Our journey through time from Windows 1 to Windows XP tells how Microsoft technically advanced the Windows operating system.

(Image: Albert Hulm)

Operating system architecture: The technological development of Windows The Root The memory is tight Virtualized early Company chance Segment curse Article in c’t 27 /2020 read The DOS of these days, which Microsoft had sold cheaply and expensively to IBM, offered a pure text interface that usually consisted of a fixed matrix of 80 characters and 25 Lines consisted: The user had to enter commands using the keyboard. There were the first tentative attempts by individual programs to use the graphics capabilities of the PC to display italic or bold text, for example in Microsoft’s Word. The smooth fonts commonly used today with variable spacing were out of the question.

The roots Word could even be operated with the mouse. Every program needed its own driver for the graphics card used if it wanted to use the graphics. The same applied to the output of work results on the printer. Each manufacturer came up with their own user interfaces. “Large” application programs that combined word processing, database and spreadsheets under one surface were very popular, such as Open Access from SPI.

At that time, Windows came in handy as a complement to DOS. It created a framework for graphic applications that software manufacturers could build on. Initially, it only brought a few adjustments to the hardware: drivers that controlled the printer and graphics card and integrated the mouse. For access to the hard drive, i.e. the files, DOS continued to be used. The old DOS devices were also used to contact the printer.

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