Talk:Windows NT

From iA wiki

A week ago i actually ran Windows NT 4.0 on a friends' Alpha Workstation. We couldn't get any NIC working, we had MSIE 2.0, and i didn't take Windows NT 4.0 SP3 with me because i misread it only contains updates for x86 while it does also have updates for Alpha too. Not for PowerPC or MIPS though. It was a funny experience, also because the ARC of the Alpha was made for Windows NT. Normally it is used to boot up Linux instead. Finally, we also made screenshots of our experiment (and crashes ;).

Does anyone now why support for MIPS 4x00 and PowerPC was dropped? -- dpi

My guess is that they wanted to focus on the only two processors that were really going anywhere: Alpha and 586. Remember that NT was supposed to be the UNIX-killer. There was really no reason, once it reached a certain mass, to keep supporting other types of processors. Especially IBM/Apple. Webfork

Sounds reasonable, except i don't understand how Alpha was faring better than MIPS during that time. -- dpi

My guess is it had something to do with DIGITAL and then possibly Compaq but I don't really know. All I know is that DIGITAL made some great hardware in its day. Webfork

The obvious connection between DEC and Microsoft is that David Cutler & Co from DEC were hired to work on the Windows NT kernel. Perhaps there was some deal. -- dpi