When did PCs stop being PCs?

[JamesD]

Sound cards, graphics cards, EGA, VGA, SVGA, VESA local buss, PCI buss, AGP, 3D Graphics cards, USB, IDE, ATA, SATA...
Windows 95, Windows 98, WindowsXP,...
DirectX

I think there was an evolution, and there's no exact moment.  The main transition was in the time between Windows 95, and Windows XP when the machines were recognized as Windows boxes rather than DOS, but there were still issues after that.
Getting Tomb Raider to work with my graphics and sound cards was a pain in the neck, and that machine had PCI, and USB.  (I don't think AGP was out yet)  I think that was Windows 98.
Even as late as when the XBOX 360 was introduced (2005), there were still some game compatibility issues.  Game devs focused on ATI or NVidea, and sometimes you had issues getting a game to work on the other cards.
I remember buying a PS2 Simline model around that time for just over $100.  You could buy a bunch of cheap games for it, and they just worked.  Greatest hits titles were under $20 at BestBuy. 
You didn't have to fiddle around with settings, and drivers for every game on consoles.
After my 2nd XBOX360 died, I went back to PC gaming. I haven't had any of the compatibility issues I had 15 years earlier.
You still have major frame rate differences between NVidea and AMD on some titles due to what platform they targeted, but at least the games work.

[Hwlngmad]

1 hour ago, JamesD said:

Sound cards, graphics cards, EGA, VGA, SVGA, VESA local buss, PCI buss, AGP, 3D Graphics cards, USB, IDE, ATA, SATA...
Windows 95, Windows 98, WindowsXP,...
DirectX

I think there was an evolution, and there's no exact moment.  The main transition was in the time between Windows 95, and Windows XP when the machines were recognized as Windows boxes rather than DOS, but there were still issues after that.

I would generally agree with you.  The IBM PC slowly evolved over time.

 

However, I would say when standalone computer systems with rival ecosystems died off (such as the Amiga and ST lines) where the only rival computing system became Apple with the Mac in addition to the IBM PC becoming a "standard" instead of a standalone ecosystem itself as it first was when it was released eventually PC = Personal Computer became PC = PC standard sometime around 1994/1995.  Just my opinion.

[Hwlngmad]

On 3/14/2023 at 2:12 AM, skaredmask said:

replying to almost dead post but....

 

I really think PC started to become something different during WIN95 and 98se basically when Microsoft added DX6-12 (I think it's at now.) due to each DX release it had a .LIB set to each Dx release and made it more of emulation than actual hardware... games that used newer graphical effects would be included in the next release of DX.. a good example of this is Gothic 3 vs hell gate londan DX9 vs DX10 both DX9 and ten could have depth of field how ever you need 10 to get this effect in hell gate londan... not because Dx9 could hold it but because it was easier under 10 since it was part of DX10 .libs files that made it easier to program for developers basically they stopped actually devolving games.. for hardware.. and had to make games more compatible for ATI, NVIDIA

By WIN95 the PC had already morphed into something different as it was pretty much the world computing platform with Apple and the Mac line the only other computing platform to be of any significance.

[Keatah]

I didn't have too much trouble getting things "ATI vs NVIDIA" working. What worked on on one worked on the other. At different speeds and with different levels of feature support. AA and mip-mapping were big things back then. And that's where I had the most issues when I had them. Getting textures the right colors and stuff. Other minor differences I didn't care about or notice.

 

What I had significant problems with was transitioning away from 3DFx. Seems like 3DFx was a powerful craze that made everyone optimize their stuff for a go-nowhere platform, then left the community hanging. Actually they were bought up by NVIDIA - no secret there.

 

But getting out from under the 3DFx craze took time as games had to be patched or partly redone to work under OpenGL / D3D. Glide wrappers were always hit or miss and were always niche - with certain versions working only with certain games. Just as bad as early driver optimizations. ATI and NVIDIA were putting advanced features in their chips but only company-sponsored demos and 3rd party benchmarks took advantage of it all. It seemed like game publishers were loathe to transition to Direct3D or Windows. But Microsoft's standardization couldn't come too soon.

 

Today none of that seems tolerated anymore thanks to more advanced consoles and smartphones. Smartphones seemed to be tipping point to where consumers began demanding that stuff just work.

 

Nowadays with Windows 10/11 all I have to look at is that, and if the system has a recent CPU/GPU combo from maybe the last 7 years.. That gives me enough confidence to say stuff will just work.

[Hwlngmad]

5 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I didn't have too much trouble getting things "ATI vs NVIDIA" working. What worked on on one worked on the other. At different speeds and with different levels of feature support. AA and mip-mapping were big things back then. And that's where I had the most issues when I had them. Getting textures the right colors and stuff. Other minor differences I didn't care about or notice.

 

What I had significant problems with was transitioning away from 3DFx. Seems like 3DFx was a powerful craze that made everyone optimize their stuff for a go-nowhere platform, then left the community hanging. Actually they were bought up by NVIDIA - no secret there.

 

But getting out from under the 3DFx craze took time as games had to be patched or partly redone to work under OpenGL / D3D. Glide wrappers were always hit or miss and were always niche - with certain versions working only with certain games. Just as bad as early driver optimizations. ATI and NVIDIA were putting advanced features in their chips but only company-sponsored demos and 3rd party benchmarks took advantage of it all. It seemed like game publishers were loathe to transition to Direct3D or Windows. But Microsoft's standardization couldn't come too soon.

 

Today none of that seems tolerated anymore thanks to more advanced consoles and smartphones. Smartphones seemed to be tipping point to where consumers began demanding that stuff just work.

 

Nowadays with Windows 10/11 all I have to look at is that, and if the system has a recent CPU/GPU combo from maybe the last 7 years.. That gives me enough confidence to say stuff will just work.

Compatibility issues are no bueno.  Things should be expected to work within a reasonable timeframe.  As cool as the late 90s and early 00s were for computer tech, I don't miss having computers become obsolete and/or irrelevant so quickly.  Things should be able to work well for a reasonable amount of time with very little to no money needed to be poured into it (depending on what one is doing, of course).

[Keatah]

3 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

As cool as the late 90s and early 00s were for computer tech, I don't miss having computers become obsolete and/or irrelevant so quickly.

There were times I was swapping back and forth between graphics cards as fast as every 6-months or faster. There was a time I had 4 of them going simultaneously. A TNT2 in an AGP slot. SLI 3DFx Voodoo² in 2 PCI slots. And a PowerVR in another PCI slot. It was crazy because I needed that funk to keep all my games working as things were evolving.

 

To get the best performance from each game (Quake I, II, III, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, GOTY edition, Great Planes RealFlight R/C sim, and Windows 2D desktop in a 1024x768 or higher, I would be switching between those cards regularly. The PowerVR made it "practical" because it fed its processed data back over the PCI bus and to your standard AGP-whatever-you-had card. 3DFx fit with its ridiculous pass-through crap.

 

Much of the aggravation came from (like I mentioned before) 3DFx not really supporting D3D/OpenGL, but their own proprietary shit. And game companies catering to it while not paying enough attention burgeoning solutions already out there.

 

Toward the mid-life and end of the TNT2 Ultra's reign of supremacy I had settled on NVIDIA going forward. 1 single card was all I needed. After the GeForce2 GTS Ultra I never had more than one card anymore. Would smoothly and trouble-free upgrade to GF3 and GF4. Then I even got out of that ratrace and would NOT upgrade my own stuff till the GTX 1080 - which I'm using today.

 

I don't chase after AAA games. So I'm good for most stuff.

 

10 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Things should be able to work well for a reasonable amount of time with very little to no money needed to be poured into it (depending on what one is doing, of course).

I know tons of people using 8+ years old PCs for modern development work (not in games however). And I plan on continuing to use my 8th gen i7's for another year or two. So I'd say we're at the point where one doesn't have to keep pouring money (like the late 1990's) into machines anymore.

[+Gemintronic]

On 12/12/2022 at 10:15 AM, Gemintronic said:

This year with Windows 11.  You can no longer install Windows without connecting to the Internet and signing up for an account.

 

YES there are workarounds.. but, that's classic M$ allowing workarounds at first to ease some evil.

 

Future me here.  Today I tried restoring over 7000 files from a family members laptop.  Win 11 managed to force updates and left itself in such a state that IT REFUSED TO CHARGE when plugged in.  Nearly botched the file transfer and several other critical processes as it drained to single digits.

 

Yeah, family doesn't let family use Win 11.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Hwlngmad]

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I know tons of people using 8+ years old PCs for modern development work (not in games however). And I plan on continuing to use my 8th gen i7's for another year or two. So I'd say we're at the point where one doesn't have to keep pouring money (like the late 1990's) into machines anymore.

That's a very good thing.  I know that computers need to be replaced after some time depending on use and/or other factors.  Still, the better and easier it is to squeeze life out of machinery the better imo.

[+5-11under]

For me, a PC is still a PC, stemming from IBM's PC back in the day (not talking about Atari, Apple, MSX, etc.). Every PC I've bought or made, starting with the 8 MHz compatible to now, I don't see a point where things changed in my relationship to the PC. I still see them all as "offspring" of the IBM PC.

[Hwlngmad]

1 hour ago, 5-11under said:

For me, a PC is still a PC, stemming from IBM's PC back in the day (not talking about Atari, Apple, MSX, etc.). Every PC I've bought or made, starting with the 8 MHz compatible to now, I don't see a point where things changed in my relationship to the PC. I still see them all as "offspring" of the IBM PC.

I would say to a degree you are right.  Modern PCs can trace their heritage all the way back to the OG IBM PC.  However, I believe the PC morphed from being a Personal Computer tied to the ecosystem as original devised by IBM to being a Personal Computing standard that pretty much eliminated all of rival computing systems save for what Apple and/or Google are doing.

[+5-11under]

16 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

I would say to a degree you are right.  Modern PCs can trace their heritage all the way back to the OG IBM PC.  However, I believe the PC morphed from being a Personal Computer tied to the ecosystem as original devised by IBM to being a Personal Computing standard that pretty much eliminated all of rival computing systems save for what Apple and/or Google are doing.

It's just an opinion, neither right nor wrong, based on my take on the fairly open initial question.

My main desktop PC has always run either MS-DOS or MS-Windows, so that's a constant that I'm sure also comes into play for me in the "PC is still a PC" opinion (not that I have a great opinion for or against MS, except MS has always been able to run the programs I need). If I was running Linux, I'd probably call it my Linux box.

[Hwlngmad]

3 minutes ago, 5-11under said:

It's just an opinion, neither right nor wrong, based on my take on the fairly open initial question.

My main desktop PC has always run either MS-DOS or MS-Windows, so that's a constant that I'm sure also comes into play for me in the "PC is still a PC" opinion (not that I have a great opinion for or against MS, except MS has always been able to run the programs I need). If I was running Linux, I'd probably call it my Linux box.

Like I said, I believe your opinion is right to some degree and I can see how the "PC is still a PC" mindset holds water as I have always had a desktop and/or laptop that has run MS-DOS and/or MS-Windows myself.  All good.  We are all entitled to our opinions.  Nothing wrong with that.

[zzip]

I see today's PCs as a successor platform to the original IBM PC rather than the same platform.

 

Way too much has changed.  Everyone assumes that it's fully backwards, but it's not really.   Try getting some of your original DOS games/programs running or even Windows 95 stuff and you'll have an easier time running them in an emulator than native.

 

I remember old graphics cards used to have all sorts of hardware graphics and text modes to provide backwards compatibility with CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules and so forth.   Now my current nVidia card has just 3 hardware modes:  640x480, 800x600, 1024x768.   Anything else is a "soft mode" emulated by the graphics processor, all the legacy baggage has been eliminated.

 

Similarly, the sound hardware eliminated things like Ad-lib chips,  wavetable,  Midi ports and even game controllers that used to be found on common soundcards.  If you need adlib/wavetable, then you need to emulate it in software.

 

It also used to be that you'd load up internal ISA or PCI cards to add all kinds of features,  I/O cards for IDE/Floppy/CD-ROM/RS-232/Parallel printer,  TV cards, video capture cards, all sorts of niche cards as well.

 

Now new PCs have no ISA slots at all,  most don't even have traditional PCI slots, just PCI express for graphics.  I/O for hard disks  and optical media has been turned into SATA and integrated onto the motherboard.   The other I/O ports are considered obsolete and everything else is moved to USB.   USB Floppy, USB MIDI, USB game controllers, etc.

 

There's almost nothing from your old 80s/90s PC that can be used in a current PC

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

That's a very good thing.  I know that computers need to be replaced after some time depending on use and/or other factors.  Still, the better and easier it is to squeeze life out of machinery the better imo.

Up to right after the Pentium IV, the specification that "outdated" a PC for me would have been MHz by far.

 

The things I hear most home users complain about are printer support and the ability to run a modern browser at any sort of speed. Web pages are continually increasing in complexity for no good reason and need faster CPUs with a modern instruction set to cut through that bloat.

[Hwlngmad]

19 hours ago, zzip said:

I see today's PCs as a successor platform to the original IBM PC rather than the same platform.

 

Way too much has changed.  Everyone assumes that it's fully backwards, but it's not really.   Try getting some of your original DOS games/programs running or even Windows 95 stuff and you'll have an easier time running them in an emulator than native.

I agree with this as well.  I think, though, it is safe to say that modern PCs are a successor and (too a much lesser degree than before) an evolution of the platform as well.

[MrMaddog]

On 3/16/2023 at 3:09 PM, zzip said:

I see today's PCs as a successor platform to the original IBM PC rather than the same platform.

 

Way too much has changed.  Everyone assumes that it's fully backwards, but it's not really.   Try getting some of your original DOS games/programs running or even Windows 95 stuff and you'll have an easier time running them in an emulator than native.

 

 

 

Well you can still run 16-bit applications although through indirect means.  Aside from DOSBOX for games, there's VDOS that lets you run full screen DOS applications and even use the Windows clipboard and printers.  Plus there's winevdm for running 16-bit Windows applications.

 

Yes the 16-bit code does run through a virtual emulator but you don't need to run the entire 32-bit operating system just for that one application.  The reason it has to be this way is because 64-bit CPUs can only run 32-bit code but not 16-bit like x86s could.  And even 32-bit x86s still run 16-bit programs using a virtual mode internally so it's not really that much of a cheat.

 

So yes I agree that modern PC's are a successor to the original IBM standard, with a little help of course...

[Lord Mushroom]

On 11/29/2022 at 5:36 PM, Flojomojo said:

cute old commercial:

 

That reminds me of this:

[MrMaddog]

That kids in the 80's know how to use a computer, but their 2020's counterparts don't even know what one is?  🤔

[Keatah]

On 3/17/2023 at 6:13 PM, MrMaddog said:

Well you can still run 16-bit applications although through indirect means.

From what I heard, there's a setting in Win10 that lets you use ancient 16-bit applications. It's something I have to check into to verify however.

[+OLD CS1]

6 hours ago, Keatah said:

From what I heard, there's a setting in Win10 that lets you use ancient 16-bit applications. It's something I have to check into to verify however.

I think you have to be running 32-bit for that.

[+OLD CS1]

6 hours ago, Keatah said:

From what I heard, there's a setting in Win10 that lets you use ancient 16-bit applications. It's something I have to check into to verify however.

This what you were looking for?

 

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable-16-bit-application-support-windows-10/

[Keatah]

Yes I think that's it.

[82-T/A]

On 11/29/2022 at 11:36 AM, Flojomojo said:

For me, a PC is a laptop or desktop computer that runs any operating system. We're getting closer to the sci-fi idealized "computer everywhere" which is a good thing. RIP beige boxes. 

 

cute old commercial:

 

 

 

"What's a computer?"

 

Ouch... that cut deep... hahah...