compatibility with apps that only recognized the first 640KB.

Expanded software compatibility makes this one more appealing to retro-computing enthusiasts since (like a vintage 386) it will do just about everything an 8088 can do, with the added benefit of a whole lot more speed and much better compatibility with seminal versions of Windows. It’s much more convenient to have all this hardware squeezed into a little laptop than in a big, clunky vintage desktop with slowly dying capacitors in it.

But as with the Book 8088, there are implementation problems. Some of them are dealbreakers. The Pocket 386 is still an interesting curio, but some of what’s broken makes it too unreliable and frustrating to really be usable as a vintage system once the novelty wears off.

The 80386

A close-up of the Pocket 386's tiny keyboard.

Enlarge / A close-up of the Pocket 386’s tiny keyboard.

Andrew Cunningham

When we talked about the Book 8088, most of our discussion revolved around a single PC: the 1981 IBM PC 5150, the original machine from which a wave of “IBM compatibles” and the modern PC industry sprung. Restricted to 1MB of RAM and 16-bit applications—most of which could only access the first 640KB of memory—the limits of an 8088-based PC mean there are only so many operating systems and applications you can realistically run.

The 80386 is seven years newer than the original 8086, and it’s capable of a whole lot more. The CPU came with many upgrades over the 8086 and 80286, but there are three that are particularly relevant for us: for one, it’s a 32-bit processor capable of addressing up to 4GB of RAM (strictly in theory, for vintage software). It introduced a much-improved “protected mode” that allowed for improved multitasking and the use of virtual memory. And it also included a so-called virtual 8086 mode, which could run multiple “real mode” MS-DOS applications simultaneously from within an operating system running in protected mode.

The result is a chip that is backward-compatible with the vast majority of software that could run on an 8088- or 8086-based PC—notwithstanding certain games or apps written specifically for the old IBM PC’s 4.77 MHz clock speed or other quirks particular to its hardware—but with the power necessary to credibly run some operating systems with graphical user interfaces.

Moving on to the Pocket 386’s specific implementation of the CPU, this is an 80386SX, the weaker of the two 386 variants. You might recall that the Intel 8088 CPU was still a 16-bit processor internally, but it used an 8-bit external bus to cut down on costs, retaining software compatibility with the 8086 but reducing the speed of communication between the CPU and other components in the system. The 386SX is the same way—like the more powerful 80386DX, it remained a 32-bit processor internally, capable of running 32-bit software. But it was connected to the rest of the system by a 16-bit external bus, which limited its performance. The amount of RAM it could address was also limited to 16MB.

(This DX/SX split is the source of some confusion; in the 486 generation, the DX suffix was used to denote a chip with a built-in floating-point unit, while 486SX processors didn’t include one. Both 386 variants still required a separate FPU for people who wanted one, the Intel 80387.)

While the Book 8088 uses vintage PC processors (usually a NEC V20, a pin-compatible 8088 upgrade), the Pocket 386 is using a slightly different version of the 80386SX core that wouldn’t have appeared in actual consumer PCs. Manufactured by a company called Ali, the M6117C is a late-’90s version of the 386SX core combined with a chipset intended for embedded systems rather than consumer PCs.

A few weeks with the Pocket 386, an early-‘90s-style, half-busted retro PC Read More »

$200-ish-laptop-with-a-386-and-8mb-of-ram-is-a-modern-take-on-the-windows-3.1-era

$200-ish laptop with a 386 and 8MB of RAM is a modern take on the Windows 3.1 era

MS-DOS, Tech, windows 3.1, windows 95 / /

blast from the slightly more recent past —

Pocket 386 supports external accessories and will just barely run Windows 95.

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  • The Pocket 386, a new-old laptop that can run MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and (technically) Windows 95.

    DZT’s Store

  • The Pocket 386 isn’t sleek, but it’s a lot smaller than an actual 386 laptop would be.

    DZT’s Store

  • The system in clear, plus the included dongles for adding external ports.

    DZT’s store

Of the many oddities you can buy from Aliexpress, some of the weirdest are the recreations of retro computer systems in semi-modern designs. We’re most intimately familiar with the Book 8088, a recreation of the original 1981 IBM PC inside a chunky clamshell laptop. The people behind the Book 8088 are also responsible for the Hand386, which is a bit like a late-80s PC stuck inside an old Palm Pilot or Blackberry, and a second revision of the Book 8088 with more built-in ports and a VGA-capable graphics adapter installed instead of a basic CGA adapter.

Whoever is selling these systems is now back with the Pocket 386, which combines Hand386-style internals with a clamshell design similar to the Book 8088. The result is the kind of IBM-compatible system that would have been common during the Windows 3.1 era, when MS-DOS still dominated (especially for games) but Windows was on the upswing.

The heart of the laptop isn’t a genuine retro 386 but an Ali M6117 embedded processor. This is a newer chip that integrates a 40 MHz 80386SX CPU core along with an ALi M1217B chipset. The system also includes 8MB of RAM, one of three different replaceable VGA adapters (either a Cirrus Logic CL-GD542X, a TVGA9000i, or a CHIPS F655x5), a Yamaha OPL3 sound card, an 800×480 IPS display panel, a 4,000 mAh battery, and a CompactFlash slot for storage. There’s no built-in trackpad, though the arrow keys can be used to simulate a mouse. The system also includes a USB port, though as with the Book 8088, it may be usable for mass storage but not for typical USB accessories.

The Pocket 386 supports standard ports like PS/2 and VGA via a number of custom ports and external dongles.

Enlarge / The Pocket 386 supports standard ports like PS/2 and VGA via a number of custom ports and external dongles.

DZT’s Store

For accessories, the laptop includes a few ports on the back that can be attached to external dongles; included dongles can be used to add PS/2, VGA, parallel, and serial ports to the system. The Pocket 386 is available in both a semi-translucent black finish and a clear finish, and though its normal list price is $300, it’s currently listed for $187. An adapter for adding external ISA expansion cards is sold separately.

This system could technically run Windows 95, and the seller will send you a working Windows 95 disk image (in the GHO format used by the ancient Norton Ghost backup and restore software, so you’ll need to figure that out). The Pocket 386 is just over the minimum requirements for Windows 95, which wanted a 20 MHz 386DX processor or better and at least 4MB of RAM. But even running off of a CompactFlash card instead of an ancient spinning HDD, expect Windows 95 support to be slow at best, particularly because of the technically inferior 386SX processor and the still-pretty-scanty 8MB of memory.

This system will work best if you stick to Windows 3.x and MS-DOS, though the extra CPU speed and RAM will make it infinitely more useful for retro apps and games than the Book 8088 running the same MS-DOS and early Windows software.

Listing image by DZT’s store

$200-ish laptop with a 386 and 8MB of RAM is a modern take on the Windows 3.1 era Read More »

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“Temporary” disk formatting UI from 1994 still lives on in Windows 11

Tech, Windows 11, windows 95, Windows NT / /

some things never change —

“It wasn’t elegant, but it would do until the elegant UI arrived.” It never did.

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If you've formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box.

Enlarge / If you’ve formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box.

Andrew Cunningham

Windows 11 has done a lot to update and modernize long-neglected parts of Windows’ user interface, including many Settings menus and venerable apps like Notepad and Paint. But if you dig deep enough, you’ll still find parts of the user interface that look and work like they did in the mid-’90s, either for compatibility reasons or because no one ever thought to go back and update them.

Former Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer shared some history about one of those finely aged bits: the Format dialogue box, which is still used in fully updated Windows 11 installs to this day when you format a disk using Windows Explorer.

Plummer says he wrote the Format dialog in late 1994, when the team was busy porting the user interface from the consumer-focused Windows 95 (released in mid-1995) to the more-stable but more resource-intensive Windows NT (NT 4.0, released in mid-1996, was the first to use the 95-style UI).

Formatting disks “was just one of those areas where Windows NT was different enough from Windows 95 that we had to come up with some custom UI,” wrote Plummer on X, formerly Twitter. Plummer didn’t specify what those differences were, but even the early versions of Windows NT could already handle multiple filesystems like FAT and NTFS, whereas Windows 95 mostly used FAT16 for everything.

“I got out a piece of paper and wrote down all the options and choices you could make with respect to formatting a disk, like filesystem, label, cluster size, compression, encryption, and so on,” Plummer continued. “Then I busted out [Visual] C++ 2.0 and used the Resource Editor to lay out a simple vertical stack of all the choices you had to make, in the approximate order you had to make. It wasn’t elegant, but it would do until the elegant UI arrived. That was some 30 years ago, and the dialog is still my temporary one from that Thursday morning, so be careful about checking in ‘temporary’ solutions!”

The Windows NT version of the Format dialog is the one that survives today because the consumer and professional versions of Windows began using the NT codebase in the late ’90s and early 2000s with the Windows 2000 and Windows XP releases. Plenty has changed since then, but system files like the kernel still have “Windows NT” labels in Windows 11.

Plummer also said the Format tool’s 32GB limit for FAT volumes was an arbitrary decision he made that we’re still living with among modern Windows versions—FAT32 drives formatted at the command line or using other tools max out between 2TB and 16TB, depending on sector size. It seems quaint, but PC ads from late 1994 advertise hard drives that are, at most, a few hundred megabytes in size, and 3.5-inch 1.44MB floppies and CD-ROM drives were about the best you could do for removable storage. From that vantage point, it would be hard to conceive of fingernail-sized disks that could give you 256GB of storage for $20.

Plummer was involved with many bits and pieces of ’90s- and early 2000s-era MS-DOS and Windows apps, including the Task Manager, the Space Cadet Pinball game, and the first version of the product activation system that shipped with Windows XP. Plummer left Microsoft in 2003.

Listing image by Getty

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