The person that posted the Windows 98/Chicago Beta made me remember that I have carried this around for 30+ years.
Posted by dendrocloud@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 42 comments
Why? I have no idea. I remember being excited that it had a quasi posix compatible filesystem. I had switched to Linux by that time and tossed it in a drawer and it moved with me all over the world.
aardvarkjedi@reddit
I got one of these when my company sent me to an event in San Francisco, which was to introduce NT to application developers. Gates gave the keynote and Dave Cutler gave a talk on NT internals.
That early copy of NT was sloooooooow!
vabello@reddit
That just reminded me that I was part of the Windows 2000 beta program. I had betas of workstation, server, and advanced server. They also sent me final RTM versions. I might still have them around here somewhere.
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
I think that was the beta NT they sent out in some developer conference, right? Could be really interesting stuff. I wonder if there are also beta developer tools there.
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I think this was sent to hardware OEMs. I had a part-time job at an Intel distributor at the time. I think this has the hardware combatibility tests.
It might have dev tools too. I may buy a CD reader and find out one day.
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
Thank you! What is your path starting with Linux back in 1993 and what do you do mostly? I think you probably bagged a lot of experience and history so would like to pick your brain, if you don't mind 😄
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
Linux started as a hobby. I liked UNIX and it was crazy expensive in the 90s. I was always looking for free ways to get it. It became a career. I was the distro lead that created Ubuntu Server at Canonical. I also founded OpenStack.
Tomorrow I am heading out to speak at O11yCon SF.
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
Wow glad to know a legend. I’ll check the conference talk page tomorrow.
VivienM7@reddit
You were running Linux in early 1993? Wow...
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I was on the MINIX newsgroup when Linus posted in 91. I made the permanent jump in 92 to SLS and haven't looked back. Linux has been good to me. I'm old.
FuckIPLaw@reddit
Wow, a proper Unix greybeard.
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I'm honored, but a proper greybeard could regale you with stories of Digital moving from VMS to Ultrix and I started with Linux.
Although, I have encountered many in my days, most have moved on to Valinor, and I haven't seen one in decades.
FuckIPLaw@reddit
I figured you at least had some pre-Linux time with Minix considering you were in the newsgroup.
Still, greybeardhood is something you grow into. If you don't count, there may truly be none left east of the undying lands.
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
Oh I have a little, but not professionally. I was a college student when Linux was first announced. Linux turned into a career, so I stayed on that side.
In the Linux community I am probably a beardless greybeard. However, I long ago moved to cloud and now to AI.
VivienM7@reddit
I guess in \~1993, there wouldn't have really been any alternatives for a 'serious' OS that could run on hardware a college student could afford? (I certainly can't think of any, but in 1993, much younger me was reading magazines about Mac System 7 and Windows 3.1... neither one of which I expect would meet your needs... )
VivienM7@reddit
I'm not sure why I got downvoted. I wasn't being sarcastic - having been using Linux before the first release of Slackware is genuinely impressive in my books...
(I am probably substantially younger than you, but I must admit the first time I heard of Linux must have been... hmmm... around the time of kernel 1.2.13? Probably sometime in 1995-6... had a friend who had heard of it somehow and he got one of those CD sets I think from Walnut Creek that had a couple different distributions...)
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I haven't heard Walnut Creek in a long time. IIRC, they used a platypus as a mascot, before Tux existed. But those days have long faded from memory.
VivienM7@reddit
Walnut Creek was a lifeline in those days, for those of us not lucky/old enough/etc to be in universities with Internet access. (Or I guess the wallet/patience for things like CompuServe)
Not only did they have that crazy 6 CD set of Linux distros my friend got, but they also had those shareware CDs mirroring Simtel, some Windows FTP whose name escapes me, and I think there was an OS/2 one too. In practical terms that was basically the only way to get access to that software back in those days...
When that business dried up later in the 90s (enough hard drive space + fast Internet + a cheap burner to burn ISOs was the end of selling Linux/BSD discs), I think they moved into all kinds of crazy things... and yes, haven't heard of them in about 20 years either...
Jorpho@reddit
The InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource? I kind of expected that funny grey blob would have ended up having more of a presence.
VivienM7@reddit
My goodness, I absolutely couldn't tell you what it was called. Maybe it was InfoMagic and not Walnut Creek, now that you mention it.
I probably saw it... once or twice. It had a CD with Red Hat 3.03 and I think another CD had a version of Slackware with the brand new 2.0 kernel. (That I remember because wanting RPM meant going with the older kernel) Not sure what the other CDs were.
You know what? I think it might have been this. https://archive.org/details/InfoMagicSept96Disk2/InfoMagic_Sept96_front.jpg The distro versions line up with my recollection.
sputwiler@reddit
I remember trying to enable Windows 95 disk compression on my 512MB Packard Bell PC to try and fit a Linux install in. It didn't go well w.
VivienM7@reddit
I tried to set up DriveSpace 3 to buy myself some more hard drive space on a 420 meg hard drive. A few weeks in, parents complained that that had made the computer too slow... *sigh* had to somehow squeeze everything back into 420 megs and uncompress it.
(It didn't help that AST helpfully sold a computer with a BIOS that didn't seem able to handle more than 528 megs in early 1995. And it had a single IDE channel for the hard drive and CD-ROM. These low-end PCs were subtly compromised in all kinds of ways, so adding a second hard drive or upgrading to a bigger one would not have been practical.)
ZappaLlamaGamma@reddit
I ran that (later beta build) on a 386DX-33 with 8MB of ram and a 200MB Maxtor drive. I was supporting WfW at MSFT as a temp the. (Did get converted to perm). Anyway, it chugged so hard.
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I ran it on this
I had the 486 DX2 50 model with 32 MB of ram. Man, I wish I still had that.
mikegalos@reddit
IIRC, Windows 98 was Nashville. Windows 95 was Chicago.
Jorpho@reddit
98 was Memphis, but it looks like it was Nashville along the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Nashville
manuelink64@reddit
Is this version uploaded to Archive.org? If not, do it for posterity!
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I'll have to get a CD reader, but I'll look into it.
randylush@reddit
If this is an actually unseen beta then I will fund whatever costs you incur archiving it. And if you sell it I’d probably pay big bucks for it.
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I don't think it is unseen, but it appears to be rarer than I thought. I also have the original paper sleeve, which you can see underneath it.
I'll make sure and upload it, if it ends up being different then what is already on Archive.org.
Anyway, I've carried it around this long. I'll probably hold on to it as a keepsake.
No_Illustrator5035@reddit
lol something once so pervasive, is now rare. I was too young to participate in something like this, so it's neat to see things like this. Thank you for sharing.
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I did a quick search of Archive.org and they have the Advanced Server Beta but not the Workstation. I assumed Microsoft stuff would be everywhere.
I'll do a more though search and upload it if I can't find it.
mdebreceni@reddit
I remember a friend of mine had the OS/2 Warp 3 Beta CD. At the time, Microsoft had just announced another shipping delay for Windows 95.
The OS/2 CD had a picture of a jet plane. “Arrive in Chicago sooner than expected!”
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
I have the Warp 3 CD sitting next to the NT Beta on my bookshelf. It came out in 1994. So it beat Win95 by a ysar.
SolarpunkGnome@reddit
Wonder if I still have my Vista Beta disc?
RCHeliguyNE@reddit
First Linux installation I had was Yddrassil (sic?) with .99 kernel
My very first CD player was bought to install that distro on my packard bell 486. Bight that and a soundblaster to run the CD. Proprietary interface.
I was quite happy to have something that resembled the Sun workstations I admin’d at work.
CD was published by Walnut Creek. Coincidentally we got married in the city park in the large gazebo located in Walnut Creek a that year (1994) 😎
dendrocloud@reddit (OP)
Yggdrasil Linux. I remember it well. It was commercial and cost ~$60. I didn't pay for Linux until a year later when Caldera came out, and I had $60.
Tall-Introduction414@reddit
I have a memory of being in middle school in 1995 and some other kid bragging about how he was using Windows NT, and it was the future.
I was already using Linux (Slackware) and UNIX by then, and we were arguing about which one was better and more stable. In that same classroom we had an OS/2 machine, which seemed very viable at the time. But Linux had the best TCP/IP support.
Alpha nerds jockeying for supremacy. Who would have thought that 30 years later people would still be having the same debate?
EIsydeon@reddit
Had you uploaded this to somewhere like archive.org we could have had a beta version much earlier lol. Amazingly one was only found fairly recently
https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1_build_404
sputwiler@reddit
Are you sure?
Hey-buuuddy@reddit
NT 1 Beta, neat. I entered corporate America when NT 4 server and workstation were around. NT was so much more stable than windows 95/98 that they didn’t supersede NT 4 until Windows 2000 (which was NT 5). NT servers hung around until 2010 in many server racks.
Academic-Shoulder308@reddit
my mcde is nt4.0, microsoft would ship new mcse's a bunch of cd's , reminded me of that
JugglingNaps@reddit
Legend!