A developer lately revealed a working native x64 port of Microsoft Phrase for Home windows 1.1a. You’ll be able to run it in your Home windows PC proper now.
Microsoft’s Workplace Suite, together with its hottest member, Phrase, has advanced vastly over time. What began out as Microsoft’s entry into the textual content and doc editor market again within the 80s has now reworked into an AI-powered platform that doesn’t even require you to kind your individual textual content.
Though Microsoft Phrase is now extra succesful than ever, one can’t assist however marvel can we even want all these superior options. After all, you might say that if Phrase is simply too overwhelming, there’s all the time Notepad. However even Notepad is a far cry from its roots of being a simple, bare-bones text editor.
So, perhaps the answer is to simply return in time to when it was all so easier? So far as I’m conscious, time-travel nonetheless isn’t doable, however that doesn’t imply going again to the roots of Phrase is solely out of attain.
Developer, and a long-time Neowin reader and discussion board contributor, Justin Marshall has completed precisely that. Justin performed with some classic code and revealed a working native x64 port of Microsoft Phrase for Home windows 1.1a.
Phrase for Home windows 1.1a arrived in 1990 because the second replace to Phrase 1.0, the primary model of Phrase to ever run on Home windows after years of being out there solely on MS-DOS. The mission takes the unique 1990-era supply code, which Microsoft open-sourced in 2014, and will get it working as a correct 64-bit Home windows executable. So, that is precise Phrase 1.1a you possibly can run in your Home windows 11 PC, not some emulation or lookalike recreation.
Trying on the program, it brings you proper again to the early 90s period of computer systems. There isn’t any Copilot button, cloud saves, fancy design templates, or a lot of the superior options you see in in the present day’s iterations of Workplace apps. There’s only a sheet of paper, with a few formatting choices, and naturally, the signature early Home windows design language.
For anybody who’s used Phrase within the 90s, and even 00s (though that is the place Phrase began getting in in the present day’s form, however nonetheless), this one will invoke plenty of recollections. And it isn’t nearly Phrase itself, both. In the event you have been a part of the early Home windows ecosystem typically, this alone could possibly be sufficient to deliver the entire image flooding again.
This is not Marshall’s first mission on this area both. He is turn into a specialist in reviving outdated software program and video games on trendy {hardware}. You’ll be able to take a look at his GitHub page, the place you may discover tasks like Quake4Doom, which merges the Quake 4 SDK with the Doom 3 engine, and Duke Nukem Ceaselessly, remade utilizing idTech 4 and leaked belongings from the notoriously troubled authentic launch, for some extra journeys down reminiscence lane.
And if you wish to attempt Phrase for Home windows 1.1a in your pc, you will get it from here.
