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

[Steve Nickolas]

On Mon, 5 Feb 2018, Michael Kjörling wrote:

> Honestly, I think you've got the timeline mixed up. Wikipedia puts the
> Xbox introduction in 2001, which sounds about right to me. Designing
> the core of the original Windows NT would be about a decade before
> that, maybe a little earlier still, around 1990-ish. Around 1990 in
> terms of game consoles was the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive
> (A.K.A. Sega Genesis), which the original Xbox was definitely _not_
> contemporary with. I _think_ (but could certainly be mistaken about
> this) that Windows 2000 ("NT 5") was the release that dropped several
> non-Intel architectures; I'm _almost_ certain that NT 4 shipped with a
> bunch of versions on the same installation CD, and believe that those
> included both PowerPC and Alpha.

Pretty sure at least PPC was supported by NT4, but don't quote me.

> Also, I think the original NT "personality modules" included OS/2 (but
> without Presentation Manager, the OS/2 GUI, so it only supported
> text-mode OS/2 applications). The way I recall it, the OS/2 module was
> a first-class citizen in NT 3.x, relegated to second-class citizen
> status in NT 4.0 (it was there, but you had to jump through some hoops
> to get it installed), and dropped with 5.0/2000.

3.51 and 4.0, at least, both had a paid add-on for PM application support.

-uso.