AutoCAD History - when did it become windows compatible?

[Coosbaylumber]

Odd...

Had near zero problems with R-14 back when, running under Win98.

 

We bought a 166 computer in the East Bay area of SFO, (new H.D.) and loaded up Win 95 (who knows what version) then Acad R-13 on to it. After a bunch of work, got it to fire off repeatedly, tablet, plotter, computer etc. Next afternoon, we got R-14 in the mail and essentially scrapped the R-13 system. Loaded up R-14 on to that 166 and it took off right away. Then we got Win 98 at the end of year 1997, and loaded it up, and viola all troubles were gone. Scrapped anything still on R-12 or R-11 and loaded up R-14 after that on to every computer. Only had troubles with fonts and such a time. Bought two new 200 MHZ computers and never looked back, for had a few jobs to complete.

 

I can remember calling up Autodesk (not a toll call for us) and was told to contact our dealer for any problems. The call to the dealer was toll, so it became sort of call after..... with that dealer.

 

 

Wm.

[Coosbaylumber]

Right now, am thinking that we had Vango and CivilCad on the system someplace. We had to DXF out everything to them, including text or they got one huge file with zero showing. Took us remainder of the week to get them going once again, for vendors were new to 98 at the time.

 

Wm.

[David Bethel]

I'm still running R12 DOS on a Win 98SE machine as my main platform.

 

Other machine is XP running R12c4aWin, R13c4aWin T14.01, 2000 when I have to. 2011 DWGTrueView as required for conversions.

 

For a 1 time session R13 is very stable and VERY VERY FAST on XP. I don't push my luck. 2011 dwgconvert is slower than molasses

[peli59]

As I remember was the R12 released for DOS, Window and Unix.

One of my major customer(a large train manufacture) still works in R12 for Unix to produce electrical diagrams.

[SLW210]

I now feel even older than when I woke up this morning.

[Currahee]

I read the first page so someone may have answered the question on page 2 or 3, but they officially come out with a (early)late release of windows 3.0 with AutoCAD 12 which was a "beta" for Windows and then they come out with their "official version of AutoCAD 12 "For Windows". That's how they marketed it. I still remember it and still have the 4 or 5 1.44 disks

[Currahee]

I'm still running R12 DOS on a Win 98SE machine as my main platform.

 

Other machine is XP running R12c4aWin, R13c4aWin T14.01, 2000 when I have to. 2011 DWGTrueView as required for conversions.

 

For a 1 time session R13 is very stable and VERY VERY FAST on XP. I don't push my luck. 2011 dwgconvert is slower than molasses

 

You mean you still running that r13 dog...that was/is the black sheep that AutoCAD released. But hey, if its working for you...

[David Bethel]

Actually it turns out that windows and the adesk interface with windows was more to blame for r13 being a dog than he program itself. I regularly create animation rendering files with r13 on windows 7 64 bit machine that literally run for days without crashing. And it is the only legacy release the doesn't have issues with 7. I believe the problem was in the ms*****.dll files that came with 13. It even became a lot more stable once 2000 was installed on any machine. 9x me or XP ( I skipped Vista )

 

That is if you went through all of pains of getting R13 from r13_a1 to r13_c4 with the 6 so releases / patches / fixes in between

[Currahee]

Actually it turns out that windows and the adesk interface with windows was more to blame for r13 being a dog than he program itself. I regularly create animation rendering files with r13 on windows 7 64 bit machine that literally run for days without crashing. And it is the only legacy release the doesn't have issues with 7. I believe the problem was in the ms*****.dll files that came with 13. It even became a lot more stable once 2000 was installed on any machine. 9x me or XP ( I skipped Vista )

 

That is if you went through all of pains of getting R13 from r13_a1 to r13_c4 with the 6 so releases / patches / fixes in between

 

Wow, didnt know that...interesting;)

[RetroCAD]

Love replying to six year old discussions  

Some good insights here, but y'all are forgetting about the Release 11 "Extensions for Windows". 

[rkmcswain]

5 minutes ago, RetroCAD said:

 

Some good insights here, but y'all are forgetting about the Release 11 "Extensions for Windows". 

 

I have to claim ignorance. That was before my time with ACAD.

[RetroCAD]

I have AutoCAD R11 for Windows running now, so expect a video about it by the end of the year.

[Cad64]

I never used R11. I went from R10 to R12, but that screenshot brings back memories. 

[SLW210]

R14 was the first Windows version AutoCAD I used.

[rkmcswain]

4 hours ago, SLW210 said:

R14 was the first Windows version AutoCAD I used.

 

Same here, at least for production, and we didn't jump on R14 til probably mid '98 once R13c4a proved to be stable.

 

We fooled around with R13 on Windows, but it was soooooo slow, it wasn't an option for real work.

[TerryDotson]

On 10/27/2019 at 8:22 PM, RetroCAD said:

Some good insights here, but y'all are forgetting about the Release 11 "Extensions for Windows". 

 

I remember that, it came as a stack of about (10) 3.5in diskettes.

[RetroCAD]

2 hours ago, TerryDotson said:

 

I remember that, it came as a stack of about (10) 3.5in diskettes.

Yup. I have the 5.25” version and it runs pretty darn well.

[David Bethel]

R14 was the first true Windows version.  It did away with things like PLOTID or other settings that could deal directly with computer

hardware.  You now had to deal with Windows API.

 

Prior to that you could assign a mouse or printer to IRQ or addresses

 

To make the computer's speaker beep :

(defun Beep (/ f) (setq f (open "con" "w"))    ;Define Beep
      (write-char '7 f) (close f))             ;Print Hex 7 To CON

 

I bought in with R11 but learned mostly on R9 ( 2.62 ) & R 10.  If I remember the quasi Windows platform did not come with automatically

with the DOS install disks.  You had to request ( maybe even pay extra ) for them 

 

-David

[RetroCAD]

It’s quite remarkable how much quicker R11/Win is when compared to R13/Win.

[f700es]

Used r9 Dos in tech school ('89-'90) and then used some version on Solaris (yuck!) on Sun Sparc 20 workstations at UNC Charlotte but not much. Started work in '96 with r12 for Win 3.11.