Old Computer Challenge 2024 Day 4
I’d been using Windows 3.11 without any great aim and it's instability was getting frustrating. The reliance on the SVGA driver made it quite slow as there aren't any drivers for the T42's card. Installing new software on Windows 3.11 is like gambling - Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose big, but most of the time it’s a rollercoaster with tense moments and a loss over time.
I installed VistaPro 3 for Windows 3.11. I still use the Amiga version and it was nice to try. It feels slow and clunky which is weird as it both resembles and is much faster than the Amiga version. I did some quick renders of Washington and Olympus Mons.
I had some ideas for a zine but decided to go full meta and make the zine I make on Windows 3.11 to be a zine about Windows 3.11. Originally I wanted to sing Windows 3.11's praises and preach the gospel of it being better than modern Windows. Unfortunately, that’s not a gospel I believe in.
The instability doesn't come from Windows 3.11 itself as much as a lack of standardization on how to do things. Everything does what it wants, causing files to be inaccessible when needed, or things failing spectacularly with no common logging framework or instrumentation. Windows 3.11 lived in an era where a lot of software changed hands, often for the worse. Lets say you Want to try Wordprefect for Windows 3.11. Your options include:
- WordPerfect WordPerfect for DOS or Windows
- Borland Office WordPerfect
- Novell PerfectOffice WordPerfect
- CorelOffice WordPerfect
- Corel WordPerfect Office (not to be confused with WordPerfect Corp's WordPerfect Office)
Don't even get me started on the shit Adobe kept pulling through the 90s, although even if you don't know you can probably guess. While it’s refreshing to see Enshittification has a long history, finding a stable version of a tool that does what you want the way you want can be surprisingly difficult.
I wrote a zine outline and transferred some tools to try out. 2 out of 4 installed, of which 1 was usable. This is a good result for my Windows 3.11 install. I started on the cover page using the Sesame Street Art Workshop to create a cover image featuring dinosaur skeletons, which I thought was quite apt.
I installed Aldus Pagemaker only to find I'd installed a US version that really didn't like A4 pages. Every time QuarkXPress starts it pops up an error warning me of a general protection fault in KRNL386.EXE but was fairly good to use aside from being very crashy. Unfortunately it could only print to greyscale as it didn't recognize Acrobat Distiller as a Postscript Printer. I installed a UK version of Aldus Pagemaker 5 and while that can print in colour it doesn't seem to embed fonts in the output. Obviously I have some way to go before I can start doing the Zine proper. If I can't fix the font rendering then I'll have to look at MS Publisher.
It might sound like I don't like Windows 3.11. That's not strictly true. I just find it slow, clunky and unstable compared to other OSes of the time like Workbench 3 and System 7.
In fact, there are some bits of Windows 3.11 I do like. As I type I’m tiling word windows so my notes and text are on the same screen. I can tile windows in most applications using the Window -> Arrange All feature. It'd be nice to have a shortcut key but I'm happy using the mouse.
Unlike modern Windows, nothing is spying on me. Nothing is sending my keystrokes to the cloud. Nothing is taking my words as I write them and feeding them into a giant water-boiling securities fraud machine designed to inflate tech company value and shift GPUs. Life is good. My OCC Adventure now has a purpose, and I’m here for it.