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Windows 93 in JavaScript (windows93.net)
291 points by hackhat on March 7, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 73 comments



In the trash can there's a strange zip file you can download. Unzipping it reveals a readme.txt, which says:

Sorry, no album download for the moment, our server is under reddit hug... The album is also here : https://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/album/poire-c-poire-v

Going to this bandcamp it mentions:

THE IDEA BEHIND THIS ALBUM WAS TO MAKE A DEVIANT DANCE MUSIC LABEL TO RELEASE THIS HORRIBLE TRACKS, BUT THIS PROJECT WENT TOTALLY WRONG AND BECAME THE THING KNOWS AS WWW.WINDOWS93.NET THERE IS A LIMITED SD-CARD EDITION OF THIS ALBUM THAT YOU CAN BUY FROM ME IRL FOR 10€ THIS ALBUM WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR FREE BUT HIDDEN ON WIN93 SOON, IF YOU SUCCEED TO FIND IT.

So I guess that's the backstory.


I also found this in the "What if?" app that is apparently a collection of Matrix memes.

http://i.imgur.com/aq8NAO3.jpg

>What if I told you

>Jankenpopp's new album is in the trash


It's that "Glitch Grrrlz" icon.


Or corglitch? I'm really enjoying that one...

http://www.windows93.net/#!glitch

[edit] Well crap, what did I click? I could have sworn this was what was playing the music, but I realized it's not. Hmm.

[edit-edit] Oh, it was acid box. That makes sense.


It is somewhat disconcerting to discover that someone has made what is essentially a version of my current project as a gag.


Maybe you could consider it a hilarious proof of concept?


Exactly what I thought lol.


I can't believe I just got sucked into Solitaire on this thing


You mean "SOLITUDE"? ;-)


I'm too busy listening to it defrag this thing.


Funny and, for a gag, surprisingly thorough and complete.

Could you please allow closing windows by doubleclicking on the top-left(!) corner of a window? I kinda need that (e.g. this still works for the file explorer on Windows 7, even though there is no icon).


Since Windows 8 system menu icon reappeared in file explorer's titlebar.


Double clicking that button closes the window. Just tried on Windows 8.1


I'm playing snake... in a Windows defragmenter, in JavaScript. I'm lost for words.


Glad to know I'm not the only one who clicked on the defrag button first.


Nope! Me too. Visual defrag was the thing I was most disappointed to lose in newer versions of Windows. Not gonna lie, I was supposed to head to a party with a friend in college, but we both got sucked in watching a Win98 defrag and lost track of time.


Use UltraDefrag.


This website just taught me that there is an HTML5 Speech Synthesis API! And there are so many accents you can choose from!


Well, it's a separate API that only Chrome and Safari support, and the accents are all on your computer already.


As far as I can figure out, on chrome it's just a web service -- and doesn't work on Debian Chromium as they stopped shipping google api keys (which makes sense, part of the point of using chromium over chrome is to have some measure of independence from google).

Just thought I'd mention it here, in case anyone else were about to run off and try stuff like:

http://updates.html5rocks.com/2014/01/Web-apps-that-talk---I...

only to be disappointed :-/

Note that on Debian/Ubuntu you can for example do:

    sudo apt-get install festival
    echo "I speak nothing, because I no verbs." | festival --tts
if you need to get your computer voice fix.


Yeah, Chrome implements it as a web service, but Google and Apple have been slowly working on a Web Speech API for a while (I suppose Mozilla and Microsoft see it as an unnecessary abstraction when the Web Audio API could do speech-related stuff).

I think Safari has only implemented the Synthesis part of the API because it can all be done offline and rely on the system voices on OS X and iOS. Google uses their own web APIs and thus also does Speech Recognition, but it doesn't work well offline or when you don't have Google API keys within Chromium/Chrome.


Pretty interesting! Started playing with the nested virtual machines, windows93 stopped loading after the 9th instance ;)


What music it is when you start the defrag program ? I am sure I know the tune but just dont remember it ? some old game ?


The groovy blue ringtone from old nokia phones. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCI_TL69rIE


Ha ha !! Thanks man for the link :)


1. What is Windows93?

2. That worked scarily well on my 3.5" Android phone (chrome).


This is great! Nice easter eggs, too: "Cat Explorer" redirects facebook.com to ello.co.


Try reddit and google. Wonder if there's a list somewhere ...


microsoft.com redirects to windows93.net. It's inception.



"totally not a virus" was quite amusing.


PokeGlitch is surprisingly playable (if you're very familiar with Red), once you get past the two-minute Growl move sound.

e: Or not, as the Viridian PokeCenter crashed the game. Was fun while it lasted, though.


My favorite is pokeglitch. Otherwise this is before my time, I've never seen 93/95/98 (my elementary school had machines running 2000 and DOS, though).


There was no Windows 93. 95 was the first release named after a year.


Windows 3.1 was before Windows 95.

One of my former employers was using DOS not that many years ago (well after 2000), using Novell netware for networking. I wrote a backup program (glorified xcopy script) for it, automatic patching (autoexec.bat called a script on the network drive), and a few other things.


The move Growl plays every sound in the game once- this is hilarious.


I feel old.


There's a virtual PC, which is Windows 93 on Windows 93.



Yes (: virtual machine into browser!


yo dawg....


Ah, very nice. And everything is there:

Stupid games, random images, random sound snippets you really had to have on your computer, nice gradient background (anyone ever changed the color gradient of the title bar with TuneUp 97 or whatever that was called?)

Nostalgia.

Edit: Oh god, Acid Box... one of my first DirectDraw attempts with a tutorial had me program a sin-wave with almost exactly that font.


If anyone is interested in playing the roms in /C/files/roms/sms/, they can be played with an emulator like Kega Fusion[1]. There is a decently sized collection of games...

http://www.carpeludum.com/kega-fusion/


Can someone please tell me where the start-up sound is from? It's so familiar.


I think it's either the Playstation (1) or Playstation 2 start-up sound.


It's Playstation 1 start up


Solitaire (Solitude) is nice but it has a weird bug, some cards cannot be found


This loads about 10 times faster in Chrome than Firefox for me


With the full photo of Lenna (after resizing the image).


The bookmarks in Cat Explorer are priceless. Especially the Pr()n list... tickled my immature parts immensely. (Self-deprecating pun intended.)


I... didn't even know there was a Windows 93.

edit: oh, right.


Windows 95 should have been released in 93, but was full of bugs. It was then renamed 95, with an expected publish date at the end of 94. Good thing to name a product with year+1: Gives a futuristic taste if published early and a bit of leeway otherwise ;)

I believe it's not an exact replica. To my knowledge, the splash screen's progress bar was introduced with Windows XP [1]. Also were windows flipping like that before opening?

[1] Here's Windows 95 splash screen. Aw, the graphics... https://www.google.fr/search?q=windows+95+splash+screen&clie...


Virtual box is awsome :< http://imgur.com/4Lwd9ro


I was very hopeful when I saw Ecco.


There is an Ecco rom and emulator hiding. I couldn't get the emulator to run correctly though.


There is also a Gameboy emulator that runs the glitch version of Pokemon Red!


There's a real glitch version? What's the background?


WOW This is better then Windows7. Any one knows keyboard keys for "Castle GAFA 3D"


Arrows, space interacts with doors, x (iirc) shoots.


good old fashioned arrow keys


If you go into catexplorer, click on "P()rn". Quite a list of unfortunately URLs!


You can open windows93.net in Cat Explorer to run Windows 93 in Windows 93


Or choose Virtual PC :)


Great Wolf version! jaja


acid box 93 is my jam


Wow, this is incredible.

Massive shout out to the people who made this.


I can't wait for Windows 94.


Cool, love the icon names.


anybody else tried winception?


It's awesome, I am playing my childhood game from like half an hour


haha, yes, it's really full of surprises (:


played with it yesterday, loved the playstation intro


yeah, a nice touch.




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