My 90s Life at Microsoft: Task Manager, ZIPFolders, Space Cadet Pinball and More - Dave Plummer

Find out what it was like to work at Microsoft in the 1990s and to work on the big projects of the day. This covers David Plummer's career at Microsoft on MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows XP, etc, which included features such as Task Manager, ZipFolders, working on Space Cadet Pinball, and more. He also describes and discusses the Microsoft interview process.
At the University of Regina Computer Science Department's 50th Birthday celebration. Thanks to Daryl Hepting for the invitation and Corey Butz for the introduction!
Dave also discusses discovering computers as a youth at his local Radio Shack as well as various schemes to obtain free computer time at the local university.

[@ShaunIvory01]

I didn't expect to be able to sit through this whole thing (damned Internet has ruined my attention span!), but it was awesome. I love it!

[@DavesGarage]

I struggled to make it through your whole comment, but it was worth it to stick it out to the end! Thanks!

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@DavesGarage Lol im a complete pig unless its a specific target in my mind. Perhaps spawning new organisms yet identified by science, particularly in my car I lovingly call the dump. Good stuff. Very cool.

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@DavesGarage You are the human calculator breed. You know, I noticed this pattern asking the same questions over ten years to almost everyone I met. Even if the mutations throw off my fairly reliable model correlative birth, ect., its hard to miss the most visually dominant people tend to cluster around Gemini and Aquarius computationally. You dont need fancy equipment or mathematics to intuit with enough data, even if statistically some of that is noise to signal be it lies, or x men mutations like Virgo Grandin.

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@DavesGarage If I were to give a good indicator as that factor being the pinnacle of that sort of computational favoritism statistically. It would almost certainly be Pisces. Im a Sagittarius. Turns out we def produce a biological lets call it adoptable truth serum just talking averages, which basically is an adaptation expressing across complex lines designed to optimize for storage capacity given irrelevant information is bad for the efficiency of pattern recognition circuitry so to speak.

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@DavesGarage Enlightening. Like weight. Getting rid of all the nasty cycles. Going by real fast. What really resonated with me was the key words "good enough". Im legitimately, and ill leave it at this, disheartened at the standards Darwin has granted mankind in its present, albeit evolving by ratio state. Nihilism venturing beyond the familiar is I think an optimization from cave times that has a half life 3 mod on the horizon.

[@lugoheriberto]

I loved pinball space cadet so much, I was pissed when it wasn't included in Vista. So I created a dinky installer, made sure to include user manual, cheat sheet and add it to game section in Vista. I was happy when I found out it still worked on windows 7.. lol

[@lillywho]

Still works on Windows 10, right out of the files of an XP install on another drive.

[@matthewsmeets]

Nobody laughed when he opened a macbook. knowing your humor that was intended as a joke

[@DavesGarage]

THANK-YOU! You're the first person to get it. I did it intentionally, but no one got it except my son. He suggested maybe people in the audience *did* get it, but were too unsure to laugh in case I wasn't doing it ironically!

[@matthewsmeets]

@@DavesGarage I indeed cannot be the first person in 2 years, besides your son, to see this lmao 👀

[@Leiton1985]

Slow group. I'm with you Dave. Loooool

[@X400DYL]

I was wondering HAHA

[@SHRModding]

Lol same!

[@efahrenholz]

Dave, your statement about others on the wide spectrum--you spoke to my soul. I enjoy watching your videos, and I started coding in basic as a child. I wish I had stayed with it, but alas life takes us in a direction we sometimes can't control. Thanks for making these videos, it's nice finding people I can really connect to. I look forward to more of your content! Dave, we are out there.

[@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT]

We certainly are...

[@randyriegel8553]

Love the part about management. I've been writing code professionally since 1998... but started out on Commodore 64 in 6th grade (12 years old). I've known Development Managers that actually quit and move to another company just so they could "Just Write Code". Through my career I have turned down offers to be management. I told them I want to just write code and not deal with meetings, paperwork, and babysitting constantly. :) I just want specs and/or idea and start coding it.

[@tarelethridge8937]

1

[@FiveFishAudio]

I sat through this whole speech... and happy to recognize and used some of the utilities/programs you invented/worked on... HiMem, Dblspace. And yeah... that Windows Install key is a PITA if you lost it in your filing somewhere and need to reinstall Windows fast. LOL. Right now, I'm trying to follow your ESP32 Spectrum Analyzer code walkthrough, just finished Part1 when this video caught my eye... okay, now on to Part2. Thanks for everything you do.

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks for making it through the entire thing!

[@MrKeserian]

As an FYI, you can find your install key in the windows registry. Doesn't help if Windows is already borked, but I usually keep copies of my install key in some sort of cloud storage I can acess from anywhere.

[@K9Megahertz]

I had installed windows98 so many times I had my key memorized. I still have ~80% of it memorized, but I have seemingly forgotten the 4th group and the 5th group has become fuzzy now as well. I remember when I was 12 in school we had Apple II's and I figured out how to CTRL-C out of oregon trail and managed to pull up a listing of the source code. After hacking the source to cheat in the game I more or less got hooked on programming. Started learning C/C++ a few years later and just progressed from there. Yeah i remember getting the prompt and having no idea what to type in but through trial and error I figured enough out to be dangerous. =) Good times!

[@txe1nd]

@@K9Megahertz cool

[@ChrLOwens]

Now that I’ve sat through a couple Dave’s Garages I’ve heard most of those stories, but you’re still an engaging speaker...or maybe it’s just because now I know that so much of my own life was driven by your code, since I’m around 13 years younger. You did a great job here, especially for having such an un-engaging audience. Several times I wondered why they weren’t laughing!

[@kevin34ct]

It's amazing how our paths go. I was born in 1968 also, and the first PC I used was a friends TRS-80 Model 1. My first home computer was an Atari 800XL. I started as a programmer but went the opposite direction working on hardware. I worked as a System Builder and now I'm just a Level One Help Desk tech. I still love it.

[@kd6lor]

40 minutes after starting this video, there was applause from my desk today. Thanks for the history. I am a little older than you b.1962 and snuck into the local community college and taught myself APL and ran batch jobs on the mainframe to generate huge lists of primes on the LP. College was a decision, dentistry or CS. I am approaching the end of my dental career and code for fun in my off time. No regrets, but will always wonder “what if?” Found you because I have lately been coding WS2812 displays on Arduinos.

[@daffyduk77]

APL is a seriously powerful, totally wacky & one-off facility. From a different planet. Only dabbled but impossible to not be awed by it, IMO

[@kd6lor]

@@daffyduk77 APL is the ideal playground for the creation of unreadable code. It was fun, however to write code in a few lines that would take many dozens of lines in a different language. I wrote a program that would chart your biorhythms ( it was the 70’s… Google it if you need to! ) and in BASIC it was at least two pages long ( we printed the code to debug back then. ). In APL it was vey small, perhaps a dozen lines. A dozen unreadable lines. It was fun to code in.

[@muzzletov]

You just have to love to say the word Regina, it is just as freeing as saying the word Spenis

[@OldePhart]

Such an engaging personality. A pleasure to watch.

[@coderider3022]

His last 10mins is very accurate for developers. Mentors and getting right employer in your early years.

[@KeithZim]

Fascinating stroll down memory lane.

[@RicardoPenders]

I absolutely agree on that

[@williamwinborne3253]

Having grown up using all these NT programs all the time... it’s really cool to hear from you.

[@jamfriday]

I love your stories. I feel like I gained a mentor by just watching your videos.

Great conversation Dave! Thank you. I started my coding adventures on a C64!

[@brandonwhite6421]

I put some electronic music on last night, listened to you speak, and let my Win95 fanboy flow and it was a rad time. You have done some really cool things, and you're a real inspiration, Dave. Dudes such as yourself are absolutely what inspired me to start tinkering back in ~1995 or so, back when I thought ending processes and making the theme of the whole Win95 OS red/black made me 1337.

[@TheFreightBeast]

Thank you for task manager good sir!

[@ChadLuciano]

People like you Dave make me love computers!! Great video and thank you very much for sharing your history with us.

[@Robinzano]

You're a wonderful person, Dave. What a great insight to how you got to be where you are, and an inspiring story that regular people truly can do extraordinary things!

[@jeffmorris9893]

I was riveted. Working in the oilfield, I bought a TRS80 and then a Commodore 64 the years both came out. Ended up programming PLCs and working on SCADA projects. I'd written an early spreadsheet program for the C64 that could do line graphs without knowing what "spreadsheet" meant. Used the joystick instead of a mouse because I'd never heard of a mouse pointing device. Pretty sure I was preceded by actual developers by 10 months or so, but thinking back on it, it couldn't have been more than that. Your presentation brought all those memories flooding back. I still think Visual Basic for DOS is one of the most useful industrial dev platforms that ever existed. It kept me under budget and way ahead of schedule for years. Great video. Thank you!

[@DavidSinanan]

Thank you for everything you've done for the industry! I worked Enterprise networking etc with the military. So I've got to play with everything from old to new. I grew up on DOS. I ended up a certified Information System Security Officer. Computers, radios, communications, encryption. I know your work well, although I just learned of you today. I actually just moved to Regina recently. Thanks again. You made a difference.

[@zehph]

As always his honest and nonchalant way of speaking of what he managed to accomplish is a treat to watch! Everything I watch from you gets me stuck to the screen! Thank you for your work that still changes so many people's lives and for all the enterntainement you have been constantly providing on youtube, Godspeed on rockin everything you do! You always makes my day brighter good sir.

[@parm_is_coding]

amazing talk even 5 years after you uploaded this

[@doomshead]

Hey, thanks for everything 😊

[@DavesGarage]

No problem 😊

[@teleroel]

I started on CP/M where a copy command (from one floppy disc to another) expected the target location first and then the source. This was so counter-intuitive that I made a mistake. Luckily the source floppy had its write-protect sticker attached, so all I got was a 'click', at which point my boss looked up sharply and was quite cross for a moment. Good lesson, no harm done, but at that moment I wanted to get out of his sight.

[@SteveMasonCanada]

Ahh yes. PIP.

[@mikeandersen8535]

14:11 About autodidact: Amen. :) I am one of those who dropped out, but have always been envious on those with university grades. Not because of the grades, but the opportunity to learn more faster. Great channel btw. I especially like the "war stories" from behind the "windows scene". ;)

[@glasser2819]

Loved the interpretation of your vision while growing up: "what was hardware for them was software for me!" To each his own perception, isn't it? 👍

[@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT]

Wonderful.

[@planetal269]

That was a great speech! Thanks for sharing it. I discovered your channel trying to learn how to program LED strips. I haven't programmed a computer for real for years--hell, decades--but watching you code brought it all back, in a good way. There's lots of parallels in our careers, and lots of differences, too. Keep on doing your good work.

[@dhamilton63]

Dave, I've only recently discovered your channel and I'm loving the content. We're the same age and my career has revolved around computers in many different aspects. While I've never pursued an opportunity to code full-time, I've done a fair amount of random high-level language coding over the years and more recently created a C++ solution that I'm quite proud of. There is certainly something to the creative inspiration that flows when you're writing code. Anyway, the point of this is just too say I enjoy your presentations, the coding perspective, and hearing your stories about various projects that you've directly influenced which have also influenced my own personal career journey. Thank you very much.

[@TonyGingrich]

This presentation breaks my heart unimagably. I wish I could have met Mr. Plummer, or another programmer with his personality traits, at a pivotal point earlier in my career. After about 16 years, I had to concede defeat and walk away from IT. Mr. Plummer and I seem to have a lot in common, and I believe finding a mentor like him could have helped me keep my programming career moving forward. I'm jealous. But I'm also very proud for him. Something akin to a hero in my eyes.

[@Ironic-Social-Phobia]

"Google actual public speaking" So no one uses bing then, not even Microsoft people.. :)

[@ian_b]

I do. :)

[@Recovered]

Excellent, time well spent listening 👌

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks for listening!

[@markj702]

I was very glad to hear reference to the STAC lawsuit over Doublespace feature in Dos 6.0...! I still tell people that one today (as I was selling MS DOS 6 in a shop in central London at the time and was at the UK launch of DOS 6 at Microsoft). "A new PC on a floppy disk" was the tagline if memory serves...! One of the biggest sellers at the software shop I worked at: Stacker disk compression, by STAC...fascinating times!

[@abrpp]

millions people use your task manager until now. Thanks Legend

[@ChadBeloin]

I never knew you were from Regina!! It’s incredible to see someone walk such an exciting life in the realm I want to be in from my hometown!

[@davedreher9254]

Somehow, the KZbin algorithm hooked us up. And my name is Dave... My first time with a computer was 1978 on a PDP-11 and the first thing I did was give it the Turing test. It failed too and just returned "Syntax Error". I started a job in 1980 at Digital Equipment in Maynard programing in BASIC and COBOL, was there for 17 years. Made the switch to PCs, Windows and Visual Basic, and went into contracting. Still working now on Microsoft .Net platform coding in SQL, Javascript and still BASIC! Really liked your story, identified with lots of it. Wish I was retired! Edit: I use task manager several times a week, thanks! Usually to kill Google Chrome...

[@thewillsfamilyaccount6486]

What a lovely story.. growiny up with the history of Windows and tech..

[@revealingfacts4all]

Dam, Dave, the more videos I watch of yours the similarities of your childhood and mine are so similar. I use to ride my bike to a local shopping mall, Hudsons department store, to type in programs into Atari and Commodore computers. Later, our local library got an Apple II, where I would spend hours on it. In highschool I worked for a software company writing CNet BBS software... anyway, enjoying your content. Keep it coming!

[@DavesGarage]

That's awesome... I met my best friend and fellow programmer in the computer section of Eaton' s at the mall. That's almost a Hudson's Bay! He had a game (Frantic Freddie) on sale there at the time, and I was just window-shopping the C64s and accessories!

[@ByronWatts]

That is very cool. I was in High School when i discovered computers

[@michaelhawthorne8696]

I really enjoyed that...funny too at times.... you've done well for yourself Dave, well done !

[@Dal-Rob]

I remember the 6.0 upgrade. Good Job

[@szczepancom]

great movie :) greetings from Poland :)

[@eskwadrat]

Great story. And so much resemblance to my own life and career in electronics and software. Thank you.

[@gentuxable]

"Naively ran a turing test of the basic interpreter" lol tried as well.

[@RealDukeOfEarl]

Didn't we all!

[@ianbW4IJB]

In my twenty-five plus years in professional development, mentoring, and management, I became witness to a nebulous "it" factor that lives within every innovative coder. You either have it or you don't. It is what separates the innovators from the garden-variety coder. Positive indicators include the self-taught; early self-driven motivation to code (in any language); plays with constructive toys like Legos, Erector Sets, and (dating myself now,) Heathkit kits; a propensity to take things apart to see how they work, and put them back together fully functional; an affinity toward building things, anything at all; and finally, an innate deconstructive sense that allows enough abstract thinking to understand how to traverse the problem domain from the nuts and bolts all the way to the finished product. The rock stars have this; the rock stars who became rock stars before 1993 have this in spades. Dave is one such individual.

[@wayneholzer4694]

Truly inspiring how you started life as a everyday person to becoming a success through hard work and determination. I really enjoyed watching this video.

[@katiedonovanAlt]

32:20 Pro tip: the only reason your copy protection lasted as long as it did was because I was still in jail. I got out of jail (that time)around Jan. 2001. Your copy protection was publically broken in Feb. The world had XP in March.

[@ciscornBIG]

Awesome

[@davidhingst7063]

Great video. Thanks for sharing. Long live machine code/assembly/BASIC where I got my start.

[@reecepeart]

Really enjoyed watching this Dave! Love your channel! BTW your public speaking skills are what I aspire to be one day. Take care.

[@virtualpilgrim8645]

I like how Dave always looked behind them at the big screen revealing his lack of trust in computer technology to this day.

[@eformance]

1993, you must have had a copy of HelpPC loaded via TSR! I learned to write x86 in 1993 from some TS engineers at Borland while I was in HS. I picked up writing x86 again last year and found it to be an old skill that was relatively easily dusted off. I even tinkered with x86_32 on Linux and learned some of the x86_64 changes -- that instruction set really turns you loose!

[@franciscovarela7127]

Dave's love of LEDs explained.

[@michaels1813]

Very enjoyable!

[@rickchowsr2532]

Awesome brother

[@djcode4714]

I admire Dave.

[@jonduncan05]

Microsoft dev that uses Mac and Google. Wow! :-)

[@482aaa]

What a great talk.

[@robertstillmaker5193]

Ran across your LED lights video. Then I recognized your name. Not sure why since I was in the OEM Finance group. I worked at MSFT from October 1993 to September 1994 as an employee. And as a contractor during the Windows 95 launch doing stats for PSS. My twin sister Betty was at MSFT from 84 to 96. She wrote the manual for MS-DOS 3.1 while waiting for Windows NT to be developed. My brother-in-law Rick Chinn also worked in User Ed at MSFT with my twin sister.

[@therealdjap]

Dave, you are amazing.

[@StarsManny]

Very entertaining!

[@javabeanz8549]

Loving this talk! But your new videos show a great improvement in your writing and confidence.

[@Gromet.]

Just a realy nice story!!

[@Magician169]

Thank you for task manager!

[@tjkirkpatrick9451]

Well done Dave your an inspiration, a great story and thank you for sharing not only your personal story but also your knowledge. I am looking forward to coding my Led lights soon all parts are ordered, i spent a lot of time on Commodore 64 and Amiga 500's during the 80s growing up they were great times i wish i had learnt coding when i was younger but its never to late to start... All the best Cheers TJ

[@billdberger7407]

This is a great example of how important mentorship is, I'm not sure how my generation (millennial) will perform in that role but I guess we'll find out.

[@butjok]

DAVE YOU ARE FAMOUS!

[@regiondeltas]

Great talk! I'm always intrigued by the spectrum - I don't *really* consider myself on "the spectrum", and certainly a career in consultancy has forced me to become a more outward people person. But, man, do I identify so much with your habits and approach. Especially the "Do [x] til I'm bored it of it and then throw myself at something else, until I come back". I think a lot of programmers and similar will identify with the 50/50 coin toss of whether a new project will get dropped in 5 minutes flat or whether it'll become all consuming and the only thing that matters. Until the next thing! My friends think it's hilarious that when they come to my house they have no idea whether they'll catch me knee deep in code, or setting up a cement mixer!

[@tomsimonis]

Wow! Just wow!

[@turcitox]

That black mesa vibe

[@erikbmx478]

Loved the talk!

[@eformance]

I think the MacBook joke would have gone over better at a mainstream computing con; the irony was not lost on me!

[@H1pok0ndr1ak]

Nor me. I smiled.

[@shadow7037932]

Hahaah "Live in a Java VM to escape me". Dave, you do have a way with words.

[@AndreasToth]

VisualZip?! I l❤ved that utility! P.S. I love how you too were an Amiga user. 😊

[@DavesGarage]

Thank you! 😄 Without the Amiga I never would have made it to Microsoft!

[@OLIV3R_YT]

Amiga forever :)

[@bstmehanik]

10:28 Maybe someone else is doing the same as me? I always count the number of columns in the porticoes. Not a multiple is an extremely rare case. Suddenly I saw him here. Although the architectural style of that school is quite constructivist.

[@common_c3nts]

Great video

[@Lion_McLionhead]

'soft in the 90's sounded like a cozy place where an animal could work alone on pet projects in his private office while the rain pattered outside.

[@tanker242]

Unrelated, but I just realized Leslie Nielsen was also born in Regina, Saskatchewan.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

32:21 except that you could just copy the CD and use the leaked key FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8, which was didn't require activation, was available immediatly and usable for several years before MS shut down updates for Windows XP copies using this key.

[@AllMyHobbies]

Server 2003 was the pinnacle of windows os. You should go back they need you. I still run 2003 server and even a 2000 server in a production system at the datacenter and they are rock solid years of up time on both.

[@benrogersdevon]

2003 server is a great OS for stability and not bad for creating a domain with AD, DNS & name servers on the server with Win2000 & XP clients. Had 385 days uptime (no UPS) from a dual PIII 667 based system with only 256MB RAM. Have found that OS’ based on the NT kernel are on a level much above 9x for much better stability.

[@AllMyHobbies]

@@benrogersdevon ya my dell 2650s get mutiple years of up time all the time. They do have redundant hdd snd power supplys

[@tonym5857]

Nice speech 👏👏👏

[@JeffTiberend]

You are so amazing and interesting. I love watching your channel. You remind me a bit of Steve Wozniak. As much as I was in awe of Steve Jobs, I was also in awe of Bill Gates.

[@FizzlNet]

32:30 Waidaminit. All those "Download RAM"-ads were from Davepl? 🤯🤯

[@UseFreeSpeech]

As a Kid I was Tinkering with Windows, and as Kids do, they break it. So I had to reinstall it, several times, after a while the registration didnt work anymore. So what do you do, as a broke kid? do you buy a new copy of Windows for 100€ or so, or do you crack it? after a while I got fed up with this shit, so I tried Linux. after a while of back and forth I finally stay on Linux. so youre literally had me switch to Linux as an Microsoft employee. Nice Job!

[@armorgeddon]

Microsoft will probably follow you on that route in the future ;-)

[@Dunestorm333]

As an Italian, I'd like to point out that Regina is pronounced "Reh-jee-nah" not "Reh-jai-nah", sounds really rude that way too! Regina means Queen in Italian :)

[@nobytes2]

The University name is tricky lol sounds like you know what.

[@RealDukeOfEarl]

I thought he was saying University of Virginia but deliberately mispronouncing it :D

[@Sasoon2006]

At 6:15 😂. I thought he said “And that was the moment when I discovered University of **gina”

[@lidarman2]

Funny Dave,. In my lab, everyone's name is shortened to a four letter name. Rich, Mike, Dave, Chris, Etc even though everyone one of use has a longer name, esp, Etc.

[@jake_dev1046]

Loved the part when he opened the mac

[@scality4309]

Wish he would contribute towards GNU+Linux.

[@zzco]

NT question here from an NT nerd. What was the most difficult part of writing Task Manager? (Came here from a channel that featured your Reddit 'Before I forget...' on Task Manager)

[@AliA-tt2lc]

thio "his hair is too long cuz of quarantine" joe fan here!

[@zzco]

@@AliA-tt2lc and fellow techlinked watcher. sup?

[@DavesGarage]

Probably my decision to move so much stuff off to separate threads. Instead of calling any shell APIs, for example, it spins up a new thread, delay-loads shell32.dll and invokes the method manually (or at least that's what I recall offhand). Makes it very robust - if the shell is hung you leak a thread but that's it. But it adds a lot of work!

[@bjornolson6527]

Any chance that your slideshow you displayed to the audience is available?

[@flashcorp76]

The Apple on the desk............ just gotta love the joke 😁👍🏻

[@viclotorto9488]

Task manager was crucial for me to see what code intruders were attempting to run and suck my systems resources down . After a Fresh install , system resources could be monitored for malicious resource drains

[@nobytes2]

Dave what is your favorite OS up to date? What do you think of Win10 mixing old gui with metro gui?

[@wilhelmsarasalo3546]

I love writing code. I hate dealing with lawyers trying to get my intellectual property.

[@mikkojala]

Im pissed that the Purble Place devs didnt progam it more! Its such an fun game, even if its that simple!

[@falkerhard]

Lovely. Its nice to see life from a none Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer perspective. Thank you for your videos.

[@uilsonRJ]

I wonder, have you ever though about contributing to ReactOS? Your knowledge would be great in helping advancing it.

[@jcfawerd]

Anyone who has working experience in microsoft is not allowed to contribute to ReactOS project

[@bezbotek]

I am wondering when Microsoft did a trasition from assembly language to more modern language like C or C++. I know that everybody was developing software in assembly language in 80's - do you know exactly when Microsoft gave up using assembly language?