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0 pointssignal112y ago0 comments

Higher resolutions (and the accompanying resource sizes) would be hell for 32-bit OSes though.

Also, it’s kind of amazing that many web pages these days are larger than Doom shareware’s zip size.

0 comments

M95D2y ago

Not true. Or it's true because of software bloat and resource waste these days.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to see what was the maximum resolution my monitor supported. It was a Samsung Syncmaster 14" entirely analog, no OSD, with analog adjustment knobs on the bottom. The video card was a Matrox Millennium II 8MB VRAM and the OS was Windows 3.10. The maximum resolution that I could get was 1600x1200 @ 41Hz interlaced. That's almost 2K (1.92K to be more precise). 41Hz interlaced hurt my eyes like hell but everything worked on the software side.

nightski2y ago

There's a lot more to it than just increasing the resolution. Graphics, animations, font rendering quality, huge images, the list goes on.

userbinator2y ago

Most of that is GPU-accelerated anyway so the OS / CPU doesn't need to do much beyond telling the GPU what to do.

1 more reply

M95D2y ago

Graphics: Win3.10 had just the right amount.

Animations: NO, THANK YOU!

Font rendering quality: It increases with font size, which is needed for high res displays. Besides, current font authors don't waste any time doing manual font hinting like the old fonts had. Good luck having crisp font rendering without manual hinting! It's all just a blur since antialiasing was introduced.

Huge images: How huge? Win95 without any patches can allocate 500MB to a single program (image viewer). That's 170 megapixels @ 24bit-color.

monocasa2y ago

I mean, I was rocking a 1920x1200 CRT for my Win2k/Win98SE dual boot system that I had until WinXP64. They were plenty capable of efficiently using the screen real estate.

therein2y ago

I remember seeing Win9x UI on a really high resolution CRT display for the first time in early 2000s. It just had so much visual appeal to it.

Amezarak2y ago

I ran a 1999-era machine well into the 2000s (I think 2007?) with Windows 98SE on 1600x1200 and it worked great, and faster than the XP computer I had.

charles_f2y ago

1) if you're just referring to pointer size, wouldn't it be mostly a matter of computer hardware and recompiling to 64bit exes? Functionally it's the same 2) there's less cluster and more optimization. Why would it suffer at anything?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

M95D2y ago

Not true. Or it's true because of software bloat and resource waste these days.

nightski2y ago

There's a lot more to it than just increasing the resolution. Graphics, animations, font rendering quality, huge images, the list goes on.

userbinator2y ago

Most of that is GPU-accelerated anyway so the OS / CPU doesn't need to do much beyond telling the GPU what to do.

1 more reply

M95D2y ago

Graphics: Win3.10 had just the right amount.

Animations: NO, THANK YOU!

Huge images: How huge? Win95 without any patches can allocate 500MB to a single program (image viewer). That's 170 megapixels @ 24bit-color.

monocasa2y ago

I mean, I was rocking a 1920x1200 CRT for my Win2k/Win98SE dual boot system that I had until WinXP64. They were plenty capable of efficiently using the screen real estate.

therein2y ago

I remember seeing Win9x UI on a really high resolution CRT display for the first time in early 2000s. It just had so much visual appeal to it.

Amezarak2y ago

I ran a 1999-era machine well into the 2000s (I think 2007?) with Windows 98SE on 1600x1200 and it worked great, and faster than the XP computer I had.

charles_f2y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse