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Microsoft gets too little credit for NT. They were effectively 9 years ahead of Apple in developing a usable multithreaded, preemptive multitasking OS (counting

Microsoft gets too little credit for NT. They were effectively 9 years ahead of Apple in developing a usable multithreaded, preemptive multitasking OS (counting Jaguar as the first usable OS X). Further, they did it in a way that (unlike on Mac) allowed software developed for the old style system to work on the new, industrial strength one.

JdeBP 3y ago
Fifteen, if that's your metric. OS/2 1.0, which was preëmptively multitasking and multithreaded and had the Family API, came out in 1987. And XENIX was even earlier, although it wasn't multithreaded.
- postmodest 3y ago
  Hold on, let me turn my TeamOS/2 mug around so it can't see me type this... Firstly, NeXTStep came out in 1989, and had both preemptive multitasking and threads, and OS X 1.0 didn't really improve on NeXTStep in that area at all. Secondly, while OS/2 1.0 had threads and preemption, it was text-only and had to run on IBM AT 80286 PCs so most of that technological might was wasted. It would be 1990 before it had a real GUI. And it would be nearly 1992 before OS/2 was 32-bit.
  - JdeBP 3y ago
    It's eduction's choice of metric, not mine, and by that "multithreaded, preemptive multitasking OS" metric, OS/2 1.0 qualifies. eduction didn't say anything about graphics. Presentation Manager was available in 1988, by the way, not 1990. Petzold's book on it came out in 1989. First (and only) edition sitting on my bookshelf as I type this.
- icedchai 3y ago
  Amiga OS had preemptive multitasking in 1985, in 256k of RAM. No memory protection though. I’d consider Amiga tasks light enough to be threads, since they shared memory.
panick21_ 3y ago
They also flat out stole MICA source code and questionably IP. If DEC hadn't been so weak and wanted to boorlick Microsoft they could have made a bigger deal of that.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  Allegedly. Though, DEC had pissed away $Billions on its VAX 9000 ECL mainframe, and why fight a costly legal battle? [0] https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/death-alpha-nt https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/death-alpha-nt [1] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/dec_forced_microsoft_into_alliance_with_legal_threat https://techmonitor.ai/technology/dec_forced_microsoft_into_...
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    For sure, they made a lot of really bad choices. VAX9000 is maybe the biggest one for sure. Using all that money to push PRISM/ALPHA and MICA into workstation and server and large server space would have yields them better results. That said, I'm not sure if DEC could have survived with that strategy either. What it would have done is make it so that Windows NT ends up not existing or existing in a very, very, very different way, likely in a far worse way. Lets remember that Gates didn't even believe in Virtual Memory.
thought_alarm 3y ago
NT wasn't ready for general consumers until XP in 2001. It took Apple a similarly long time to whip NextStep OS into shape.
- ChikkaChiChi 3y ago
  I always considered Windows 2000 to have that honor. Had the licensing been there, it could have gone mainstream. Much better alternative than Windows ME.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    I remember very much how XP was universally panned versus Win2k when it arrived, but XP just boots significantly faster even on the same hardware. I think it's the first one who really had any chance to replace 9x/ME.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    When was NT able to play Windows 95/DOS games? Was it 2000 or XP? I remember 2000 being able to do it.
    - sillywalk 3y ago
      I remember playing Half Life on 2K, and it had Direct-X support. I don't think 2K could do DOS games, as they usually talked to the hardware.
      - BirAdam 3y ago
        They’d work through NTVDMs.
    - BirAdam 3y ago
      Shortly after the release of ‘95. Microsoft’s DirectX was made available for both NT and CE. NT was able to run anything for DOS or Windows pretty much right away, though some bugs were evident in games.
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
This is rewriting history with present hindsight. NT was a hugely bloated OS (imagine an OS today that requires literally 4x the RAM of your mainstream OS just to boot) and almost killed Microsoft several times over until computing resources caught up. And still, a shitton of sacrifices had to be made to the original design until anyone outside of a server farm could run it.
- andai 3y ago
  > imagine an OS today that requires literally 4x the RAM of your mainstream OS This is just every OS when a new version comes out... sad! WinXP needed 64MB RAM and was considered hugely bloated at the time.
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    No, it's not even comparable. Windows NT came in the early 90s and required a whopping 16MB of RAM (at a time where most home PCs could not even address that much). Windows 9x came _years later_ and only required 4MB. And 9x was already considered bloated (new GUI et al).
    - sillywalk 3y ago
      To be pedantic, Windows 95 needed 8MB to be usable without constantly swapping.
      - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        Well, to be pedantic, it's not like NT would be usable with 16MB either; I remember the desktop taking 5 minutes to show and the HDD constantly thrashing. EDIT: Actually, I just checked, and NT 3.5 opens in around 8 minutes and uses 20MiB of swap, when booted with 12MB.
    - andai 3y ago
      Interesting. What is it about NT that causes such a high memory requirement?
CharlesW 3y ago
> They were effectively 9 years ahead of Apple in developing a usable multithreaded, preemptive multitasking OS… But 23 years behind OS-9, which I happily ran on my CoCo 9 years before NT was born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9 https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/OS-9%20Level%20II%20and%20the%20Tandy%20Color%20Computer%203%20(1994)(Rodger%20Alexander).pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/OS-9%2...
- watersb 3y ago
  Mad props for OS9 on an 8-bit microprocessor. The Motorola 6809 was a nice architecture for UNIX-like systems... if we accept the 16-bit memory address space.
deleted 3y ago
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JdeBP 3y ago

Fifteen, if that's your metric. OS/2 1.0, which was preëmptively multitasking and multithreaded and had the Family API, came out in 1987. And XENIX was even earlier, although it wasn't multithreaded.

postmodest 3y ago
Hold on, let me turn my TeamOS/2 mug around so it can't see me type this... Firstly, NeXTStep came out in 1989, and had both preemptive multitasking and threads, and OS X 1.0 didn't really improve on NeXTStep in that area at all. Secondly, while OS/2 1.0 had threads and preemption, it was text-only and had to run on IBM AT 80286 PCs so most of that technological might was wasted. It would be 1990 before it had a real GUI. And it would be nearly 1992 before OS/2 was 32-bit.
- JdeBP 3y ago
  It's eduction's choice of metric, not mine, and by that "multithreaded, preemptive multitasking OS" metric, OS/2 1.0 qualifies. eduction didn't say anything about graphics. Presentation Manager was available in 1988, by the way, not 1990. Petzold's book on it came out in 1989. First (and only) edition sitting on my bookshelf as I type this.
icedchai 3y ago
Amiga OS had preemptive multitasking in 1985, in 256k of RAM. No memory protection though. I’d consider Amiga tasks light enough to be threads, since they shared memory.

panick21_ 3y ago

They also flat out stole MICA source code and questionably IP. If DEC hadn't been so weak and wanted to boorlick Microsoft they could have made a bigger deal of that.

sillywalk 3y ago
Allegedly. Though, DEC had pissed away $Billions on its VAX 9000 ECL mainframe, and why fight a costly legal battle? [0] https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/death-alpha-nt https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/death-alpha-nt [1] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/dec_forced_microsoft_into_alliance_with_legal_threat https://techmonitor.ai/technology/dec_forced_microsoft_into_...
- panick21_ 3y ago
  For sure, they made a lot of really bad choices. VAX9000 is maybe the biggest one for sure. Using all that money to push PRISM/ALPHA and MICA into workstation and server and large server space would have yields them better results. That said, I'm not sure if DEC could have survived with that strategy either. What it would have done is make it so that Windows NT ends up not existing or existing in a very, very, very different way, likely in a far worse way. Lets remember that Gates didn't even believe in Virtual Memory.

thought_alarm 3y ago

NT wasn't ready for general consumers until XP in 2001. It took Apple a similarly long time to whip NextStep OS into shape.

ChikkaChiChi 3y ago
I always considered Windows 2000 to have that honor. Had the licensing been there, it could have gone mainstream. Much better alternative than Windows ME.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  I remember very much how XP was universally panned versus Win2k when it arrived, but XP just boots significantly faster even on the same hardware. I think it's the first one who really had any chance to replace 9x/ME.
- Clubber 3y ago
  When was NT able to play Windows 95/DOS games? Was it 2000 or XP? I remember 2000 being able to do it.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    I remember playing Half Life on 2K, and it had Direct-X support. I don't think 2K could do DOS games, as they usually talked to the hardware.
    - BirAdam 3y ago
      They’d work through NTVDMs.
  - BirAdam 3y ago
    Shortly after the release of ‘95. Microsoft’s DirectX was made available for both NT and CE. NT was able to run anything for DOS or Windows pretty much right away, though some bugs were evident in games.

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

This is rewriting history with present hindsight. NT was a hugely bloated OS (imagine an OS today that requires literally 4x the RAM of your mainstream OS just to boot) and almost killed Microsoft several times over until computing resources caught up. And still, a shitton of sacrifices had to be made to the original design until anyone outside of a server farm could run it.

andai 3y ago
> imagine an OS today that requires literally 4x the RAM of your mainstream OS This is just every OS when a new version comes out... sad! WinXP needed 64MB RAM and was considered hugely bloated at the time.
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  No, it's not even comparable. Windows NT came in the early 90s and required a whopping 16MB of RAM (at a time where most home PCs could not even address that much). Windows 9x came _years later_ and only required 4MB. And 9x was already considered bloated (new GUI et al).
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    To be pedantic, Windows 95 needed 8MB to be usable without constantly swapping.
    - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
      Well, to be pedantic, it's not like NT would be usable with 16MB either; I remember the desktop taking 5 minutes to show and the HDD constantly thrashing. EDIT: Actually, I just checked, and NT 3.5 opens in around 8 minutes and uses 20MiB of swap, when booted with 12MB.
  - andai 3y ago
    Interesting. What is it about NT that causes such a high memory requirement?

CharlesW 3y ago

> They were effectively 9 years ahead of Apple in developing a usable multithreaded, preemptive multitasking OS… But 23 years behind OS-9, which I happily ran on my CoCo 9 years before NT was born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9 https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/OS-9%20Level%20II%20and%20the%20Tandy%20Color%20Computer%203%20(1994)(Rodger%20Alexander).pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/OS-9%2...

watersb 3y ago
Mad props for OS9 on an 8-bit microprocessor. The Motorola 6809 was a nice architecture for UNIX-like systems... if we accept the 16-bit memory address space.

deleted 3y ago

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