Microsoft at Work

https://computer.rip/2024-04-26-microsoft-at-work.html

By kryster at 2:39 PM

ranger_danger | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

Windows CE however DID finally make it onto a Sega SH-powered console, the Dreamcast.

And only within the last decade has it become easily accessible to play those games at full speed with an open source emulator, such as Flycast, mainly due to the performance impact of implementing the MMU.

Jasper_ | 2 comments | 3 weeks ago

The Dreamcast did allow you to use a Windows CE-based SDK, but that was rare. Katana and Ninja were the native SDKs that you could use from SEGA, without touching Windows CE at all.

ranger_danger | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

There were 79 CE games for Dreamcast. I guess it just depends on your definition of rare.

ekianjo | 2 comments | 3 weeks ago

yeah even most sega games did not use Windows CE. I think that the exception may have been Sega Rally's port on the Dreamcast

ranger_danger | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

https://segaretro.org/Windows_CE

reddalo | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

Do you think they used Windows CE for Sega Rally to ease the port from the Windows version?

ekianjo | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

no idea if that was a factor

tomjen3 | 2 comments | 3 weeks ago

Its a bit of a tangent, but the article mentioned Windows shipping with a fax like appliance which reminds of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Bu5tkDs98

Millions of people must have insisted that they didn't a have a fax machine and completely missed that it was build into the computer they were using and fully supported by the fax modem in their machine.

voidfunc | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

Oh... that's what the Fax device does lol. Been wondering about that for 20 something years.

paulryanrogers | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

Right but it was rare to have a home line dedicated to faxes. I used a primary then secondary line to send faxes, never receive them.

araes | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

The technical part was kind of interesting, yet the commentary on general Microsoft was pretty funny.

Conjures images that they're all fighting to the death with spears over at the Microsoft offices.

> It was an early attempt at an operating system for a touchscreen mobile device, one that, in classic Microsoft fashion, competed internally with another project to build an operating system for a touchscreen mobile device (called Pegasus) and died out along with the rest of MAW.

"We'll pit them against each other in the Thunderdome and see who survives." Instead they both fatally stab each other.

xgkickt | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

(From a game developer’s perspective) The SH series was great. While they still live on in ARM’s Thumb licensing I can’t help feeling they would still be relevant with today’s compilers.

whereistimbo | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

Check out j-core.org (reimplementation of SH processor based on expired patents) made by Rob Landley

SadTrombone | 1 comment | 2 weeks ago

Am I the only one who had trouble reading the post with that font? Maybe it's because I'm now an ancient 37 year old but reading full paragraphs in a monospace font makes my eyes hurt.

CRConrad | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

Press F9.

fallingsquirrel | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

Interesting stuff, but I think there's one more string he could have pulled. What was the MS software that ended up in the Saturn? I would bet emulator devs have done a lot of reverse engineering here already. Even if it doesn't lead to an obvious answer, there's bound to be more clues.

IntelMiner | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

Microsoft shipped a Windows CE based dev kit for the Sega Saturn

From developer and reverse engineering accounts it was significantly heavier than just running the games bare metal (which isn't terribly surprising)

fallingsquirrel | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

Yes, but doesn't that run on a different layer than the CD drive firmware? I'm specifically referring to this quote:

> Microsoft may have reached some level of completion on that project and sold it to Sega for the Saturn's complicated storage controller, but it's also possible that the connection between the Saturn and MAW is mistaken and the software Microsoft delivered to Sega was a simple, from-scratch effort.

win32/win16 code has a very distinctive style, so I think if an emulator author dumped the firmware and even just looked at it with `strings` it would be pretty obvious whether or not the firmware is some kind of slimmed down version of proto-Windows. At least that's the next place I would look for answers.

jcrawfordor | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

A reader has done exactly that and reports pretty confidently that the CD-ROM subsystem firmware is not Windows, and appears to be mostly hand-written assembly and probably by Hitachi. Unsurprising considering their prominent role in the CD-ROM industry.

It is true that the later Sega Dreamcast could run Windows CE, although the Saturn, as far as I can tell, never could. Windows CE had barely been started when the Saturn came out, so it doesn't seem realistic that there had been a plan in the Saturn era to put CE on it. If I had to speculate (and I do) I think that perhaps the Sega-Microsoft partnership for the Saturn didn't work out, perhaps due to the failure of WinPad or Pegasus, but did start the relationship that lead to CE support on the Dreamcast.

KerrAvon | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

(note to author: LaserWriter, not AppleWriter. Recall that AppleWriter was a word processor for the Apple II.)

jcrawfordor | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

embarrassing. fixed it.

but wasn't the parallelism to WinWriter pleasing?

nailer | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

> This kind of terrible product naming was rampant in the mid-'90s, perhaps more from Microsoft than usual.

The xbox team thoroughly disagrees with this statement.

ethbr1 | 1 comment | 3 weeks ago

At least there's no XBox Live!(tm) yet...

Oh.

RajT88 | 2 comments | 3 weeks ago

Lest anyone forget, let's revisit the naming convention of Xboxen. To make my point, I will randomize the order instead of going chronologically:

Xbox One

Xbox

Xbox Series X/S

Xbox One X/S

Xbox 360

They all had "Xbox Live!" more usually written Xbox LIVE

At work I like to joke that any new product coming out from Microsoft should be renamed "Azure DevOps", since their goal appears to be confusion.

input_sh | 2 comments | 3 weeks ago

Are you referring to Azure DevOps Server, formerly known as Team Foundation Server / Visual Studio Team System? Or are you referring to Azure DevOps Services, formerly known as Visual Studio Online / Visual Studio Team Services? Fortunately they both support both Git and Microsoft's own Team Foundation Version Control (which luckily never changed its name). Please let me know the answer via Microsoft Teams, or if you prefer, via Microsoft Teams Free (Classic).

With you 100%, nobody's worse at naming things than Microsoft. I'd say the only real contender for its throne is Google with its Messages/Allo/Duo/Hangouts Chat/Hangouts Meet/Google Chat.

ornornor | 2 comments | 3 weeks ago

You forgot Azure DevOps, their attempt at a JIRA/project management ersatz.

Also Skype, that is sometimes called Lynx, or Skype for Business.

twodave | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

Lync* actually, so imagine talking about new things coming to the System.Linq namespace and the migration to Lync from MSN Messenger at a .NET shop in the late 2000s, confusing the heck out of everyone.

ethbr1 | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

Afaicr, Skype for Business (aka Lync) is a completely different codebase / program than Skype.

They rebranded it when they bought Skype because everyone hated Lync so much.

Which... to be fair, Lync is the only application I've known that's dumb enough to repeat failed login attempts with the same incorrect credential until the account is locked.

Found out when I'd rotate my AD password and a box I was remoted into would promptly lock my account by trying to use the old cached auth.

WWLink | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

AHHH I fucking hate microsoft :D

graynk | 0 comments | 3 weeks ago

Don’t forget to add to that list such beautiful services as Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass For PC (later renamed to PC Game Pass, for which you still have to have an Xbox app installed)

Af16 | 0 comments | 2 weeks ago

Yess