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> And that compatibility problem was still a hard one for Microsoft to deal with, remember that NT was not ubiquitous until Windows XP despite being a massive i
by nullindividual 2y ago
> And that compatibility problem was still a hard one for Microsoft to deal with, remember that NT was not ubiquitous until Windows XP despite being a massive improvement.
I think when it comes to this it is best to remember the home computing landscape of the time, and the most important part: DRAM prices.
They were absurdly high and NT4/2000 required more of it.
My assumption is Microsoft would have made the NT4/2000 jump much quicker if DRAM prices were driven in a downward direction.
- euroderf 2y agoI recall DRAM prices restricting the uptake of OS/2 also.
- steeeeeve 2y agoI remember talking to an IBM rep when he came to CompUSA to demo OS/2. I asked him why I should pick OS/2 over NT and his response was "honestly, if you can afford it, NT is better" At the time, we were selling OS/2 for $99 and NT for $499 IIRC. (And I was able to use a store copy of both to take home and use, which was awesome) OS/2s interface was better IMO.
- kev009 2y agoDefinitely impactful for NT4, not for 2000.
- p_l 2y agoWas very impactful in early days of 2000. Seeing 64 MiB "used up" by barely loaded NT5.0 beta/RC was honestly a sort of chilling effect. But prices shortly fell and 128MB became accessible option, just in time for Windows XP to nail Windows 9x dead
- hnlmorg 2y ago128MB was pretty common by the time Windows 2000 was released. I could afford it and I wasn’t paid well at that time. Plus Windows ME wasn’t exactly nimble either. People talk about the disaster that was Vista and Windows 8 but ME was a thousand times worse. Thank god Windows 2000 was an option.
- somat 2y agoMy understanding is that ME from a technological point of view was 98 with NT drivers. It probably was a critical step in getting vendors to make NT drivers for all of their screwball consumer hardware, and this made XP, the "move the consumers to the NT kernel" step a success. The lack of drivers is also what made XP 64 bit edition so fraught with peril, but xp-64/vista was probably critical for win7's success for the same reason. But yeah, what a turd of a system.
- mepian 2y ago98 was the one that introduced NT drivers (WDM).
- hypercube33 2y agoDidn't it still use VXD drivers for a lot of stuff though?
- cyberax 2y agoYes, because WDM support was limited. It only allowed synchronous requests and was really only suitable for USB or storage drivers.
- p_l 2y agoIt got much better once the release date rolled in, but it was something I remember discussed a lot at the time among those who did use NT. Also, at the time NT was still somewhat limited in official settings to pretty much rare more expensive places and engineering systems, with typical business user keeping to Windows 98 on "client" and NT Server domain controllers or completely different vendors, at least outside big corporations with fat chequebooks. Active Directory started changing it a lot faster, the benefits wer great and 2000 having hotplug et al was great improvement, but it took until XP for the typical office computer to really run on NT in my experience.
- nullindividual 2y agoIt was roughly $1/MB in 1999. Or about $250 USD with inflation in 2024 dollars for a 128MB DIMM.
- hnlmorg 2y agoDOS compatibility was a far bigger issue. PC gaming was, back then, still very DOS-centric. It wasn’t until the late 90s that games started to target Windows. And even then, people still had older games they wanted supported.
- dspillett 2y agoI'd say both. IIRC the DOS story was better under OS/2 than NT, but the RAM requirements were higher (at least until XP). To add a third prong: hardware support was a big issue too as it is for any consumer OS, with legacy hardware being an issue just as it can be today if not more so. This hit both NT and OS/2 similarly.
- hypercube33 2y agoNT 4 had NTVDM and it worked well enough. Quake 1, command and conquer, sim games for DOS and a bunch of other stuff worked just fine. You'd run into issues with timing on crappier games or some games that talked directly to soundcards I forget what the details were but you'd just not have audio.
- cyberax 2y agoI remember NT4 having problems with games that wanted to access SVGA resolutions and SoundBlaster. I kept a volume with Win98 back then specifically for the games.
- nikau 2y agoI had a gravis ultrasound at the time and remember having to cut the reset signal line on the card. I could then initialise the card in DOS and reboot into NT without it being reset and losing settings. Then some sketchy modified driver was able to use it.