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

[Toby Thain]

On 2018-02-04 3:05 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 12:21 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com
> <mailto: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.

You might remember this:
https://www.wired.com/1998/07/sunk-by-windows-nt/

--Toby

> 
>     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.
>