The very first retro-computing video on this channel was working Windows 1.0 software development. I now want to take a look what it takes to port software across the generations, specifically, seeing what it takes to port an application from Windows 1.0 to Windows 3.1, then to Windows 9x/NT, then XP, and finally to Windows 11.
Microsoft included a fair number of example applications with Windows 1.0, including Hello World, Cardfile, and more, and over the years, a few people have written or ported other demo applications such as Wine's version of Minesweeper. One thing I'm more curious in documenting more in-depth is seeing what it takes to bring software across the almost 40 year gap from the 16-bit era to the 32-bit one.
The plan is to setup a development environment on Windows 1.0, compile several of the demo applications, then switch to Windows 3.1, migrate them to Visual C++ format, then make the jump to 32-bit computing on Windows NT and Visual C++ 4.2 or 6, then XP, and finally 11. In theory, this should be a relatively straightforward affair, and maybe we'll even dig out FAILSERV and try it on Itanium.
Come join your host NCommander on Sunday, November 14th, for livestreaming fun and more. See you all then
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