- #Install microsoft pinball arcade no language dll install
- #Install microsoft pinball arcade no language dll software
This is good for reverse engineering though: early versions of Visual Basic compiled applications to a bytecode called P-Code instead of native code.
#Install microsoft pinball arcade no language dll software
This is an unusual choice - most multimedia software produced by Microsoft at the time was written in C/C++ or sometimes custom languages. Many of the Bob applications are written in Visual Basic. The animated characters are stored in a custom file format, which has previously been reverse engineered and reimplemented in JavaScript in the aptly named Robert.js. The DLLs included with Bob are a hodgepodge of early 90’s Microsoft technologies - OLE, Jet Red, Multimedia Viewer, WinG, as well as a bunch of custom libraries that provide the framework for Bob applications. Bob uses the Jet Red relational database to store application content and user settings. Some of the files installed with Microsoft Bobīob consists of executables for the main Bob shell and all of the applications, a lot of DLLs, and a bunch of Microsoft Access database files. I could have just unpacked the big CAB file on the CD-ROM that holds all of the installed binaries, but then I wouldn’t have had the fun of actually using Bob.
#Install microsoft pinball arcade no language dll install
I used VirtualBox to create a Windows XP virtual machine and install Bob in that instead.
Unfortunately, modern 64-bit Windows won’t run 16-bit executables unless you install a replacement for NTVDM such as WineVDM. Bob is a 16-bit application designed to run on top of Windows 3.1.
I started by installing Bob and having a look at what files are installed by default. I decided to set out on an egg hunt to see what I could find. Microsoft loved putting Easter eggs in their products in the 90’s, so it was quite strange that Bob didn’t seem to have one. I was surprised to find that there didn’t seem to be any documented Easter egg in Bob. The technology was also made available to third-party software developers as Microsoft Agent, which led to the development of such virtual assistants as BonziBUDDY and, well… mostly just BonziBUDDY. The product was soon discontinued but the animated character technology was integrated into Microsoft Office 97 as the Office Assistant. Despite the hype around the new “social interface”, it is estimated that only about 58,000 copies of Bob were sold. Microsoft Bob's default family room layoutīob was not a big success. It also included a set of home productivity applications to help you write letters, balance your home budget, and create lists to organise things. Bob introduced animated characters that helped to make the computing experience more social and friendly for people who hadn’t used computers before. a desk with pen and paper would represent a word processor). a living room) containing objects that represented applications (eg. Bob replaced the standard Program Manager / Explorer shell with a virtual home consisting of a number of rooms (eg. Microsoft Bob was a graphical shell that installed on top of Windows to make it more user friendly and appealing to home users.
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