Afterdark "Star Trek: The Screen Saver" works in Windows 2000!

From: Don Wallace <dwallace_at_m-net.arbornet.org>
Date: Sat Aug 16 11:12:00 2003

A blast from the past... this is an old (1992) Windows 3.1 screen
saver.

In cleaning out and cataloging old books and SW in our basement I
tracked down the installation disks and serial number for this screen
saver. The last time I had installed it was on a 33 mhz 486 with 8 mb
of RAM, and the screen saver would make the system noticeably slower
in restarting and would make debugging in Borland's IDE slightly
unstable. And I only heard the sound through a tinny PC internal
speaker.

So... on a lark I installed it on Windows 2000 SP 2. The installation
apparently failed and aborted at the update of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file,
according to the log:

[23] Using Straight copy of file: 'c:\autoexec.bat', to:
'c:\autoexec.adk'

However... the next time I rebooted, "After Dark" was running in the
system tray at startup. I put it in demo mode... no sound... cured by
setting the sound system to "Windows 3.1 Multimedia" from "PC
Speaker". And yes, it still wakes up at the programmed time you set.

My favorite scene is Spock ... "PAIN!" (the horta).... strumming a
Vulcan lyrette, singing "bitter dregs"... getting a blast of mind
altering pollen from that plant, followed by "Spocks' Love Theme"...
Spock with a beard... phasering holes in the screen display... Spock
himself looking kind of wrinkled... honorable mention to the flying
brain cells, and the sick bay display.

As a software developer, I'm really impressed by the backward
compatibility of Windows. A 32 bit OS playing a 1992 program with
sound.
Received on Sat Aug 16 2003 - 11:12:00 BST