Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

computernewb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#11

Post by p_ing »

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

Microsoft's eye wasn't on open sourcing their OS and describing the deep internals. They still don't want you to develop against the NT API, even though developers certainly do (and Microsoft makes compatibility shims for applications which do, when required).

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#12

Post by p_ing »

cmiles74 wrote: post #7
cpeterso wrote: post #5

> The first release of NT is planned as a workstation product that will provide a strong competitor to UN*X based workstations. UN*X spelling for trademark reasons or a joke that UNIX is verboten at Microsoft?

I think trademark, I remember Bill Gates referring to Windows NT as "a better UNIX than UNIX".

OS/2 is likely where that came from - https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/successor_to_unix_pla...

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#13

Post by [deleted] »

jdboyd wrote: post #3

For those unclear on what the large pile of .doc and .pdf files are, it appears to be some revision of the design documents for "NT OS/2", which then turned into just NT. This appears to be the Smithsonian description of their physical copy: https://www.si.edu/object/microsoft-windows-nt-os2-design-wo...

[deleted]

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#14

Post by phendrenad2 »

This is giving me flashbacks to the times when I had to implement systems based on big, verbose specification documents like this. Horrible.

If you really want to understand Windows, skip this and check out Windows 2000 Internals by Solomon and Russinovich (Win2k is a good middle-ground where Windows had matured a bit).

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#15

Post by markus_zhang »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #14

This is giving me flashbacks to the times when I had to implement systems based on big, verbose specification documents like this. Horrible. If you really want to understand Windows, skip this and check out Windows 2000 Internals by Solomon and Russinovich (Win2k is a good middle-ground where Windows had matured a bit).

Yeah this is definitely a hell of read which probably has more historical values than real ones. The book "Inside Windows NT" also gives a good overview about Windows NT 3.1. There is another one called "Understanding Windows NT File System" which talks about the fs I think.

The biggest problem is NT is not open-source, and while there are leaked copies posted online, there is no "official" build guide so people have to try their luck.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#16

Post by kryptiskt »

cpeterso wrote: post #5

> The first release of NT is planned as a workstation product that will provide a strong competitor to UN*X based workstations. UN*X spelling for trademark reasons or a joke that UNIX is verboten at Microsoft?

That was back when there was "real" UNIX around, as well as a number of clones, including Microsofts own Xenix (maybe they had offloaded that to SCO by then). So UN*X was one way to indicate that it meant UNIX-like OSes.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#17

Post by kryptiskt »

kryptiskt wrote: post #16
cpeterso wrote: post #5

> The first release of NT is planned as a workstation product that will provide a strong competitor to UN*X based workstations. UN*X spelling for trademark reasons or a joke that UNIX is verboten at Microsoft?

That was back when there was "real" UNIX around, as well as a number of clones, including Microsofts own Xenix (maybe they had offloaded that to SCO by then). So UN*X was one way to indicate that it meant UNIX-like OSes.

Turns out SCO bought Xenix in 1987, but Microsoft was just a couple of years removed from being the biggest Unix vendor around at this point.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#18

Post by markus_zhang »

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

I think Windows and DOS do have good documents. I actually think they had way better ones than Linux at the time. But I could be wrong.

For reference:

https://jacobfilipp.com/msj-index/

And also MSDN.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#19

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #14

This is giving me flashbacks to the times when I had to implement systems based on big, verbose specification documents like this. Horrible. If you really want to understand Windows, skip this and check out Windows 2000 Internals by Solomon and Russinovich (Win2k is a good middle-ground where Windows had matured a bit).

For more modern Windows, Windows Internals Parts 1 and 2[1][2], and Windows 10 System Programming Parts 1 and 2. Basically anything by Yosifovich, Russinovich, Ionescu et al.

[1]: https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/windows-internals-...

[2]: https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/windows-internals-...

[3]: https://leanpub.com/b/windows10systemprogrammingP1and2

Post reply on HN