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[Author/submitter here] > The only way this would have happened is if Dave Cutler had never left DEC. Yes and no. Things happened the way they did because D

[Author/submitter here] > The only way this would have happened is if Dave Cutler had never left DEC. Yes and no. Things happened the way they did because DEC cancelled Prism and Mica and he decamped to MS. But the point here is that, 3 years before NT, MS had a very capable 386 OS and this shows it, complete with screenshots. Windows 3.0 was extremely poor by comparison and I speak as someone who deployed and fixed countless copies of Windows 3.0, 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups, all the while running OS/2 2.0 at home. We're not talking about that alternate history here. What the article is about is that MS had a complete working 386 OS in 1990... but chose to kill it, and it would be another 3 years before its own in-house version was ready, and a decade after that before that in-house 32-bit OS finally replaced DOS-based Windows.

chasil 3y ago
From Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft by Zachary, we learn that Microsoft hired Cutler in October of 1988. By this time, Microsoft had already maintained a 32-bit kernel with a flat memory model as Xenix. They disposed of it because AT&T was entering the commercial UNIX market and Microsoft would be at a distinct disadvantage. This means that Cutler had been expounding on his grand kernel plans for two years prior to the 32-bit OS/2 from 1990, and staff at Microsoft could very well grasp the significance. Chapter 4 of Zachary, Blind Alley, claims that the NT development kernel booted on an i860 PC in July of 1989. This being the case, the knives must have been out for OS/2 for some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler
- lproven 3y ago
  From the start, there were 3 planned editions of OS/2. 1.x - 16-bit, for the 80286 2.x - 32-bit, for the 80386 3.x - 32-bit, portable and CPU-independent, aimed at RISC chips. MS also had a multitasking DOS 4, never fully commercially released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_4.0_(multitasking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_4.0_(multitasking) http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-lives/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-lives/ What became NT started out as OS/2 3. It was initially developed on the Intel i860 RISC chip, codenamed N10. OS/2 3 was codenamed OS/2 NT for N-Ten.

chasil 3y ago

From Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft by Zachary, we learn that Microsoft hired Cutler in October of 1988. By this time, Microsoft had already maintained a 32-bit kernel with a flat memory model as Xenix. They disposed of it because AT&T was entering the commercial UNIX market and Microsoft would be at a distinct disadvantage. This means that Cutler had been expounding on his grand kernel plans for two years prior to the 32-bit OS/2 from 1990, and staff at Microsoft could very well grasp the significance. Chapter 4 of Zachary, Blind Alley, claims that the NT development kernel booted on an i860 PC in July of 1989. This being the case, the knives must have been out for OS/2 for some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler

lproven 3y ago
From the start, there were 3 planned editions of OS/2. 1.x - 16-bit, for the 80286 2.x - 32-bit, for the 80386 3.x - 32-bit, portable and CPU-independent, aimed at RISC chips. MS also had a multitasking DOS 4, never fully commercially released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_4.0_(multitasking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_4.0_(multitasking) http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-lives/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-lives/ What became NT started out as OS/2 3. It was initially developed on the Intel i860 RISC chip, codenamed N10. OS/2 3 was codenamed OS/2 NT for N-Ten.