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Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

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Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#51

Post by bonzini »

rpiguy wrote: post #47

What I find interesting is that PC-DOS (MS-DOS) was also a mostly clean room copy of CP/M. The guy who wrote it before Microsoft acquired it literally went through a CP/M programming manual and recreated the system calls for x86, changing a name here or there. Neat parallel to how NT doesn't copy any VMS code, but still essentially copies VMS in several aspects.

And the new MS-DOS 2.0 APIs were based on Unix, sometimes down to the name (for example INT 21h/AH=42h is named LSEEK, and the value you put in AL matches exactly the "whence" argument of the Unix syscall lseek)

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#52

Post by pjmlp »

saul_goodman wrote: post #40

"Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface." Right... There's another reason why it was originally called OS/2 NT: IBM had hired Microsoft to co-develop OS/2 with them before Windows NT development had begun (as early as 1985). The reason for a resemblence to OS/2 with the name and API…

Well, it helped that a Microsoft employee discovered a way to make virtualization work with their ongoing Windows 3.x design instead of having to go with OS/2.

It has been several years, but I think the story is described here "Unauthorized Windows 95", I no longer have the book.

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/book-review-unauthorized-windows...

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#53

Post by WorldMaker »

EdSharkey wrote: post #48
WorldMaker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems just the opposite to me. The Windows Subsystem for Linux seems a testament to the NT Kernel and its deliberate approach from nearly three decades ago. Designed originally to support Win32, POSIX, and OS/2 frontends, for a long time it only ever really needed to exercise one of those things. Now it has the best POSIX layer it has ever had, focusing on byte-for-byte compatibility with binaries targeting the Li…

> If the NT Kernel is "Doing Linux better than Linux", that's a fascinating statement, because the NT Kernel is also running Win32, UWP, and all of its own chores at the same time. What's the Linux kernel doing? ;P Microsoft, the former juggernaut, would say "Linux, who?", and then proceed to throw their sales and marketing weight around. > a testament to the underlying NT kernel, because the NT kernel doesn't care,…

> Microsoft paved a gilded path for application development that points AWAY from the Windows platform. Yes, there is novelty and a definite technical achievement there that one can appreciate. But I choose to focus on the motives rather than the technical achievement, and I am disturbed by what I perceive is Microsoft's capitulation in the consumer software/platform arena.

Most paths support two-directional travel. The ancient adage that "all roads lead to Rome" seems to apply. Rome built a lot of roads to travel away from Rome, but nearly everyone realized that all of those roads also lead back to Rome. That does seem to be something of an intent in Microsoft's strategy here: if Windows is great at reaching users where they are, then Windows is great at bringing users back.

WSL makes it extremely easy to build on/with/for Linux, without leaving Windows. It worked for Macintosh to bring BSD users to Macintosh. It seems to working for Microsoft that WSL has given an option for previously Mac-or-Die web developers to give Windows a second chance. There have been plenty of headlines here on HN of previously Mac-only users delighted by new Surface devices. Obviously anecdotal evidence, but signs do seem to point that new roads are leading to Rome.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#54

Post by pjmlp »

EdSharkey wrote: post #33

I wonder how relevant the NT kernel is nowadays. My impression is the kernel as a foundation is that it is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, the windows structures atop it are eternally collapsing and rotted in parts. With the introduction of the windows subsystem for linux, the whole edifice is coming down, threatening to bury the NT kernel and render it obsolete. It seems Microsoft has capitulated and competition h…

No, they are doing GNU/Windows actually.

It just happens that Linux kind of killed the commercial UNIX offerings, with Aix and HP-UX the last ones standing.

Everyone else just happens to want to use POSIX like tools, so GNU/Windows is no different than running a Linux VM on top of an IBM z/OS or IBM i mainframe.

Microsoft is cleverly going after the users that Apple doesn't care any more, the ones that weren't interested in Apple platform to begin with, they just want a pretty UNIX to run their POSIX command line tools.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#55

Post by squarefoot »

Analemma_ wrote: post #34
teh_klev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Mark Russinovich was the author of many life saving SysInternals tools and utilities[0]. He was also the author of the original Windows Internals books. [0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/

A persistent rumor is that Microsoft bought Winternals partly because Russinovich knew the guts of Windows better than a lot of their own engineers did.

According to the Wikipedia article, it looks like more of an embrace and extinguish move, at least regarding the utilities sources and Linux development.

"However, since the Microsoft acquisition, none of the utilities currently available are accompanied by source code, and the Linux versions are no longer maintained or available.

Some of the coding tricks used were based on the Windows Native API (NTAPI), which was (and still is) mostly undocumented by Microsoft. Using these coding examples - with source - would enable developers to create extraordinary programs that performed operations that would otherwise have been impossible using a standard API. Examples include hiding Registry information, intercepting or hooking APIs to monitor file operations by the OS, as well as Registry operations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysinternals

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#56

Post by yuhong »

pjmlp wrote: post #52
saul_goodman wrote: post #40

"Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface." Right... There's another reason why it was originally called OS/2 NT: IBM had hired Microsoft to co-develop OS/2 with them before Windows NT development had begun (as early as 1985). The reason for a resemblence to OS/2 with the name and API…

Well, it helped that a Microsoft employee discovered a way to make virtualization work with their ongoing Windows 3.x design instead of having to go with OS/2. It has been several years, but I think the story is described here "Unauthorized Windows 95", I no longer have the book. http://www.os2museum.com/wp/book-review-unauthorized-windows...

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180514-00/?p=...

One of the problems with running 16-bit programs directly in Win9x was the Win16Mutex, BTW.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#57

Post by vt240 »

beefhash wrote: post #32
vt240 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember messing around with that ages ago. I wonder if any of the contributors ended up working with VMS Software on the port. It looks, from their site, like they are getting close.

> It looks, from their site, like they are getting close. Does it? It looks to me that the last commit was almost five years ago[1]. [1] http://www.freevms.net/gitweb/?p=FreeVMS.git;a=summary

I was referring to the VMS Software port, sorry. nickp posted the link bellow.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#58

Post by nineteen999 »

rpiguy wrote: post #47

What I find interesting is that PC-DOS (MS-DOS) was also a mostly clean room copy of CP/M. The guy who wrote it before Microsoft acquired it literally went through a CP/M programming manual and recreated the system calls for x86, changing a name here or there. Neat parallel to how NT doesn't copy any VMS code, but still essentially copies VMS in several aspects.

There was a nice analysis of this done by Bob Zeidman where he compared the released CP/M 2.0 and DOS 2.0 source code. His basic conclusion was that source and basic commands were not copied, but that a large number of the system calls were copied.

https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=...

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#59

Post by EamonnMR »

pjungwir wrote: post #43
EamonnMR wrote: post #3

For a detailed account, there's always _Show Stopper!_ by G. Pascal Zachary which is a shot at writing a _Soul of the new Machine_ style book about Microsoft during the creation of NT. If that sort of story entertains you, I recommend it.

Can someone tell me what is so great about SotNM? (It even won a Pulitzer.) I read a bunch of computer history books last year, and these were all more interesting IMO: - John Gernter, The Idea Factory - T.R. Reid, The Chip - Stephen Levy, Hackers - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning - Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work (Actually I read Levy & Lammers a l…

I actually like SoTM the best out of the list you've posted. More so than the others it's a study of the everyday people of technology, not just the heroes that we've all heard of. Dealers of Lightning, Hackers, and Where Wizards Stay Up Late all do a fine job of telling human stories of technology you use, but SoTM is mainly about the day-to-day life in an industry, the triumphs and failures on a much smaller, more human scale. A similar book could have been written about companies I've worked at, and I'm sure everyone here can say the same. It's less of a history and more of a study of people.

I enjoy this genera though, and I'll add Gertner and Lammers to the list. You may want to try Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley (about phone phreaking) and The New New Thing by Michael Lweis.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#60

Post by pjungwir »

EamonnMR wrote: post #59
pjungwir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone tell me what is so great about SotNM? (It even won a Pulitzer.) I read a bunch of computer history books last year, and these were all more interesting IMO: - John Gernter, The Idea Factory - T.R. Reid, The Chip - Stephen Levy, Hackers - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning - Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work (Actually I read Levy & Lammers a l…

I actually like SoTM the best out of the list you've posted. More so than the others it's a study of the everyday people of technology, not just the heroes that we've all heard of. Dealers of Lightning, Hackers, and Where Wizards Stay Up Late all do a fine job of telling human stories of technology you use, but SoTM is mainly about the day-to-day life in an industry, the triumphs and failures on a much smaller, more…

Thanks! I'll rethink SotNM some in light of that. I did enjoy the parts about "signing up" and the software/hardware interaction (although I wished for more technical details about that.) I didn't think it was bad btw, just not as rich as the others. Also after I wrote that comment I thought, "Monotony isn't always bad. The Iliad and Symphony of Sorrowful Songs are monotonous too. Maybe the form is expressing the long slog of the project." :-) Thanks also for the new recommendations!
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