Windows 3.11, Shivers and Gob
I bought Windows 3.11 a few days ago.
No, Akril15's journal hasn't been hacked by a time traveler from the mid-90s. This is the same person who has been writing all these entries.
So anyway, I won Win3.11 on eBay (scant competition, as you might imagine). Why did I bid on it? Well, a lot of my old Windows games don't run well (or don't run at all) in WinXP, and since DOSbox (a very helpful DOS emulator that tends to work better than the real thing) has recently implemented Win3.x lacks quite a few things (like CD-ROM support), I figured, why not get my own copy and get it installed?
So the disks arrive about a week later, I slip Disk 1 into the drive, and McAfee VirusScan pops up to say that the disk has a virus on it.
...
I was surprised at first, and I wondered if it was a false alarm because of Windows XP's detecting another operating system. But nope, it was genuine, and it was identified as the very uncommon but still somewhat problematic Anticmos virus. Disks 2 and 3 were infected as well.
I emailed the seller about this, and he said that he had no idea that there was a virus on the disks. He even scanned them with Norton Utilities, which apparently didn't detect the virus because of its age and obscurity. Just another case of "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it". He vows to be more thorough in future disk scans, though. I'm afraid I'll have to give him a negative feedback point, though. Boot or not, a virus is a virus. For some time, I was afraid that my computer had become infected, and I was almost afraid to restart it.
According to the pages on Anticmos that I found, it is a boot virus, meaning it can't hurt your machine unless you boot from the infected floppy. After much anxious discussion with the tech-savvy dwellers of the DOSbox forums (a.k.a., VOGONS - Very Old Games On New Systems. Is that a homing beacon for geeks or what?), I learned that copying the files from the disks to my hard drive was harmless -- and indeed it was. Against all odds, I managed to get Windows 3.11 running in DOSbox (I ran the risk of overwriting my system files by doing so - eeeek.).
Ah, the memories. Of course, the sound is terrible when it exists at all, and when I try to run a 256-color game, I get a window saying that this game can only be run in 256 colors...eh??
Of course, I'm sure that DOSbox will continue to improve, Windows emulation-wise. I'm determined to play the Windows version of Space Quest 4 on 3.11 again.
In other news, I got a chance to play Shivers recently. That thing is addictive. The ending was kind of a letdown, though. I was also intrigued by the fact that the narrator the same person who played Rathbone in The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain, Rodney Sherwood. He has a very wide range of tones and accents, and the one he uses in Shivers sounds just like Rathbone's voice in the File Sorting region. I couldn't help but think of a monochromatic rat wearing spectacles whenever I heard the narrator in Shivers. I was a little perplexed by the fact that you never find out who the owner of that voice that you hear all throughout the game is (who the character is, not the actor).
I just got another scam email from someone named Jose Wayas claiming to be a tsunami victim. I doubt that a true victim would let his urgent plea for money be sent without checking the spelling first. This was the closing line:
Thanks for your anticipated cooperation and Gob bless you.
I have so many ideas for jokes I could make out of that typo, but I wouldn't want to invoke the wrath of the Almighty Gob.
EDIT: OMGSD! The Janitorial Times LIVES!!!!
No, Akril15's journal hasn't been hacked by a time traveler from the mid-90s. This is the same person who has been writing all these entries.
So anyway, I won Win3.11 on eBay (scant competition, as you might imagine). Why did I bid on it? Well, a lot of my old Windows games don't run well (or don't run at all) in WinXP, and since DOSbox (a very helpful DOS emulator that tends to work better than the real thing) has recently implemented Win3.x lacks quite a few things (like CD-ROM support), I figured, why not get my own copy and get it installed?
So the disks arrive about a week later, I slip Disk 1 into the drive, and McAfee VirusScan pops up to say that the disk has a virus on it.
...
I was surprised at first, and I wondered if it was a false alarm because of Windows XP's detecting another operating system. But nope, it was genuine, and it was identified as the very uncommon but still somewhat problematic Anticmos virus. Disks 2 and 3 were infected as well.
I emailed the seller about this, and he said that he had no idea that there was a virus on the disks. He even scanned them with Norton Utilities, which apparently didn't detect the virus because of its age and obscurity. Just another case of "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it". He vows to be more thorough in future disk scans, though. I'm afraid I'll have to give him a negative feedback point, though. Boot or not, a virus is a virus. For some time, I was afraid that my computer had become infected, and I was almost afraid to restart it.
According to the pages on Anticmos that I found, it is a boot virus, meaning it can't hurt your machine unless you boot from the infected floppy. After much anxious discussion with the tech-savvy dwellers of the DOSbox forums (a.k.a., VOGONS - Very Old Games On New Systems. Is that a homing beacon for geeks or what?), I learned that copying the files from the disks to my hard drive was harmless -- and indeed it was. Against all odds, I managed to get Windows 3.11 running in DOSbox (I ran the risk of overwriting my system files by doing so - eeeek.).
Ah, the memories. Of course, the sound is terrible when it exists at all, and when I try to run a 256-color game, I get a window saying that this game can only be run in 256 colors...eh??
Of course, I'm sure that DOSbox will continue to improve, Windows emulation-wise. I'm determined to play the Windows version of Space Quest 4 on 3.11 again.
In other news, I got a chance to play Shivers recently. That thing is addictive. The ending was kind of a letdown, though. I was also intrigued by the fact that the narrator the same person who played Rathbone in The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain, Rodney Sherwood. He has a very wide range of tones and accents, and the one he uses in Shivers sounds just like Rathbone's voice in the File Sorting region. I couldn't help but think of a monochromatic rat wearing spectacles whenever I heard the narrator in Shivers. I was a little perplexed by the fact that you never find out who the owner of that voice that you hear all throughout the game is (who the character is, not the actor).
I just got another scam email from someone named Jose Wayas claiming to be a tsunami victim. I doubt that a true victim would let his urgent plea for money be sent without checking the spelling first. This was the closing line:
Thanks for your anticipated cooperation and Gob bless you.
I have so many ideas for jokes I could make out of that typo, but I wouldn't want to invoke the wrath of the Almighty Gob.
EDIT: OMGSD! The Janitorial Times LIVES!!!!