I worked on device connectivity in Windows core OS division in the Longhorn/Vista push. I came from the Linux and SunOS world before that. It was simply crazy at the dedication and effort put in to make Windows backwards compatible with whatever old broken and poorly behaving USB and printer device. We would have no-named cheap web cams that didn't function to USB spec but "worked" in Windows 98 that needed to work in Vista while still implementing new secure driver models that broke all cheap device assumptions. It was a long hard trek to get all those devices working.

▲

Grombobulous 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Did you have to procure a physical library of random devices for that kind of work?

	▲	okanat 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Raymond Chen actually talks about this: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240521-00/?p=10... They basically had a cart populated with random-ass stuff they found in computer shops to the maximum of the USB spec supported wirh hubs. They inserted the hub and watched Windows crash until everything is fixed and worked, then they started yanking it when it was still discovering devices.
	▲	direwolf20 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Don't know about that commentor but Microsoft definitely had one, since Raymond Chen (main source this AI stole from) talked about it.