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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)

#61

Post by mschaef »

yuhong wrote: post #56
pjmlp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To some extent, _every_ Windows program on Win95 was a 16-bit program. (There was a lot of the 32-bit API that was built by thunking down to 16- bit equivalents.... one notable example was that Windows95 notepad was still limited to 32K files, etc.)

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

#63

Post by mschaef »

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...

> 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.

That's sort of right. Larry Osterman goes into more detail here, but the gist is that Microsoft figured out how to run (mostly) unchanged Win16 apps in protected mode. This was released to market in 1990 and immediately turned into the best solution to get at more than 640K RAM.... which had been a latent and mostly unresolved issue for over five years. (So lots of pent-up demand.)

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/02/02/fa...

(V86 Virtualization happened with Windows/386... another good product, but not nearly as compelling as Windows 3.0 was.)

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

#64

Post by EdSharkey »

WorldMaker wrote: post #53
EdSharkey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Rome fell.

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

#65

Post by JetSpiegel »

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.

Dramatized in the first season of Halt and Catch Fire. That show is a mishmash of all lore from that era.

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

#66

Post by wolfgke »

EdSharkey wrote: post #64
WorldMaker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Rome fell.

> Rome fell.

But not because it built roads.

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

#67

Post by beachy »

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…

If you enjoyed SoTM for that reason, you may also enjoy "House" by the same author.

Its a nail by nail account of... building a house with Kidder's trademark style.

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

#68

Post by wrs »

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…

SoaNM is an extended portrait of a single product development process/team under severe competitive pressure. The specific technology being developed isn’t the point (though it has to be explained for context) — it’s an attempt at capturing some archetypal characters and narrative of how technology is developed. It’s sort of like Silicon Valley, except instead of satirizing the outrageous nonsense that takes place in the Valley today, it takes seriously the mostly-serious work of development.

When I worked at Apple in the 90s, if someone asked “what is your work like?” I would give them that book.

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

#70

Post by indigodaddy »

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…

Wouldn't that have been against contract/illegal (or whatever terminology) ?
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