3 ms·

The problems you experienced were not with DOS, but with Windows 3.11 / 95. DOS itself was one of the most stable platforms I've ever worked with. I personally

by slacka 7y ago

The problems you experienced were not with DOS, but with Windows 3.11 / 95. DOS itself was one of the most stable platforms I've ever worked with. I personally worked on a NetWare Server running on DOS that had an uptime of over 20 years. DOS's stability was not an outlier. Many of the UNIX machines I worked that predated DOS had uptimes that all measured in months and years. The only reason why Windows was so buggy for you is that you were using the home editions. At the same time that you were experiencing blue screens in Win 9x. My NT workstation was rock solid without any of the issues you described.

ken 7y ago
I hear this claim occasionally but it doesn't match my experience. The very first time I used Windows NT 4 (probably 1997 or 1998), I couldn't figure out how to log out, so I chose Start -> Help to look it up. Bluescreen. In the subsequent months/years with NT 4, the situation did not improve. It was a sad day when they replaced the HP/UX section of the lab with more NT machines. They were faster but they crashed a lot. It really took until Vista before NT was reliable.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  Windows NT was originally a microkernel architecture. NT4 moved a bunch of code back into the kernel space for performance reasons. Most notably: graphics and printer drivers, which are not typically written the highest standard. Big iron vendors don't really have that problem, since they typically control their hardware as well. Microsoft had to rely on component vendors to provide driver software and couldn't plausibly test all permutations under all conditions (even though they test very, very many).
- slacka 7y ago
  > windows (3.11, 95) would crash, >> At the same time that you were experiencing blue screens >>> first time I used Windows NT 4 For the 3.11/95 period, I was talking about NT 3.51 not 4. Yes, NT 4 had well known issues with poor quality graphics drivers. For this reason many of us stayed with 3.51 until the graphic driver problems were ironed out. You can cherry pick unstable OS's from any time period. But there is nothing special about today's OS's or programs. I've seen DOS, multiple forms of UNIX in the 80's and 90s that are just as stable as today's Win 10 or OS X.

by slacka 7y ago

ken 7y ago

I hear this claim occasionally but it doesn't match my experience. The very first time I used Windows NT 4 (probably 1997 or 1998), I couldn't figure out how to log out, so I chose Start -> Help to look it up. Bluescreen. In the subsequent months/years with NT 4, the situation did not improve. It was a sad day when they replaced the HP/UX section of the lab with more NT machines. They were faster but they crashed a lot. It really took until Vista before NT was reliable.

jacques_chester 7y ago
Windows NT was originally a microkernel architecture. NT4 moved a bunch of code back into the kernel space for performance reasons. Most notably: graphics and printer drivers, which are not typically written the highest standard. Big iron vendors don't really have that problem, since they typically control their hardware as well. Microsoft had to rely on component vendors to provide driver software and couldn't plausibly test all permutations under all conditions (even though they test very, very many).
slacka 7y ago
> windows (3.11, 95) would crash, >> At the same time that you were experiencing blue screens >>> first time I used Windows NT 4 For the 3.11/95 period, I was talking about NT 3.51 not 4. Yes, NT 4 had well known issues with poor quality graphics drivers. For this reason many of us stayed with 3.51 until the graphic driver problems were ironed out. You can cherry pick unstable OS's from any time period. But there is nothing special about today's OS's or programs. I've seen DOS, multiple forms of UNIX in the 80's and 90s that are just as stable as today's Win 10 or OS X.