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Windows NT for Power Macintosh
- LisaST 2y ago[flagged]
- fny 2y agoVery, very cool, and I can't wait to relive giving up all my DOS games!
- TickleSteve 2y agoThis isnt an x86 emulator that can run a DOS box, this is NT running natively on PPC. So... no DOS games I'm afraid.
- nullindividual 2y agoMacintosh PowerPC. NT4 was already compatible with PowerPC systems. The support ended with NT4 Service Pack 2; no further SPs had PPC support.
- FMecha 2y agoBecause desktop PowerPC was unpopular for anything other than Mac, and PPC NT wasn't designed for Open Firmware. Though you can blame Microsoft's monopoly tactics - in which loyalty to x86 was the prime directive, alternative OSes on PPC Macs were not a widely accepted idea either - people stuck around with classic Mac OS, in (ultimately) vain hopes that Copland/Taligent would deliver.
- nullindividual 2y agoWhere are you getting this information? The PReP/CHRP was a venture by Apple, IBM, and Motorola (but primarily IBM) to allow companies to build OSes for a common platform. Apple didn't want to participate in the end. But like other ports of NT to MIPS and Alpha (Alpha enjoyed much more support until Compaq dropped support), the popularity was well beneath the dirt cheap in comparison x86 platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_Reference_Platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_Reference_Platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Plat... This had nothing to do with Microsoft's monopoly. And nothing to do with exclusively 'desktop' PPC -- remember, NT4 Server also had PPC support through SP2. IBM's intention was for servers, not desktops (though they did produce compatible laptops/desktops), to support operating systems such as AIX and S[l]o[w|l]aris AIX isn't exactly a desktop OS.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> AIX isn't exactly a desktop OS. If so, only artificially; AIX was born on a workstation and seems to still support running a graphical desktop environment.
- nullindividual 2y agoJust like NT4 Server :-) Intended use vs. potential use. And yeah, NT4 Server was just NT4 Workstation with some registry fiddly bits flipped.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoRight; NT was and is likewise quite capable of being a desktop or server OS, the difference is that MS actually pushed that and NT 10.0 is still actively used in both contexts.
- lizknope 2y agoAIX was the first Unix I ever used in 1991 on an IBM RT with the ROMP CPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC I wanted one on my desktop so bad. DOS/Win3.1 PCs were just so bad to me. Then I saw SunOS and really just wanted any Unix system on my desk. I bought a PC in 1994 just to install Linux.
- icedchai 2y agoI had one of these back in the early 90's, bought used, of course. It was running AIX 2.x. I moved on to Linux pretty quick.
- lproven 2y ago> AIX was the first Unix I ever used in 1991 on an IBM RT with the ROMP CPU Nice. Me too. But it was about 1989. The first machine I ever compiled a C program and it took me ages to find `a.out` and work out that that was my binary. I was more used to DOS compilers that turned $SOURCENAME.$ext into $sourcename.EXE.
- duffyjp 2y agoSomeone gave me an NT4 CD when I was a kid and on the jewel case it said it supported x86, PPC, I think some other architectures too. I was disappointed I could never get our PowerMac to boot from it. :P
- nullindividual 2y agoAlpha and MIPS are the other two architectures. Sad trombone noises for Alpha
- duffyjp 2y agoI had a job in 2006 where the sysadmin ran the entire shop on a single OpenVMS server with two 500Mhz Alpha CPUs. It was our file server, AD server (somehow), DB server, web server, everything. I just looked it up and that CPU came out in 1996, at the same time Intel released their 200Mhz Pentium. Alpha was way ahead of their time.
- cobbaut 2y agoYes, and 64-bit!
- hypercube33 2y agoSomewhere there is a blog about how that CPU had some hardware bug that prevented it from hitting 1ghz. if it didn't have that I'd be a 1ghz 64bit processor in a desktop early on. I really cannot find the blog. It was down a rabbit hole of how Intel AMD both picked some IBM mainframe to base their designs off but AMD went for an older quirky design but it allows a lot of advantages. Anyway, search engines are awful now.
- IIsi50MHz 2y agoWhich CPU? One of the DEC Alphas? I tried a few Kagi searches, but found Wikipedia claiming that at least one Alpha ran faster: > The Alpha 21164 or EV5 became available in 1995 at processor frequencies of up to 333 MHz. In July 1996 the line was speed bumped to 500 MHz, in March 1998 to 666 MHz. Also in 1998 the Alpha 21264 (EV6) was released at 450 MHz, eventually reaching (in 2001 with the 21264C/EV68CB) 1.25 GHz.
- my123 2y agoNT on PPC had NTVDM afaik (with the licensed SoftPC x86 emulator)
- xbar 2y agoRead it again.
- Narishma 2y agoYou misread the comment. They don't want to run DOS games, they want to relive the inability to run them when switching to Windows NT.
- rezmason 2y agoI wonder what software is available NT4 on a Power Macintosh.
- Dwedit 2y agoWindows 2000 and XP had very good support for many MS-DOS games if you installed VDMSound.
- gcp123 2y agoWow, just when I was looking for a reason to fire up my old 1998 bondi blue iMac G3, this pops up. What a weird, wild, and specific project!
- ndiddy 2y agoThe same developer ported PPC NT 4 to the Wii last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8BpUpr1h9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8BpUpr1h9U
- gigatexal 2y ago[flagged]
- space_ghost 2y agoThe truest of arts require no purpose other than to exist.
- itomato 2y agoExploring the walled-off corridors of prep and chirp? Maybe this will enable OS/2 PPC to run? More reading on NT & PPC: https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2020/08/02/the-lost-history-of-prep-windows-nt-3-5x-and-the-rs-6000-40p/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2020/08/02/the-lost-histo...
- nullindividual 2y agoThis is specifically for NT4 on Macintosh PowerPCs. Not OS/2; not AIX; not NetBSD; not <insert other OS>. Not some random other PPC variant.
- itomato 2y agoThe firmware OTOH?
- jackstraw14 2y agoHard to say why. Windows NT was something pretty interesting though. It was meant for a corporate environment but was well known as a much more "stable" version of Windows than 95 and 98. All happening in parallel, with the Power Macintosh even!
- nullindividual 2y agoNT4 was more stable, to a point. But it had it's serious annoyances. IP address change? Reboot. I can't remember other scenarios, but there was a lot of <settings change, reboot> in NT4. Graphics and print drivers? Moved from user space (NT 3.5, 3.51) to kernel space -- and oh boy, graphics card vendors SUCKED at writing drivers (printer manufactures never improved to this day, hence the elimination of vendor print drivers). BSOD city. NT4 was also hobbled as a desktop OS for consumers due to only supporting up to DirectX 3. But! It was super popular for CAD/CAM/3D modeling. FireGL cards. 3DLabs cards. Yissss those were awesome monsters. It also required a hefty 16MB RAM but as with all minimum system requirements from Microsoft, it really shined on 32MB+. This is one of the reasons we had Windows 9x -- memory was too expensive to run NT4. One of my favorite Microsoft-led NT4 (and SQL Server) proving grounds was TerraServer [0][1]. I miss the days of NT4. Computing was much more interesting and varied. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraserver.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraserver.com [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-microsoft-terraserver/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-mic...
- ngneer 2y agoAny screenshot?
- lawnchair 2y agoWindows NT was fascinating. If you want to read a great book about it, check out Showstopper.
- eigenvalue 2y agoThat was a great book, up there with Masters of Doom and The Soul of a New Machine.
- dboreham 2y agoWas ?
- badgersnake 2y agoDunno why this is getting downvoted. Modern Windows is still very much a Windows NT derivitive.
- redox99 2y agoIs it a derivative? I'd say it's the latest version of Windows NT.
- badgersnake 2y agoIt’s the same codebase that was my point. Whether it’s still called Windows NT or whether that name died in the 90s can probably be argued either way.
- stahi 2y agoNostalgia reminds me of this: https://lowendmac.com/2014/next-openstep-and-the-triumphant-return-of-steve-jobs/ https://lowendmac.com/2014/next-openstep-and-the-triumphant-... Amelio and the rest of his senior staff began searching for a way out. They needed a new operating system to buoy their attempts to compete with the Wintel juggernaut. The same search had taken place several times before, but now the company was desperate. Limited Options Ultimately the list of possible targets was narrowed down to five options: License Windows NT from Microsoft and bolt a Mac-like interface onto it. License Solaris from Sun and bolt a Mac-like interface onto it. Narrow the focus of the flagging Copland project and release it in a year and a half. Acquire Be and use BeOS. Acquire NeXT and use OpenStep.
- mepian 2y agoThey did end up releasing salvageable bits and pieces of Copland as Mac OS 8.
- nullindividual 2y agoSimilar story to Cairo with Microsoft [0]. Both visionary, both only partial successes. WinFS :-( [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system)
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoI think of it as a time when people became so entranced with the idea of the emerging object-oriented zeitgeist that they imagined that making things OO and component driven would just hand-wave towards success. People rushed to make infrastructure to support this model, and, well, it was no magic bullet. Complexity, fragility, and a lot of hard work remained.
- exe34 2y agothe thing I'd like to see is for software to expose functional/"rest"-like interfaces. similar with websites and the content/user data. if you look at what accessibility software achieves by simply looking at the screen/hooking into the OS, now imagine any and all software could be connected like that. some of this functionality is now provided in individual silos, e.g. an email with an appointment in gmail can go into your Google calendar. a ticket from your train company can be added to Google wallet. but if you look at a flight booking system and want to compare the total price of a given set of dates for travel, including hotel and other things at different times - you're back to doing it on paper (or use somebody's website where 20% of the flights or hotels you want aren't included).
- the_panopticon 2y agoFascinating work. The ARC std https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_(specification) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_(specification) was used to boot the Dec Alpha Windows machines, along w/ MIPS, etc. Anyone know of other open source variants of that in the wild? At intel in 1998 the original efi spec was modeled on & inspired by Arc. The Intel boot initiative (IBI) in fact looked mostly like Arc. EFI (now UEFI) is sort of Arc + installable GUID-based interfaces (aka protocols) a la MS COM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model. Page 8 of https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/research/2011-vol15-iss-1-intel-technology-journal.pdf https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents... recounts some of those travails.
- lizknope 2y agoMy roommate's Alpha had the SRM firmware which he used to boot NetBSD. ARC would boot NT but SRM could not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRM_firmware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRM_firmware
- runjake 2y agoIt's been mentioned here before, but Dave Plummer's YouTube interview[1] with Dave Cutler[2] (NT lead architect) is a must-watch with never revealed before history about Windows NT. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxmZPMg7vIs&list=PLF2KJ6Gy3cZ6XYnS6VZm-NLBEMfp997dH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxmZPMg7vIs&list=PLF2KJ6Gy3c... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Connector2542 2y agohow far away is it from being a (even as a joke) daily driver?
- walterburns 2y agoIf I had a dime for every person that's asked for this.
- actionfromafar 2y agoYou'd have a dime?
- xattt 2y agoThis is one of those things that I’d have nerdy arguments about with my nerdy friends in middle school.
- technothrasher 2y agoDude, shut up, the Amiga is totally better. Cooperative multitasking is lame. Have you seen HAM mode??
- xattt 2y agoNo, Amiga sucks, it can’t even run UNIX! Do you even know what it is? My dad uses it for work.
- pjmlp 2y agoDepends on what one considers UNIX. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix
- jamesy0ung 2y agoThe Amiga 3000 and 2000 can run Amix, a port of Unix System V Release 4. https://www.amigaunix.com/doku.php/home https://www.amigaunix.com/doku.php/home
- Locutus_ 2y agoHah! We had ixemul.library and the geekgadgets distro back in the day! Full bizare GNU+BSD userland on top of AmigaOS!
- pwenzel 2y agoMan, I loved Windows NT back in the day. It was light enough that I could run it on fairly low end late-90s hardware, and it was substantially more stable than Windows 95.
- pjmlp 2y agoHad Microsoft been serious with POSIX subsystem, and most likely I would never bothered with Linux for our UNIX assignments. Instead I dual booted between both of them.
- hylaride 2y agoIt's a shame. NT did support POSIX, but it was in practice designed to make it easier to port UNIX apps. At co-op job I had back in the day (~2000), I had to fight with Veritas' backup software on NT that wrote to tapes. I don't recall what it was (a device mapping to the drive maybe?), but you could see the UNIX foundations of the software.
- pjmlp 2y agoIronically they had multiple iterations of it, with POSIX subsystem in NT, MKS Toolkit, Interix, Windows Services for UNIX, for various levels of "POSIX support", dropped everything on Windows Vista, only to create WSL out from Project Astoria ashes. And before they got golden goose with MS-DOS/IBM deal, they were into the UNIX business with Xenix. A few reasons why Linux would probably never taken off, had Microsoft stayed closer to their UNIX related projects.
- temac 2y agoThere was actually "SUA" after "SFU", only removed in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
- banish-m4 2y agoIt was mostly for running NFS to talk to other UNIX boxes, not to run UNIX software. To make a Windows NT box UNIX-ish, there was MKS Toolkit. It predates Cygwin, msys, and djgpp.
- _yb2s 2y agoCan someone explain the context here? Surely NT is closed source and was never developed for macs, what actually is this? And what are the chances you can get software for it? Presumably most NT software was compiled for Intel only and closed source.
- nullindividual 2y agoNT4 was developed for PowerPC architectures (and MIPS, Alpha). A large portion of the NT4 source code was leaked [0]. I'm not saying the author used the NT4 source code in any fashion, but I would imagine using such source would make life much easier to accomplish this task. Or the author clean room reversed engineered the bootloader. Or there is enough information out there to forgo the need for any internal knowledge of Windows code. The PPC code base was never explicitly targeted for Macs, but other systems from IBM/Motorola; but because it is a 'common' platform, the binaries themselves on the NT4 ISO do not need modification. And yes, you can find the source code on GitHub. In multiple repos! [0] https://www.neowin.net/news/exclusive-windows-2000--windows-nt-4-source-code-leaks/ https://www.neowin.net/news/exclusive-windows-2000--windows-...
- temac 2y agoNt has a dynamic HAL layer to adapt it to platforms. I'm not sure if it was publicly documented, but in any case yes the source code leak don't harm that kind of port, even if you "just" have to write a HAL.
- sumtechguy 2y agoThe current PE exe format supports it. As well as a few Alpha, a few ARM formats, a few MIPS format, Itanium and of course x86. The big part would be finding a compiler that spits out the right code. The preceding NE format also did a few variations.
- aeyes 2y agoIsn't this just drivers and a HAL? Microsoft built the OS in a way so that such ports would be possible so there should be some API documentation out there. The question is how complete it is because everybody just used the MS provided HAL.
- tiahura 2y agoMicrosoft killed the PowerPC 615 IBM engineer offers up 615 information https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/01/microsoft_killed_the_powerpc/ https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/01/microsoft_killed_the_...
- dmitrygr 2y agoWriting a new NT HAL is a very impressive achievement. A tip of my hat to you, sir! Docs are spotty at best, and I am sure many bugs aren’t known as existing HALs simply got lucky to not expose them.
- Lammy 2y agoNeat. I am totally going to try this on one of my spare Blue&White G3s.
- whalesalad 2y agoFinally, I can run a domain controller off an old G3.
- nxobject 2y agoTHat's absurd. That's it, that's the comment. Hack of the Year award, stat!
- unixhero 2y agoI love the boot loader file https://github.com/Wack0/maciNTosh/blob/main/boot_files/System/BootX https://github.com/Wack0/maciNTosh/blob/main/boot_files/Syst... Sidenote: The Open Firmware syntax is so unreadable. No wonder it was scorned. A lost opportunity.
- limp88 2y ago[flagged]
- yuhong 2y ago[dead]