Old Computer Challenge Day 1 Proper
I realised earlier on that I was unlikely to complete 2024’s OCC as a continuous week. Instead I decided to limit myself to about an hour per day spent on OCC on dedictated OCC time. Well, that didn’t quite work out as intended either. I’m definitely going to work up to the full 7 hours of time. I just have to try and fit it in around everything else.
This photo was taken with my Sony Mavica FD-200, saving the photo to floppy disk as read on the PC I've written this post with.
Using Windows 3.11
I did use Windows 3.11 extensively in the 90s both at college and at work but I have to say I never really liked it. It was never as good as Workbench 3.x, nor did it come close to MacOS System 7, let alone MacOS 8 or 9. Still, Office 4.3 is mighty quick on this system and Word 6 is responsive as heck. Some of the keyboard shortcuts I remember, some not so much but I’m (re)learning.
My first stumbling block was getting screenshots. The tradition is to use the prtsc key and paste the buffer into MS Paint, but this won’t work for full screens as MS Paint doesn’t enlarge the image and chops the screen off at the window boundary. After trying and failing to get Snagit to output to file I stumbled across PaintShopPro, arguably the best Win16 art package, and was able to paste my screenshots into an enlarged buffer for use in my blog posts... yay!
Getting files onto the Windows system is complex, and this was my second problem. Although my Windows 98 install can see USB, System Commander hides the DOS partition. This means I have to boot into a mini-XP livecd with USB support, transfer files from USB to DOS and then reboot. Going the other way is similar. This is a particular pain for me as the Mavica FD-200 camera I’m using has a floppy drive built in but my T42 Thinkpad doesn’t. My only floppy drive available to the Thinkpad is USB. So it’s back to the XP boot CD to get things moved!
All things being equal I’m finding the Windows 3.11 experience underwhelming. When I’ve used CP/M I’ve been impressed at the quality of SuperCalc and Wordstar. When using the Amiga it was actually a joy to use, even though some things were quite fiddly. OpenBSD and Haiku are great to use too. If I could sum up Windows 3.11 in one word so far, it’d be... meh. Maybe it’s because it set the standard, or maybe it’s because it fell just short of it.
What Next
Now I have the system working with basic document writing and convoluted file transfers, the next step is to edit some photos. PaintShop Pro might be enough, but just in case I need more I thought I’d try Aldus Photo Styler. I never tried it before, so using it with the Mavica should be should be interesting.
I’d also like to look at publishing options. I have MS Publisher, but I also have other tools to try. Finally I need a PDF generator. I’ve read mixed things about PDF creation support but I’ll see what works and give it a try.