The Curious History of Cats on the Windows 8 Black Screen of Death

But let’s look at the context before we get back to cats. Windows 8 was supposed to be Successor to Windows 7. It wasn’t easy, because Windows 7 was a complete success. From issue end of 2009, Windows 7 was well received. Partly because it made us forget about Windows Vista. And partly because Microsoft fixed the mess with Vista by offering a serious and acceptable operating system.

Thus, Windows 8 faced two challenges. First, succeed in Windows 7 without getting on the Windows damn list. And secondly, do switch to touch screen and the ARM architecture for tablets and touch computers. Moreover, the development of Windows 8 begins before the release of Windows 7. This ambitious development because it’s about complete transformation how users interact. Instead of a mouse and keyboard or trackpad, they will be able to touch the screen. And furthermore, devices that will be released with Windows 8 will use ARM processor, so the operating system will have to be adapted to this architecture. But with an added complication, Windows 8 should also continue to run on non-touchscreen Intel/AMD PCs. Will they be able to please both viewers? Spoiler: no.

Operating system development is not an easy task. In the lines of code Windows 8 has about 50 million lines in your source code. For understanding: in Windows 98, released 14 years before Windows 8, there were only 18 million lines. In addition to code, you must keep in mind that the operating system must do everything. Connect computer components to each other, connect programs or applications to these components, prioritize their work, allocate resources… A lot can go wrong…

And when things go wrong an error message appears on the screen. It’s the softest we can find. Because for years blue screen was a common occurrence. windows blue screen. There is a problem with some component, something went wrong and Windows cannot continue to work. When the blue screen appears, we can only restart the computer, cross our fingers and hope that it does not happen again. And next to the blue screen there is also black screen. And that’s when we get back to talking about cats. Cats on the fence.

The anecdote was told by Raymond Chen in his blog. old new thing, which is part of other Microsoft blogs and developer materials. Exactly at about Raymond Chen is said to have “participated in the evolution of Windows for over 25 years”. Although Chen doesn’t tell us who was responsible, the developer of the Windows 8 black screen introduced ASCII graphics for give casual contact to the screen we see when something goes wrong.

This time the problem was with transition between two layers what the user saw in Windows 8 in its version for tablets. The base layer is called Start off or Home. This was the starting point. There were boxes and rectangles that represented apps, games, widgets, etc. Clicking on one of these items would open the app in full screen mode. He moved from the Start layer to the level Programs.

And if there was an error in this change between Home and Applications, then there was no other way out than to show a black error screen. A normal screen in the early stages of Windows 8 development. So it’s possible that the idea beautify black screen It was for internal use only. A wink or an inside game for those who were going to stare at that black screen for hours.

To spice up that Windows 8 black screen, the developer in charge introduced an ASCII graphic featuring two cats on the fence. art It consists of drawing using symbols and text. It was very popular in the age of typewriters and certainly in the early days of computing when graphics cards didn’t exist and/or were very simple.

Let’s continue with Windows 8 ASCII graphics. Two cats were looking at the moon. But every time the black error screen reoccurred, the drawing continued. Like animation. With each new error screen, the original drawing changed. For example, the cats moved their tails, the moon went down lower and lower… There are nine images or frames in which the moon disappeared, and one of the cats said: Good night moon!“Good night moon” in English.

And if you are lucky or unlucky to see for the tenth time the Windows 8 black screen error that appeared when something went wrong in the Start and Applications layers I mentioned earlier, you have seen animation that combined nine images. One way to downplay the question and dedramatize an uncomfortable situation, such as something is wrong with windows. But he had a problem.

The reason for the Windows 8 black screen is that something went wrong. So the screen should be as simple as possible. In other words. Raymong Chen says that “the performance team asked us to remove them” (cats). The reason was that “ASCII art uses a monospaced font and the display of cats was the only part of the startup sequence which used a monospaced font.

“Draw the backup window was forced font rasterization brand new which was worth the time and memory. Time and memory for something that if Windows 8 had worked well, we would never have seen. And even more so, complete the animation of the cats on the fence ten times in a row.

Although Chen does not name the author of the animated black screen in Windows 8, which did not see the light of day in its retail version, Chen cites the original author of the ASCII art that inspired it. Joan Stark. As I said, this art form was very popular in the era of typing, in the early years of computer technology, and also in Internet before 2000. It is on one of the many ASCII drawings created by the American Joan Stark that two cats are depicted looking at the moon. It dates from 1998.

ASCII art stood out in an Internet teeming with newsgroups like the ones on Usenet. Over time, Joan Stark created her own website at Geocities, which is now hosted at PathBackMachine. And at this link we can see the original drawing that inspired the ASCII art that appeared on a black screen Windows 8.