Hamilton 95
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Hamilton 95 (or Ham95) is a non-existent operating system that was rumored to exist by many Usenet posters, beginning in 1995. The Operating System is entirely fictional, created partially as response to the hype of Windows 95, which was forthcoming at the time of the hoax.
Usenet posters began to embellish the story, creating fictional features for the faux operating system, such as "color disk formatting", or Sub-bit compression, which could compress any file to less than 1 bit.
Ham95 was joked to run on a variety of Hardware architectures, including 386s, Vic-20, and even Coke Machines and Vibrators.
As the joke grew, those who figured it out began to give Hamilton 95 even more outlandish features, and claimed that it had been given the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
The system was reportedly a 44-bit operating system. "Others may be 32 bit, but Hamilton '95 offers an incredible extra 12 bits to speed up processing and get the full potential out of your existing hardware."
Pranksters rumored that Linus Torvalds, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates met to talk about this new operating system.
When new users, or those who hadn't figured out that the operating system didn't exist asked where to get it, often in Warez groups, they were instructed to download it from a server whose DNS resolved to 127.0.0.1 (their own computer).
While most of the reports of the Operating System died down in 1995–1996, new references to it still surface on occasion.
[edit] External links
- Usenet Articles discussing the Operating System
- Official Hamilton 95 Site
- Non-Intel Based Ports
- 'Hamilton95' was almost year's biggest story
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