[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez wrote:

> A friend who worked at M$ doing research, told me a different story. NT had 
> nothing to do with anything while it was being "born." In fact there is a 
> reason why the first NT to see the market was 3.x,

Yeah, because it uses the Windows 3.x user interface and API.  That's
not too difficult to figure out.  If they called it Windows NT 1.0, no
one would've bought it because "Regular Windows is already at 3.1.  Why
would we want NT--it's two versions behind!".

> there were previous releases of the system, at least interally, and
> these would seem pretty foreign to people who assume that NT is what
> came after 3.51. Basically it was a research project where Cutler and
> Co. were given free reign. It ended being a VMS-like

Only in a very distant sort of way.  It's not VMS.  It shares -some- of
the same concepts, but NT doesn't really look like VMS on the inside.

> system using a microkernel and developed on a RISC machine with HW
> independence as a design methodology from the ground up, due to early 
> experiences with the original target platform.

Correct.  It was designed on a DEC MIPS system, at that.

> There was another project called OS/2 NT, it was killed by M$ when
> they split with IBM. So what we know as NT today is basically the
> marriage of the NT research, with the OS/2 NT, with the win32 cruft.

Originally they were all separate.  NT has a core API that is neither
Win32 nor OS/2 nor VMS.  It's NT.  Atop that ran the Win32 and OS/2
subsystems.  In 4.0 and later, Win32 became part of NT, and, as of
Windows XP/2003, that's all that's left.

> More trivia, NT is called that because the original target for the research 
> project was the N-Ten processor (aka the 80860).

Also true.

> In fact all the earlier development of NT was done on MIPS machines,
> and it seems that M$ had a large say on the design of the MIPS box.

Any any other platform that implements ARCS: AXP, post-R3000 32-bit SGI
(except for Indigo and Crimson), and even the RSPC family of RS/6000s
(7268, 42P, and 43P).

-- 
Jonathan Patschke ) "I've built my whole system with [-fomit-frame-pointer]
Elgin, TX        (   cause it was recomended...as I don't care if a program
USA               )  crashes, not interested in finding out why."
                  (                     --Tim, Another Satisfied Gentoo User