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

[Warner Losh]

On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 5:37 PM, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki at buric.co> wrote:

> 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.
>

3.51 had MIPS support too, though that appears to have been dropped in 4.0.
I don't have my NT disks anymore to go check on that detail.

Warner
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