anything meant to be tested can be seen here. anything!

“Silver”/”Amber”

aspect_ratio The desktop of Microsoft Windows NT 3.1, the first major version of Windows NT.

In 1988, Microsoft hired Dave Cutler, a former DEC engineer, to create a portable 32-bit version of OS/2 under name NT OS/2, the operating system that the company worked on in collaboration with IBM. At the time OS/2 was a 16-bit operating system very much tied to the x86 platform with considerable DOS heritage. The new operating system intended to be a preemptive multitasking system with multiprocessing support. The design included a portable kernel with executive services layered on top of a hardware abstraction layer, and multiple environmental subsystems running in user mode offering support for multiple APIs. Portable OS/2, or NT OS/2, would have included support for both 16-bit and extended 32-bit variant of the OS/2 API, as well as virtual DOS machines and an implementation of the POSIX standard, which would allow Microsoft to run for US government contracts. Commercial release was planned for the early 1990s with NT shipping as OS/2 3.0, while IBM was adding 32-bit support to the original OS/2 codebase to create OS/2 2.0.

Initially, NT was developed for the Intel i860 processor, targeted to both personal computers and servers, partially to ensure portability by preventing programmers from introducing x86-specific paradigms into code. When the team learned about the disappointing performance of the i860, the operating system was ported to the i386 and MIPS architectures.

Following the success of Windows 3.0 in 1990, Microsoft revised its OS/2 plans as a part of its new “Windows Everywhere” strategy, which tried to position Windows as a common environment that could run the same apps on DOS and OS/2 as well as on the new NT platform. This included the addition of a Windows subsystem to OS/2 3.0 as a peer to the existing OS/2 environment. However, this didn’t improve the already deteriorating Microsoft-IBM relationship and eventually led to its collapse. The design of NT was then further changed and Windows became the main environment providing the system’s user interface, while OS/2 support was reduced to character mode OS/2 1.x applications. The change was first announced in January 1991 with the new operating system initially being called Advanced Windows.

A user interface was added to Windows NT in the first half of 1991, with network support following during summer. The first prototype version was shipped to selected partners in September and the new operating system was publicly demonstrated for the first time at Fall COMDEX 1991 in October. A MIPS build first shipped in a December release. Later builds added crucial components such as the registry, NTFS and the ability to run 16-bit MS-DOS and Windows applications. Windows NT 3.1 was finally released on 27 July 1993 in the Workstation and Server SKUs.

The next minor version, Windows NT 3.5 was released in 1994 and included performance improvement as well as a new full TCP/IP stack, long filename (LFN) support on the FAT file system and other refinements. Windows NT 3.51 was released in 1995, which ensured compatibility with the upcoming Windows 95 and added support for the PowerPC architecture, the PCMCIA interface, as well as file compression, or replaceable GINA.

“Trifrost”