[TUHS] Windows roots and Unix influence (was Re: Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!)

[Dan Cross]

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 12:21 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> > None of these APIs is native to NT, they're implemented on top of it.
> > I think only at boot you can run code that uses the NT API directly.
> Amusingly, I have a device in my airplane that runs NT4 without any Windows
> graphical API on it.   You can see the thing printing the NT4 startup and
> build number when you power it on and it will BSOD.
>

BSOD on an airplane? That sounds kind of scary.

One time I was poking around a US Navy landing craft after coming off an
amphibious assault ship and somehow found myself down in the engine room.
The computer controlling either the engines or the screws was running some
variant of Windows. It wasn't my bailiwick at the time (I was a Marine
officer; I wasn't even *supposed* to be there ... but I was curious and
pretty much had the run of the boat as long as I didn't touch anything) but
it sort of scared me.

I actually worked with the n10 and i860.   IBM build a 4 processor i860
> card.   We ported the 370/386 AIX to it.
>

That actually sounds kind of cool.

The only non x86 chip I worked with NT on was the iTanium (or as we called
> it the iTanic).   I might have had an NT Alpha around but we pretty much
> were an OSF/1 shop at the time.


I think it was Lockheed Martin that ended up buying a ton of Alphas to run
NT for Exchange server. Shoulda stuck with sendmail....

        - Dan C.
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