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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Macintosh PowerPC. NT4 was already compatible with PowerPC systems. The support ended with NT4 Service Pack 2; no further SPs had PPC support.
Someone gave me an NT4 CD when I was a kid and on the jewel case it said it supported x86, PPC, I think some other architectures too. I was disappointed I could never get our PowerMac to boot from it. :P
Sad trombone noises for Alpha
Amelio and the rest of his senior staff began searching for a way out. They needed a new operating system to buoy their attempts to compete with the Wintel juggernaut. The same search had taken place several times before, but now the company was desperate.
Limited Options Ultimately the list of possible targets was narrowed down to five options:
License Windows NT from Microsoft and bolt a Mac-like interface onto it. License Solaris from Sun and bolt a Mac-like interface onto it. Narrow the focus of the flagging Copland project and release it in a year and a half. Acquire Be and use BeOS. Acquire NeXT and use OpenStep.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxmZPMg7vIs&list=PLF2KJ6Gy3c...
Windows NT was fascinating. If you want to read a great book about it, check out Showstopper.
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Exploring the walled-off corridors of prep and chirp? Maybe this will enable OS/2 PPC to run? More reading on NT & PPC: https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2020/08/02/the-lost-histo...
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Windows NT was fascinating. If you want to read a great book about it, check out Showstopper.
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Hard to say why. Windows NT was something pretty interesting though. It was meant for a corporate environment but was well known as a much more "stable" version of Windows than 95 and 98. All happening in parallel, with the Power Macintosh even!
IP address change? Reboot. I can't remember other scenarios, but there was a lot of in NT4.
Graphics and print drivers? Moved from user space (NT 3.5, 3.51) to kernel space -- and oh boy, graphics card vendors SUCKED at writing drivers (printer manufactures never improved to this day, hence the elimination of vendor print drivers). BSOD city.
NT4 was also hobbled as a desktop OS for consumers due to only supporting up to DirectX 3.
But! It was super popular for CAD/CAM/3D modeling. FireGL cards. 3DLabs cards. Yissss those were awesome monsters.
It also required a hefty 16MB RAM but as with all minimum system requirements from Microsoft, it really shined on 32MB+.
This is one of the reasons we had Windows 9x -- memory was too expensive to run NT4.
One of my favorite Microsoft-led NT4 (and SQL Server) proving grounds was TerraServer [0][1].
I miss the days of NT4. Computing was much more interesting and varied.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraserver.com
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-mic...
Nostalgia reminds me of this: https://lowendmac.com/2014/next-openstep-and-the-triumphant-... Amelio and the rest of his senior staff began searching for a way out. They needed a new operating system to buoy their attempts to compete with the Wintel juggernaut. The same search had taken place several times before, but now the company was desperate. Limited Options Ultimately the list of possible targets was narrowed…