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It has been quite some time since my last post, though finally feel I’m at the stage of spending some time and attention towards this blog again. I was expecting followers to dwindle with the presumption it was no longer active, though it’s been nice to see this hasn’t been the case. It is unfortunate that the COVID-19 pandemic continues, which has paralysed at least in Australia the freedoms and enjoyment people took for granted.

Over the year I was experiencing chronic sleep apnoea in which I would regularly stop breathing. This had led to a poor quality of life and the need for naps at random times of the day from fatigue. I’ve now bought a ResMed CPAP machine which gradually over time has improved my life significantly. Another change has been the prescription for Ritalin just recently, which has helped me tackle ADHD. It has been slow going, though my spirits are up whilst my life has literally had a reset.

There’s been a couple of changes in regards to this blog. Only recently I’ve started receiving auto-generated e-mails of a ‘share request’ by people attempting to download files from here. The files are currently stored on Google Drive, and Google recently decided in the name of improved security add a resource key to the links making the original links posted here not very useful. Please bear with me as I’ll need to spend some time to update the links.

I’m very much an amateur when it comes to Instagram, though a new dedicated account has been created to complement this blog in which content will gradually appear. For visibility, an Instagram link will now show below the e-mail subscription option.

But for now, here’s a photo of me after a few hours participating in a photo shoot in Melbourne back in July.

It goes without saying 2020 has been a challenging time for many globally, even just to get toilet paper. As the year is coming towards an end, it went down like a cancerous spread of bad sectors over a failing hard disk.

At a time like this I feel fortunate to retain my job which happens to be in the energy industry, and that all it really meant was working from home and saving a heap of time on commuting. However, to much extent was one of the few things that kept me going through the year. Whilst not everyone was directly effected by the COVID-19 virus itself, many including myself have taken a hit from a mental health perspective with other issues bubbling away. So for me with the exception of remembering to wear a mask, it was often the last thing on the mind and instead was a time of self discovery.

To cut a long story short, back in January I commenced going to counselling just weeks before Australia recognised the pandemic had spread across to its shores. My wife whose from Japan was increasingly unhappy and agitated about how I was as a husband and a father for our two young sons. Overall counselling continued for several months and ultimately for me to see a doctor. From that, referrals were made to see an endocrinologist and psychologist. Hundreds of questions were provided by the psychologist answered by myself, my mother, and wife, that ultimately led to a formal diagnosis of having autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and a case of “Severity 1” of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It came as a surprise, though understanding these disorders started to make sense looking back to the past from work situations down to childhood. Whilst this was occurring hormone replacement therapy had commenced with the endocrinologist as it was established I was transgender.

Within weeks of discovery of this diagnosis, marriage separation and work stress came to the spotlight. I recall bad dreams such as the typical scenario of being the lonely kid bullied in a schoolyard – except the kids were adults wearing corporate attire pointing and shouting at me all at once. Another time I’d be crying trying to give my sons a bath one evening, feeling so down I contemplated jumping in my car thinking which road to take in order to crash into a big gum tree or brick wall. My arms were shaking, and taking deep breaths it took me an hour to finally calm down. Now I’m taking antidepressants and on the waiting list to see a psychiatrist.

From September the focus turned to finding my own home and having to spend a small fortune on household items and furniture. It wasn’t until 30th of October that I received the keys to my new townhouse. Unfortunately since then I’ve had to resort to sleeping on an air mattress, as there’s allegedly lengthy delays with shipping of furniture. There’s also that sense of losing the family home, and a return back to the rent cycle.

Whilst this isn’t an all-inclusive description of what’s occurred, it’s enough indication that returning to this blog hasn’t been on top of the priority list. Having said that it’s been a nice feeling when a comment pops up to say they’ve enjoyed an article or found the information useful. Also from time to time I receive a message for help. Whilst normally in my nature to help, it’s often not something I can spend the time or energy to solve your problems. I have figured though as the problems are not consistent, that it’s likely to be user error. Had I received several messages outlining the same problem such as receiving a consistent error message, I’d be more inclined to think a post of mine needs some refinement to solve the issue.

As the number of followers has reach the milestone of 100, I’d like to say thank you for taking an interest. Never did I expect my blog to appeal to the wider masses given it’s a niche hobby though the gradual rise of followers and comments of support provide encouragement to continue sharing towards the retro computing scene.

eBay Purchase Price: $19.95 AUD

Country of Origin: Australia

Condition: Excellent

Norton Commander and Norton Navigator have some things in common. Both coincidentally were a motorcycle in the later half of the 20th century, and both were file management software applications acquired by Symantec that are now defunct. Out of the two, it would be fair to say Norton Commander was more commercially successful and competed head-to-head with XTree Gold.

XTree Gold was brilliant in the DOS era, though as with other applications failed to keep momentum transitioning across to Windows. This led to an acquisition by Central Point Software, who in turn were acquired by Symantec. Ultimately Norton Navigator loosely was a replacement for Norton Desktop and XTree Gold aimed at Windows 95.

A faded mark on the copy purchased indicated a retail price of $169 AUD ($99-130 US depending on source). Personally I felt the price was set too high and may have been more successful for around $80 instead. With Windows 95, many felt adequate managing files with Windows Explorer despite offering only the bare minimum. The system requirements also mentioned that it won’t run under Windows 3.x and there was no mention of Windows NT whatsoever limiting its target audience.

From a hardware perspective, requirements were no different to Windows 95 itself. A 386 DX with 4 MB RAM although a 486 DX with 8 MB RAM was more suitable. Installation is brief with only three floppy disks provided. Although missing, the back of the retail box suggests an enclosed coupon was provided on a “multimedia version” of Norton Navigator. Really this appeared to comprise of adding a few tutorials onto CD-ROM covering topics such as the Windows file system and memory management.

I attempted with the later Windows 95 OSR 2.5 release. Clearly it became obvious that it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Executing SETUP.EXE off the first floppy disk, Windows immediately warns that it may not run correctly and obtain a newer version. It was unexpected, and raised suspicion that Navigator was only intended for the original RTM Windows 95 release. At the conclusion of installation, a similar warning appeared that there would be incompatibilities with Internet Explorer 4.0, largely thanks to the introduction of changes to the Windows 95 GUI.

With Navigator installed, changes to the Windows desktop are immediate. Along the taskbar, an additional desktop workspace is provided. The taskbar to the right is meant to have buttons that function much like the QuickLaunch buttons Internet Explorer 4.0 introduced. Except with the later Windows 95 version, the clock needed to be removed in order to see them, or by increasing the width of the taskbar.

Navigator adds an additional secondary desktop, though its toolbar along the taskbar doesn’t play nicely with later versions of Windows 95.

Within the collection of utilities included with Navigator, the Norton File Manager was to me the most useful overall and immediately preferred over Windows Explorer. Built from the ground up with the Windows 95 interface in mind and not just a 32-bit port of a Windows 3.1 application, built-in tools such as creating and extracting ZIP files, FTP support, and synchronisation of directories in different locations were nice additions.

One drawback though was despite functioning okay on a FAT32 formatted hard disk, Norton File Manager was designed to simply expect a FAT16 drive that were limited to 2 GB in capacity. Whilst this didn’t affect stability of the program or throw out weird error messages, as shown below it merely reported both total and free disk space as 1.99 GB. A minor update was available that included a few extras such as FAT32 and DMF floppy disk support. Unfortunately tracking down the update file (1-TO-95B.EXE) was a fruitless exercise with the only links found pointing towards Symantec’s decommissioned FTP server.

Norton File Manager allows easy creation of ZIP files forgoing the need for other tools such as PKZip or WinZip.

As shown below from the Norton Navigator Control Center, several Windows enhancements were provided akin to Microsoft’s own PowerToys. Norton QuickMenus allowed customisation of the Start menu, offering cascade menus for the Run, Documents, and Control Panel commands. Once again these didn’t work as intended on the Windows 95 version I was using.

Norton Navigator Control Center is the place to enable and disable system enhancements.

The Norton LFN Enabler was also of interest to me. Windows 95 introduced long file names, a feature Macintosh users claimed superiority over for a number of years already. Previously due to DOS limitations, the maximum character length was eight. At the time it was reasonably common for a Windows 95 PC to have 16-bit Windows 3.1 applications installed that couldn’t take advantage of this enhancement. Here Norton rectified this limitation with such applications provided they were developed using standard Microsoft-style dialog boxes.

Overall Norton Navigator was a nice-to-have not a got-to-have product, now hardly remembered like a one hit wonder. Symantec were more motivated to maintain their Norton Utilities and Anti-Virus product lines instead.

Download Norton Navigator for Windows 95, 1.44 MB 3½” (3.6 MB)

Scanned image of Norton Navigator’s retail box (front). Click on the image.

Scanned image of Norton Navigator’s retail box (back). Click on the image.

eBay Purchase Price: $15 AUD

Country of Origin: Australia

Condition: Very Good

Ever since Windows dominated the PC landscape, Microsoft Office was and still is the mainstay for productivity applications. Major competitors were Lotus and Corel, though market share had slid to the point where it didn’t really matter who was considered second or third place. Instead of attempting to copy like for like with Microsoft Office, the emphasis became about niche feature sets and avoid alienating their existing user base.

As one would gather WordPerfect Office 2000 was competing with Microsoft Office 2000, albeit with more aggressive pricing. In a similar manner, Corel also offered both a Standard and Professional edition, with Professional including their Paradox database application. This copy purchased sat in-between known as the Voice-Powered edition comprising of a headset manufactured by Philips with the Standard edition of the software. Other offshoots included Small Business and Law Office editions for the legal profession.

System requirements were more forgiving than Microsoft Office. WordPerfect Office 2000 was satisfied with a 486 DX/2 66 PC with 16 MB RAM, and either Windows 95 or NT 4.0 installed. 32 MB RAM was recommended. On the other hand, Microsoft Office 2000 was seeking a Pentium 75 and was a bit hungrier on RAM requirements particularly on Windows NT 4.0. Both office suites were around the ball park of 250 MB for installation dependant on features installed. In saying that, to use with the headset system requirements jumped up to recommending a Pentium II with 128 MB RAM.

Whilst there’s five CDs included, only one is required to install the office suite. Other discs included contain a heap of clip art and fonts, headset software, and a trial version of Corel Print Office, a now discontinued desktop publishing application.

I tested under Windows 95 OSR 2.5 using VMware Workstation. Installation is with the Corel Setup Wizard. In its early stages, the wizard will request your product serial number provided by the Product Authenticity Card. It’s easy to hit the Next button and forgo entering one; no validation takes place at all. It did stutter at having a newer version of DCOM95 (Distributed Component Object Model for Windows 95) installed already than the one provided. Whilst not the most user friendly error for many people, to be fair it’s come from Microsoft’s own DCOM95.EXE distributable file than the wizard itself. The same error occurred installing Microsoft Office 2000. Completing installation required two restarts.

Installing WordPerfect Office 2000.

The golden child in the office suite, by Version 9.0 the spotlight was well and truly gone compare to the product’s earlier years, however this hadn’t meant the word processor was a poorer cousin to Microsoft Word.

Much of the new additions compared to the previous version were minor enhancements more than anything; embedding fonts into saved documents, and the addition of 100 shapes for diagrams for instance. Surprisingly Print Preview was only just introduced. Unlike Microsoft Word however, it was essentially using Page View zoomed out to fit the entire page onscreen with the ability to continue editing the document.

On the main toolbar, navigational tweaks included auto-scrolling through documents and back and forward buttons to easily switch between locations of the insertion point had been provided.

Some of WordPerfect’s features are more obvious to find than in Microsoft Word. For example, if I wish to keep the lines of a paragraph together to prevent a split across multiple pages, it’s simply a matter of selecting Keep Text Together from the Format menu. Word and for that matter the rest of Microsoft Office has a tendency to consolidate options more under multiple tabs, so to access the same feature would have been to select Paragraph from the Format menu and choosing the Line and Page Breaks tab.

WordPerfect showing a document created from Microsoft Word.

Overall if you had been a WordPerfect 8.0 user, it wasn’t considered a must-have upgrade unless you had a tendency to use the more advanced feature sets. I could flip a coin and be content with using either WordPerfect 9.0 or Word 2000 as my word processor of choice.

Since the headset is only meaningful with WordPerfect, I’ll cover it here. In my case, the headset was still wrapped and unused. The ear pads deteriorated to the point it was becoming dust. Due to space and time constraints with setting up a Windows 9x PC at home, I decided to give it a miss for a trial run on its accuracy of speech to text. Version 3.0 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking was chosen to perform this task. A pamphlet is provided in order to understand the method behind dictation, such as saying “foxtrot” to display the letter ‘f’.

Originally a Borland product, Quattro Pro made some headway during the heyday of Windows 3.1, though the release of Windows 95 had been a turning point for this spreadsheet application.

Spreadsheet gurus of the 1990s gravitated towards Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3, though Quattro Pro was still a reasonable product for the SOHO environment.

Using a sample file included with WordPerfect Office, I did a simple comparative test with Excel 2000 to see how both applications would interpret the small data set into a graph without any modifications. Quattro Pro elected for a 3D bar graph and placed the title in an odd position. The X axis labels were totally missed, and generally didn’t make much sense as a whole.

Quattro Pro offered this chart by default for the number of t-shirt orders.

Excel’s charting features were more refined.

Excel on the other hand went for a simple 2D bar graph, and clearly identified both the X and Y axis, though the title appeared as part of the index. Whilst tweaking of graphs is generally necessary regardless, to me it’s an indication that Excel does a better job in this area.

Quattro Pro was king for users of large spreadsheets, allowing up to one million rows and 18,000 columns. Excel and 1-2-3 paled in significance with 65,536 rows and 256 columns. It took several years with the release of Excel 2007 to reach around parity when Microsoft Office file formats changed over to the Open XML standard.

Apart from the increase in worksheet size, very little worth mentioning. There was the introduction of “formula markers” that were blue triangles appearing on a cell to signify it contains a formula.

In terms of spreadsheet software, Excel 2000 and 1-2-3 9.x would be my inclination here if I was required to use it on a frequent basis.

The origins of Presentations came from a circa 1990 product known as DrawPerfect, offering a hint that it was developed by WordPerfect Corporation. Presentation/slide show software was a relatively more saturated segment, competing with the likes of Microsoft PowerPoint, Aldus Persuasion (later with Adobe), Lotus Freelance Graphics, and Harvard Graphics at various stages in the 1990s.

Likewise with Quattro Pro there wasn’t any killer features introduced in this version, and was more of a user interface tidy up to bring more consistency across the suite. Notable features was now having the ability to export to Microsoft PowerPoint files, and the Scrapbook function was greatly enhanced allowing importation of your own media files and categorisation.

Creating a new bitmap image directly onto a slide was easy, opening an editor to customise without resorting to another application beforehand.

Presentations displaying the second slide of a slide show.

It was noted support for Envoy (competitor to Adobe PDF), and Barista (to publish as Java-based documents) were quietly removed, indicating Corel’s recognition these products weren’t particularly successful.

I’ll admit that I’m biased here and would be more inclined to use PowerPoint, which for casual use comes with a better selection of templates to get going.

All the main applications now allowed direct publishing of files into PDF, forgoing the need to obtain Adobe Acrobat. Right-clicking on the menu bar in WordPerfect and Quattro Pro allows a swift change to suit your preference of an earlier version or competitor’s menu layout. WordPerfect could mimic Word 97, whilst Quattro Pro offered both Excel 97 and Lotus 1-2-3. Oddly Presentations had no option at all.

VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) integration was introduced now allowing implementation of complex macros that work interchangeably with Microsoft Office documents. If you hadn’t installed VBA initially as I had, the menu option is outright disabled, so you’ll need to manually rerun the setup installation program to enable it. Personally a more seamless option of presenting a dialog box requesting if you want the feature installed would have been preferable. XML was also implemented, replacing the older and more complex variation that was known as SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language).

A small collection of utilities under the CorelCENTRAL umbrella are included, loosely offering personal information management. These aren’t well integrated into the broader office suite, and personally I’d rather use Microsoft Outlook or Claris Organizer in this segment.

Service Pack 3 was the final batch of bug fixes and enhancements freely available for the suite bringing versioning up to 9.0.0.738 from the original 9.0.0.525. There had been a Service Pack 4 (9.0.0.883) though this was only distributed as a complete piece of software, not just an additional patch file. This service pack largely was aimed at sorting out issues with Windows Terminal Server, Citrix Metraframe, and document management systems. It was only available at the time by contacting Corel, who requested your product’s serial number for validation who would mail out a CD for a small fee. The offer lasted until the release of WordPerfect Office 12 in 2004.

WordPerfect Office 2000 was also made commercially available for Linux. Corel in the late 1990s took Linux seriously, and even released their own distribution simply called Corel Linux incorporating WordPerfect 8.0. An attempt to break the Windows and Office duopoly, this endeavour was short lived.

Scanned image of Corel WordPerfect Office 2000’s retail box (front). Click on the image.

Scanned image of Corel WordPerfect Office 2000’s retail box (back). Click on the image.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, computer terminals such as the IBM 3270 crept up in office environments allowing staff to easily retrieve data from the company’s mainframe. Mainframes tend to come with a hefty price tag and due to significant investment and mission-critical functions, are subject to much less frequent changes. Whilst the computer terminals gradually were replaced with PCs, the mainframes often remained. The protocol for communications lived on (e.g. as TN3270E) allowing emulation of the original computer terminals themselves.

In Part 3 I’ll be checking out Microsoft SNA Server included with BackOffice 2.0, following from Exchange Server and Internet Information Server some time ago. SNA refers to IBM’s proprietary Systems Network Architecture dating back to 1974. SNA Server was superseded by Microsoft with Host Integration Server in the early 2000s.

The role of SNA Server is primarily to work as a gateway between Windows based networks and mainframes (often by IBM), AS/400 mid-range servers and Unix systems, that were to be found in large corporate or government enterprises.

Shown in the diagram above, a possible use case scenario was to have a bunch of Windows-based office PCs connected on a domain using the TCP/IP network protocol. The domain controller is running Windows NT 3.51 Server with SNA Server installed. SNA Server is then configured to connect to an IBM mainframe using the X.25 protocol. Consequently the office PCs could then use terminal emulation software to interact with the mainframe. Conversely information from the mainframe can be directed to the office printer.

Client terminal applications such as Relay/PC Gold and Reflection did allow direct connection to the mainframe from the PC. The attraction to SNA Server however is simplifying the administrative burden for IT departments by centralising connection points and user permissions.

Commencing installation from the BackOffice Installer, Setup was quick to notify this was an evaluation copy of SNA Server 2.11 that allowed for only five concurrent users. As BackOffice was aimed for small business, connecting to mainframes was likely unnecessary but was enough to entertain functionality for those considering it. From what I gathered a regular license was $409 US per server, in addition to $64.95 US per user license. Based on that it was quite a bit cheaper than Version 3.0 in hindsight.

Evaluation only.

Continuing on Setup detects what network protocols are installed on your server, and allows you to select which ones SNA Server is to work with. The complete options are Microsoft Networking (Named Pipes), Novell Netware (IPX/SPX), Banyan VINES, TCP/IP, and AppleTalk.

Next confirmation will pop up about a SNA Server domain name. This was a new feature with Version 2.11 in that it was now possible to have several SNA Server sub-domains under a Windows NT domain.

The server role is then requested, selecting either to be the Primary Configuration Server, Backup Configuration Server, or Member Server with no configuration. Primay and backup roles operate in a similar manner to primary and secondary domain controllers on a network in function, though hold a domain-wide configuration file. The configuration file holds sub-domain information such as the SNA servers, link services, and user information. For each sub-domain there can only be one Primary Configuration Server, though it’s possible to have up to 49 Backup Configuration Servers.

Near the end of installation, the remaining piece is to select and configure link services. This determines the protocol/s to ultimately talk between the NT server and mainframe or other desired system, provided the right hardware adapter is installed.

Configuring a X.25 link.

As Setup completes, the following program group is presented in Program Manager.

SNA Server in Program Manager.

Initially administrators will seek SNA Server Admin where it’s split into three focus points. The Servers and Connections window is fairly self explanatory in that it manages SNA servers within an NT domain, and their connections to a SNA network and its systems. Connections can be easily transferred to other SNA servers as required. Users and Groups links directly with those from the NT domain.

Bridging these together is by incorporating logical units. A logical unit (LU) in short identifies and holds configuration information of users and devices to establish a session onto the SNA network. Variations can occur in the type of connection and terminal emulation for each logical unit.

Logical units of the same kind can be grouped together as a logical unit pool. Some of the benefits of incorporating a pool is to act as a fail-safe in case one of the logical units fails (e.g. one of the SNA servers goes out of service), and balancing the load from users over multiple servers.

Administer servers, connections, and users.

When it comes to SNA, I’m far from being an expert but can somewhat relate. During the 2000s, working in the telecommunications industry I had been using a 3270 terminal emulator to connect to the mainframe that managed telephone lines and billing. One thing that was certain compared to newer web-based systems was that it had rock solid stability. Not once did I experience an outage, nor the need for frequent software updates.

In 1993 Microsoft released Arcade for Windows 3.1, as part of their Microsoft Home product line. Inspired by Atari, it was a small collection of games that had been played in the heyday of coin-operated arcade machines over a decade prior. The following year, it also was made available on the Macintosh. Dima Pavlovsky had been the sole developer.

Fitting onto a single floppy disk, Arcade was typically sold in its own retail package. However on occasion the disk was tossed in with some models of Microsoft Mouse, as had been the case with my copy.

Here’s a rundown of the included titles – Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command, and Tempest which actually contains a little secret.

Atari released this space-themed shooter in November 1979, the oldest in the group. Controlling a spaceship, your aim is to dodge and shoot your way around through an asteroid belt. Shooting larger asteroids will split them up creating more obstacles, and it’s only when they have become small enough they can be disintegrated. From time to time, flying saucers will show up, attempting to shoot you down.

One tip is that you earn more points shooting down the flying saucers.

A year later from Asteriods, Battlezone was released, rated only behind Pac-Man as the best arcade game in 1982 (Third Annual Arkie Awards). The US Army even received a modified version known as The Bradley Trainer. A vector based 3D combat game, the aim is to defend your tank against enemy tanks, missiles, and flying saucers. The cube and pyramid objects can be used for brief protection.

Flying saucers won’t attack your tank, but will be a cause of distraction.

In 1981, it was Centipede. Set in a garden patch of mushrooms, the use of your bug zapper is to fight against the tide of centipedes, spiders, fleas, and scorpions. Ultimately to complete a round the centipede needs to be eliminated in full.

The spiders have a rather unpredictable behaviour making them more difficult to aim. They can either jump long or several short jumps at once.

Alongside Battlezone came Missile Command in 1980. The game is set with having six cities, and three missile launch bases. Each base has 10 defensive missiles in order to protect the cities. The cities were originally named from locations around California where Atari had offices but were removed during development. Considering its time, the Cold War and Soviet Union were deeply entrenched in people’s minds potentially giving influence to the game.

Well placed shots can destroy multiple missiles amongst the explosion cloud.

The final game, Tempest, dates back to 1981. “Tempest transports you into an out-of-control region of space where deadly aliens from a parallel universe are attempting to pour through a series of cosmic tubes.” This is how the game is described in the help file, although to me you’re playing on a 3D surface of different shapes, and zapping anything that moves before it can reach the end. The help file description sounds more exciting.

One tip is to avoid firing at missiles, as they are dangerous and won’t provide additional points shooting them down.

Generally most people who played Tempest were provided with the following level selection upon starting a new game.

Original levels.

Double-clicking the Tempest icon from Windows 3.1’s Program Manager, holding down both T and D keys at the same time gave access to secret levels.

Secret levels.

Another tip that applies to all games. Microsoft claimed that if you’re playing in “less than perfect surrounds” such as at work or in school, hit the Escape key during game play to instantly pause and minimise to the desktop. When no one is looking over your shoulder, use the Alt+Tab combination to get back into it!

Download Microsoft Arcade

One weekend I went for a drive up Horsham way, a good two hour drive from home along the main highway between Adelaide and Melbourne. It’s a sizeable regional centre popular for stopovers. Usually when I’m there the only things I might pick up is fuel or a burger from McDonald’s on the way to somewhere else, so picking up a PC was a rare occurrence.

Stored in a dusty old tin shed, the person I bought from had several identical PCs stacked away, presumably scored from a local e-waste depot. Originally these had been used by what was known as the Wimmera Institute of TAFE in the mid 1990s, later merging to what became the University of Ballarat (now known as Federation University since 2014). For those overseas, TAFE meant Technical and Further Education, and operate in a similar nature to colleges in Canada and the United States.

Due to this the PCs were fairly unremarkable. I was offered one for $50 AUD with a Honeywell AT keyboard, so no complaints from me. Apart from noticing it was a Pentium PC, I didn’t really bother looking closely but was told it worked and the hard disk had been wiped.

The PC as it was received.

Bringing it home I gave the PC a clean up both inside and out. Not perfect, but sufficient. Subsequently a quick power on test indicated all was well and no obvious issues. Reviewing the hardware more closely indicated it had the following specifications:

• Intel Pentium 133 MHz
• 32 MB EDO RAM
• A-Trend ATC-1020 430VX Socket 7 Motherboard
• 1 MB S3 Trio64V+ PCI video card
• 1.2 GB Samsung IDE hard disk drive
• Intel 82595 ISA LAN card supporting both 10Base2 and 10Base-T

It’s pretty standard hardware circa 1996 albeit there’s some indication of cost cutting. Unexpected the RAM was a pleasant surprise, not 8 or 16 MB as first thought. Lacking in what was then known as multimedia capabilities, it led me to walk down to my backyard shed, and pull out a spare sound card and CD-ROM drive. The sound card, a Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro16 II offering excellent SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 compatibility. The CD-ROM drive was a new Sony CDU5211 rated at 52x speed.

The drive was a little fiddly to install, primarily from pulling away the front plastic cover of the case with the cables intact, in order to remove the disposable steel plate that covers the drive bay. I didn’t have a spare 40-pin IDE cable, only the newer 39-pin variety which was a little irritating. To work around this, I rearranged the IDE cable from the PC to allow both the hard disk and CD-ROM drive to share the same cable, using the master and slave jumper arrangement.

With the benefit of now being able to use CDs, it was time to install Windows 95. I personally like to refrain from using Windows 98 unless the PC is at least a Pentium 166 with 64 MB of RAM for the benefit of performance. The only thing needed were the sound card drivers.

Connected to the home network, I transferred some DOS games – Ultimate DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition, Heretic, and Quake. Quake would have appreciated a better video card to achieve beyond 360 x 480 resolution. The Aztech sound card turned out to be a solid performer. I’d still lean towards the Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold that I have for MIDI playback, though still rate this better than some of the ESS sound cards of the time. In 1996, I had an ESS sound card and whilst I forget which chipset it had, it was a budget card that had a tendency to struggle with sound effects from DOS games.

The last little piece I attended to was the LED lights and LCD display on the front of the case. At first glance, the LED light for power wasn’t working at all and it seemed it was merely just a matter of connecting to the motherboard. However as the front panel connector combined the power LED and key lock as one it caused another issue. Ultimately the result was the power light would come on, but the key lock pins caused to lock out the keyboard upon booting up the PC as a security measure. Without having keys to the case, stripping and replacing with a smaller 2 pin connector would be the only workaround.

The LCD display was showing up as 9 MHz initially. I was expecting jumpers to set to the display though there was none to be found. A small battery had been located on the back of the PCB, so pulled this out as it was beginning to corrode. Presumably this is to store the value when the PC has no power. I discovered by accident the value could be changed pressing the PC’s reset button excessively. It’s purely aesthetics though, there’s no connection to the motherboard telling it what to display.

Ideally this PC is best left for DOS games for what it is, and it does that with flying colours. A larger capacity hard disk would be of benefit, as Windows 95 and the aforementioned games already took about a third of the drive. It was a time when games could easily chew up towards 100 MB each. For now, time to play some Heretic!

BeOS despite generally long forgotten (if you were aware of it in the first place) had an interesting past. A Frenchman named Jean-Louis Gassée had for most of the 1980s held senior positions with Apple, where at one point had become head of product development for the Macintosh once Steve Jobs left. He was a staunch supporter of Apple, who believed the company should continue its focus at the premium end of the personal computer market, and that people were prepared to pay up for the Macintosh experience. That was fine to a point, though with more affordable IBM PC clones and Windows 3.0 approaching, this was increasingly becoming unsustainable. By the end of the decade, corporate politics and disagreements with the then CEO John Sculley led to Jean-Louis’ exit in 1990.

Just as Steve Jobs left Apple undeterred leading him to found NeXT Inc., Jean-Louis followed a similar path and founded Be Inc. in 1991 that also developed both proprietary hardware and its own operating system, BeOS. At first it was to run on Hobbit based hardware, RISC-like processors developed by AT&T that never made commercial success. Not before long BeOS was moved across to support PowerPC hardware and with this came BeBox, dual PowerPC 603 machines running at either 66 or 133 MHz. The BeBox was rather unique for its time with the number of I/O ports on the back, suggesting its use was targeting professional audio and video production. Sales of BeBox were abysmal, with only around 1,800 units sold worldwide. Financially going in the red, Be’s move to open up support on PowerPC hardware such as the Power Macintosh was in the hope for Apple to come along with a fat cheque. Apple in the mid 1990s was after all seeking a new generation operating system, and its Copland project turned out to be a mess. Apple consequently considered Be, though the offer provided was no where close to the asking price in excess of $300 million US. Ultimately Apple paid more acquiring NeXT instead. I sense however deep down Apple paid the higher price to win back Steve Jobs. Either that or his presentation skills.

With Be in a bind to stay afloat, by early 1998 BeOS was ported across to x86 hardware to increase exposure and spark further interest. It wasn’t enough and the final version, R5.1d, was leaked online upon its demise just as Palm Inc. acquired Be for a paltry $11 million US. It would seem Palm had no care factor that it was leaked, more interested in bringing over additional engineers to their payroll.

The legacy of BeOS continues in the open source form of Haiku. Worth checking out if you like to explore niche operating systems.

For this guide I’m running Oracle VirtualBox 6.0.14 with an ISO image file of BeOS R5.1d “Dano” sourced online.

Firstly out of interest, I had done a comparative test between VirtualBox and VMware Workstation 15 Pro. It had been a very long time since I touched BeOS so wasn’t sure how well it would run under a virtual machine (VM) or the ideal settings. Between the two, VMware Workstation was the clear winner for speed of installation, responsiveness, and once configured could comfortably run at 1,600 x 1,200 display resolution. On the other hand, VirtualBox just needed some extra time for loading on startup and would work up to 1,280 x 1,024 resolution. Both only support up to 16-bit colour.

Creating a new virtual machine in VirtualBox there’s no BeOS option to select from, so I went with the Other/Unknown option when selecting the operating system in the wizard. For RAM and hard disk capacities I went with 768 MB and 2 GB respectively. BeOS has difficulty addressing more than 1 GB of RAM and will crash; frankly there’s no tangible value if it did given the thin application support. Hard disks can also stumble past the 128 GB range apparently using an IDE controller, so to get past that using SCSI is the best alternative. I gave it a shot with the following options selected, essentially the same as what I would set up for Windows 98.

• System > Acceleration tab > Deactivate the VT-x/AMD-V and Nested Paging
• Display > Scale Factor > Default is 100%, useful for enlarging low resolution output on our modern resolution displays if desired
• Display > Graphics Controller > Use VBoxSVGA
• Storage > Add a floppy controller, and use IDE controller with PIIX3 as the type (PIIX4 works although apparently PIIX3 provides a speed boost)
• Audio > Audio Controller > Use ICH AC97 (SoundBlaster 16 is another option although I personally found BeOS to be less stable)
• Network > Adapter 1 > Use Bridged Adapter with Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop
• USB > Set the USB controller to USB 1.1

Whilst still in the Settings dialog box of your VM, you may mount the BeOS boot floppy disk image and ISO CD-ROM image before running it. Once done, select OK to close the dialog box.

With the boot floppy disk and ISO images mounted you should initially see a BeOS splash screen after starting the VM. After a few moments you’ll be greeted with the End User License Agreement, so select Agree. For the duration of the installation process, the screen remains in monochrome and mouse movement tends to be slow thanks to some incompatibilities with VirtualBox’s VESA implementation.

The next few steps is really about sorting out the hard disk. Initially when the Installer window is shown, select Setup partitions after expanding More options. A window displays known as Drive Setup, a vague resemblance to Mac OS X’s Disk Utility. Listed you should see a minimum of three devices for the floppy, hard disk, and CD-ROM drive. Select the device that lists itself beginning with “/dev/disk/ide/ata/0/“. Select Setup from the menu and choose intel from the Partition sub-menu. A dialog box will appear to cover over file systems and partitioning of the hard disk. Keeping it simple select to make only Partition 1 active and the file system from Empty to BeOS. From the Layout sub-menu, select 100% Partition. Select OK to confirm the configuration. A warning message will pop up that changing partitions will cause data to be destroyed. Select Proceed.

BeOS installation process.

Returning back to Drive Setup the hard disk would have expanded in the list of devices now reflecting its partitions. Select Setup from the menu again and choose Be File System via the Initialize and BeOS sub-menus. A dialog box will appear to select the file system block size and the name of the volume. I left the block size at the default of 1,024, though elsewhere read to use 2,048 instead. Either option should be fine; select Initialize. When asked whether to mount the partition, select Mount. After the previous steps have been done, Drive Setup should know have details displayed in the File System and Volume Name columns. Now you can close Drive Setup, either by selecting the top left square of the window, or via the Mount menu.

Returning the Installer window, the Onto option now shows the newly formatted hard disk instead of stating there’s no volumes. Select Begin and installation of BeOS commences. You’ll notice various files are being copied from the CD image, though no blurbs and images to look at as to why this is the greatest version yet. Eventually you’ll be prompted whether to install the Be boot manager; select No as we aren’t setting up multiple operating systems.

The Installer should now state that installation was successful. Unmount the floppy disk image and select Quit to reboot the VM. If all goes well BeOS should successfully load to the desktop albeit with a warning message about the display.

BeOS installed, but isn’t keen at first on VirtualBox’s virtual display adaptor.

Those familiar with setting up Windows, will find the process of installing drivers and such a bit unconventional. The first thing to sort out is the display to not only see things in colour but as a side effect the mouse will perform substantially better. From the BeOS desktop, press the key combination Alt+F to bring up the Find feature. Search for vesa and return the search results. A small file named the same should appear.

Repeat the previous steps and search for drivers as a separate window. Returning more results, the one needed is the folder located at /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/. For the vesa file, double-click on the path location. In the drivers search window, double-click on the folder itself located at the aforementioned path. The way BeOS operates is that clicking on the file or folder directly will open it, but clicking on the path will open where the file or folder is located instead. Opening up both destinations you should have windows display showing the contents of both the sample and drivers folder.

Returning the search results. The aim is to copy the vesa file into the drivers folder circled.

Ideally you should make a copy of the vesa file to the drivers folder, though for some reason this proved more difficult than it should have been with drag-and-drop. BeOS by default will move the file if it’s on the same disk volume. The alternative method is to right-click on the file and go through several sub-menus via the Copy to option in the context menu. Once the file is copied or moved across, double-click to open. Add a third line to the file with mode 1280 1024 16 and save the change.

The following parameter sets BeOS to operate at 1,280 x 1,024 resolution with 16-bit colour.

Whilst we are here, repeat the previous steps with the kernel file. The kernel file won’t assist with video output, but to sort out a disk cache bug. As a workaround, enter a line as per the below screenshot stating disk_cache_size 16384 and save the change. For the changes to take effect, select the BeOS logo at the top right corner, and choose Restart. Personally I found BeOS unreliable with restarting in the same session, so worst case scenario is to close the VM completely and start again.

Setting the disk cache overcomes a BeOS disk cache bug.

Once back to the BeOS desktop, it should appear similar to below.

Mounting the floppy disk image.

In order to get some sort of sound capability, I went on a search and located some Sound Blaster 16 drivers initially for BeOS 3.x. I subsequently placed these drivers onto a floppy disk image. It worked though had a tendency to cause stability issues whilst testing; worse if Sound Blaster 16 was used instead of AC97 as part of the VM configuration. Your experience may vary but these weren’t official drivers by the manufacturer.

After mounting the floppy disk image in VirtualBox, there is also the need to mount again within BeOS. It’s only a matter of right-clicking on a blank area of the desktop, and selecting the floppy option from the Mount sub-menu. The floppy disk will appear as another icon on the desktop.

Double-clicking on the ZIP file will by default open Expand-O-Matic; a similar program to the free version of StuffIt Expander that was commonly found on the Macintosh. First I select Destination to point the extracted files to the desktop for easy access, followed by Expand.

Extracting the Sound Blaster drivers to the desktop.

Out of the extracted files, only the one named sb16 is required. Move this file across to the drivers folder located within /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/. That’s it. The next time you boot BeOS you should hear the startup sound.

In a similar manner, I extracted the network adapter drivers from the floppy disk image into a folder on the desktop and ran install.sh. It’s a script file for easy installation.

This is where it turned to a grinding halt. References on installing later versions of BeOS online tend to refer to Version 5.0 (codenamed Maui), and here I’m using 5.1d (codenamed Dano). As per the following screenshot, the next step was to access Network from the Preferences menu. The problem was there was no Network option to select from!

Installed the Intel network adapter drivers.

I went to look back at the CD image which proved to be fruitless. As 5.1d wasn’t a released product I can only speculate the network features weren’t ready. Under 5.0 in the Network preferences the gist of it was to set up a static IP address and add a DNS server (such as Google’s at 8.8.8.8). So in this instance, I discontinued the thought of connecting to the home network.

A ‘CPU fix’ was created to sort out timing issues with faster processors with BeOS. This also proved to be incompatible with 5.1d, so did not proceed. It’s safe to suggest for a more rounded and reliable experience of BeOS to stick with 5.0, and upgrade to 5.0.3 via a patch. The steps shown here will be much the same if you do decide to give it a try.

Despite the obscurity of the operating system these days, there are some handy resources online:

Here there’s an easy to read guide on setting up BeOS 5.0.3 in VirtualBox.

There’s also bits of software and drivers available from this site, though I have doubts that it’s been actively maintained. The aim was to be a repository specific to BeOS.

In the heyday of Windows 95, there had been a running joke of its security features (or lack thereof). Multi-user account management was nothing more than creating profiles for storing desktop settings and documents. The request to enter a username and password at the Enter Network Password dialog box on startup was often mistakenly seen by less savvy users as a form of security, not realising it’s just credentials for accessing network shares in a workgroup.

Originally retailing for $90 US, Norton released Your Eyes Only (YEO) to up the ante in this regard. Whilst it didn’t overcome Windows’ limitations entirely it added an additional layer as a deterrent. Its main purpose was to keep prying eyes away from files you want private. A Windows 95-based PC with 8 MB RAM were the requirements, with 16 MB recommended.

Commencing installation a brief antivirus scan is performed hinting to go purchase other Norton products (i.e. AntiVirus and Utilities). You’ll be prompted for a new username and password for the purpose of encrypting files, and booting up the PC if desired with the use of the BootLock feature. Enabling BootLock modifies the master boot record (MBR) resulting in a lock down of the hard disk. To counteract, an Emergency UnLock Disk is able to be created in case problematic issues occur later down the track. Once the setup program closes, your PC will restart and YEO comes into effect.

As Windows 95 comes to the desktop, a YEO login dialog box appears requesting the username and password created during installation. Someone not knowing these details won’t stop them from using Windows, though won’t have the ability to create or access encrypted files. When such details are entered, the YEO’s Control Center runs in the background.

Installing Your Eyes Only.

Encrypting files and folders is rather simple; right-click the desired file or several at once and select from the YEO sub-menu. A dialog box appears to modify users of who can access the file and the encryption algorithm. 40-bit RC4 and DEC algorithms were provided being the international version tested – the US version allowed 128-bit. Also I was only allowed up to 512-bit encryption keys, whilst the default with the US version was 768-bit with options up to 2,048. When encrypted, the icon changes to a padlock as the file itself is changed over to the YNC file extension. Double-clicking the file Windows won’t recognise which program to open with, until you manually decrypt the file.

Encrypting a file is only a couple of clicks away.

For files that are regularly accessed, incorporating a SmartLock folder is more practical. To implement, it’s following the same process as selecting a file. With a SmartLock folder, files placed within will automatically encrypt and decrypt as needed. The timing of when to automatically encrypt the file again can be set via the Control Center. Note an encrypted file can be deleted, though a folder won’t. Emptying the Recycle Bin an error is produced.

The Control Center itself provides a number of options concerning user and password management. Passwords can be configured to enforce minimum character length and frequency to change for instance. A feature known as ScreenLock can activate a password protected screensaver. Apart from tying in with YEO’s user password, the main advantage over the standard Windows settings is having the hotkey option to immediately lock the PC.

YEO overrides the standard Windows settings on screensavers such as the timer. However if a password has been activated in Windows’ Display Properties, you may find yourself entering passwords twice to unlock, one from Windows, followed by a prompt from YEO.

A little program, Audit Viewer, is included to assist with determining activities that have occurred over a period of time. Unlike Windows NT, 95 wasn’t provided with Event Viewer so this somewhat compensates for that. The recorded activities can be exported out to a CSV file.

Audit Viewer provided kind of similar information as NT’s Event Viewer.

Windows NT wasn’t officially supported. BootLock became problematic if you dual booted between Windows 95 and non DOS-based systems such as NT or OS/2 rendering the PC unusable. There was also the issue that you weren’t able to decrypt your files under NT. But overall the application was well regarded for its seamless integration into Windows 95 and processing speed compared to competing products.

Download Norton Your Eyes Only 4.02 International Edition (3 MB)

SmartDraw originally dates back to 1994 as a tool primarily for the use of process mapping, organisational charts, maps, and various forms of technical diagrams. The software still exists to this day, although the choice of diagrams has changed greatly and a web-based version is now available.

Today we rewind back to Halloween of 1997 when Version 3.2 was released, an incremental update from the original 3.0 release in 1996. The next major release was a couple of years away, so I’m led to believe this would be the last to support Windows 3.1. A native Windows 95/NT build was also available during the installation process. At the time it had been a much more affordable option compared to its competitors, Visio Corp.’s Visio Professional 4.5 and Micrografx FlowCharter 7.0. The point of difference apart from the retail price tag was to simplify the creation of diagrams to suit the occasional user.

On hardware, a Pentium 90 with 8 MB RAM is enough to get by.

Upon startup you’re presented with a welcome dialog box. Much of it is consumed to offering users hints and tips. Showing hints as you use SmartDraw is aimed at new users, prompting you with dialog boxes with information on utilising a feature that had been selected for the first time.

You’re presented with a welcome dialog box upon startup, offering hints and tips for new and experienced users.

From here, you may start with a blank canvas, or choose from one of the available templates. Templates are broken into the categories of diagrams, flyers, frames, and maps with the bulk naturally under diagrams. The diagrams are where you’ll likely look the most searching through the assortment of organisation charts, pyramid charts, and room plans amongst others listed.

Add map templates and flags easily from the assortment of templates and libraries.

Libraries bring up a large selection of categorised objects known as SmartDrawings depending on the intended purpose of your diagram. There’s also the ability to create your own libraries, or extend existing ones with customised objects that you’ve made. As shown below there’s some controls on their characteristics, such as whether to be able to include text, or change the colour. Toolbars can be made from these libraries for easy access.

As objects are placed, connectors will easy snap into position between them and move accordingly as you adjust the positioning in the process of designing your diagram.

Create or modify SmartDrawings (i.e. objects) to suit your needs, and save into new or existing libraries.

Version 3.0 brought about other new features such as the ability to export to GIF and JPEG image formats, print preview function, curved lines, and opening up to 32 drawings at once.

A tutorial is included comprising of several chapters that will get you up and running using the bulk of the application. This is more or less viewed as a PDF style document. The document is embedded within an executable file with a read only copy of Novell Envoy Runtime Viewer – a failed attempt to compete with Adobe Acrobat in the 1990s.

To me, SmartDraw has a vague similarity to that of Microsoft Publisher in terms of the target market. The price point was attractive for home and small business users that have a need to fulfil but not necessarily on a daily basis. Professionals earning a living designing floor plans or electrical diagrams would likely looked elsewhere.

Download SmartDraw 3.20 (7 MB)