Operating System Fun

I’ve always been fascinated by the history of computers, and for some reason when I see a copyright date on a piece of software that is as old if not older than myself, I get a weird tingly feeling all over!

Recently I’ve been playing around with Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 which, as the name may suggest, is a fully-functional PC emulator.  You can change it’s settings to mimic dozens of different PC configurations, and it behaves just like a computer should.  VPC 2004 comes complete blank, so you can install your favorite operating system and other software and have fun.

Last night I was able to install a pieced-together version of MS-DOS 5.0 along with Microsoft Windows 1.01, which was as you may guess the first version of Windows released in the late 80′s.  I actually got it to install and then boot, and even though it was all monochrome and didn’t really have that many features, it was still kinda neat!  And I even got a Blue Screen of Death, which I have to say is comforting to know that the BSOD has been with Windows since its early inception   My next step will be to install the much enhanced Windows 2.03 which I also found floating around the internet.