The O'Reilly Windows Center

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This page last updated March 18, 1996

Windows 95

• A Sneak Peek at Windows 96/Nashville? by Fred Langa (Windows Magazine): "We got our hands on some interesting software, and here's the completely unauthorized scoop." Particularly interesting is the description of how the Explorer is now like the Internet Explorer: apparently, you "explore" your local hard disk in the same way that you would explore the web: one more sign that the web, rather than Windows, is what's becoming interesting.

• Andrew Schulman's article, "Vexed by VxDs", InfoWorld, February 27, 1995

• Andrew Schulman's article on memory protection in Windows 95, "New isn't necessarily better", InfoWorld, April 24, 1995

• "Examining the Windows 95 Layered File System" by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, Dr. Dobb's Journal, December 1995. Also see their DevMon program, and their DblScan program, used to expose SoftRAM95.

• Some online document from Microsoft with absurd claims for Windows 95

• Windows 95 Virtual Folders: See Mark Hughes's page of information on extending the Windows 95 shell "name space." This requires undocumented calls exported from SHELL32.DLL. It is unclear if these undocumented calls will be supported in the Cairo shell -- or even if the documented shell interface will be!
  A good sample program which uses the undocumented API is Microsoft's "PowerToy" called CABVIEW, which lets you use the Explorer to manipulate .CAB (cabinet) files.
  Another good example is Chris Becke's REGSHELL, which integrates the registry into the Explorer.

Windows Tools

• "Windows Source" disassembly toolkit from V Communications (408-296-4224, fax 408-296-4441). "Windows Source" is an add-in for the Sourcer disassembler, also from V Communications.

• Explanations of Stealth, Cloaking, Windows memory management, etc. from Helix Software

• Some interesting material on Win95 and Win32 from Nu-Mega Technologies (makers of the superb Soft-ICE/Windows debugger)

• Device Driver Development for Microsoft Windows and Windows NT (Dan Norton, Cherry Hill Software)

• Information on Virtual Device Drivers (VxDs) from Vireo Software (makers of the VtoolsD toolkit for writing VxDs in C and C++)

Intel

• Dr. Thomas Nicely's fascinating paper on the work he was doing when he found the infamous Pentium FDIV bug: "Enumeration to 10^14 of the twin primes and Brun's constant". Even though the sum of the reciprocals of the individual primes (1/2 + 1/3 + 1/5 + 1/7 + 1/11) is divergent, amazingly, the sum of the reciprocals of the twin primes (1/3 + 1/5 + 1/11 + 1/13 ...) is a constant; Nicely has produced an improved estimate for this constant: 1.9021605778 +/- 2.1 x 10^-9. Also see Richard Smith's description of "How Dr. Nicely's Pentium FDIV bug report reached the Internet", and the "Pentium Papers" archive maintained by Mathworks.

• Robert Collin's collection of material on "Intel Secrets"; includes undocumented Pentium instructions and Robert's brilliant article on LOADALL. Check this out! Also see Ralf Brown's paper on "Pentium Model-Specific Registers and What They Reveal".

Internet

• Executable Content on the Web: an extensive collection of articles on Java, Telescript, and executable content generally, from Ray Valdes's JavaJive web site. See especially "Mobile Code" by Dan Connolly of w3.org, Distributed Computation by gordoni@base.com, and Naming by gordoni@base.com.

Internet Tools

• DejaNews, a fantastic search engine for Usenet newsgroup postings. A superb research tool!

• Four11, an Internet "white pages" directory service.

• Lycos, an Internet search engine with a huge database.

• Computer Daily News from the New York Times Syndicate.

• Amazon.com Books, an online bookstore with a huge number of titles.

Miscellaneous Microsoft Windows, DOS

• "Bug++ of the Month" column, edited by Mark Nelson in Windows Developers Journal. The January 1996 one is particularly interesting, demonstrating an apparent multiplication bug in Visual C++ 2.1 and 2.2. Also see Nelson's home page, which includes information about his superb The Data Compression Book.

• OLE 2: The Makings of an OCX Container -- a fascinating article presenting a simplified and logical approach to OLE (very different from Microsoft's approach), by Panangipally Aruna and Suvarnalaxmi Pandit ("Aruna and Suvarna"), working with Vijay Mukhi.

• The WinWord "prank macro" virus (WordMacro.Concept) -- a collection of links to other sites, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Computer Security Resource Clearinghouse. Also see material on the WinWord macro virus from DataFellows (Finland), and from David Chess of IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Massively Distributed Systems Group.

• Materials on the US v. Microsoft antitrust case. Also see the growing set of economics and legal material on the Internet about "network externalities." This is an important and fascinating topic: see Luke Froeb's Vanderbilt Antritrust Policy Project, the NYU Stern School of Business's "Economics of Networks" site, and "Microsoft Plays Hardball: The Use of Exclusionary Pricing and Technical Incompatibility to Maintain Monopoly Power in Markets for Operating System Software" from the Berkeley Rountable on the International Economy (BRIE).

• NetEx's "Unofficial Windows 95 Discussion Forums." This uses HyperNews, which is sort of a cross between the Web and Usenet News or a BBS. Take a look.

• Ralf Brown's Interrupt List.

• Ralf Brown's pages with errata for Undocumented DOS, 1st and 2nd editions

• Microsoft Systems Journal library. I'll be adding links soon to specific files with the code for articles by Matt Pietrek, Jim Finnegan, and Andrew Schulman.

• Robert Mashlan's "Internet Resources for Windows Developers"

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