How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT
- Reference: 1711630064
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/28/plummer_windows_95_nt/
- Source link:
Clue? Further than you might think. Plummer, the programmer that worked on MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows NT, yesterday [1]explained how a dollar bill came to be affixed to a Redmond noticeboard.
It was 1994, and Microsoft was hard at work porting the Windows 95 interface to Windows NT for what would eventually become NT 4. Some – this hack included – might regard peak NT as Windows NT 3.51, replete with the Program Manager shell, but the Start Menu needed to be included and so the porting had to be done.
[2]
It was all a bit of a daunting task, starting with getting the Windows 95 user interface compiling for Windows NT, before tackling anything else.
[3]
[4]
"That meant adapting every system call that differs between 95 and NT, handling cases that just won't work on NT," said Plummer.
"For example, on Windows 95, you can re-initialize a critical section, but on NT, you cannot. And 95 shared a memory section amongst all shell processes, and so on."
[5]
It took weeks, but Plummer finally managed to get the code to compile and "out popped explore.exe and shell32.dll ." There was still plenty to do. By Plummer's estimation, a year of work remained for Unicode conversion and feature work. But it was enough to bring up a Windows 95-ized version of Windows NT.
[6]Windows Format dialog waited decades for UI revamp that never came
[7]Plummer talks to us about spending Microsoft's money on a red Corvette
[8]USB Cart of Death: The wheeled scourge that drove Windows devs to despair
[9]Remembering the time Windows accidentally sent Poland to the bottom of the sea
Plummer grabbed a colleague, Bob Day, to show off his efforts. They made a bet for a single dollar on how far the code would get before it crashed. Day reckoned it would fall over in DllAttach . Plummer had the confidence of youth on his side and bet it would get all the way to the desktop.
The two sat before the CRT attached to Plummer's 486DX2-50 development machine and fired up the code. It took a while – log messages scrolled past on a VT220 terminal connected to the serial port – but the debug build did its thing.
Plummer said: "A few seconds later, the PC's screen turned that classic sea foam green!"
Icons appeared – mostly wrong and with missing labels – but it was unmistakably the Windows 95 desktop, running on Windows NT. Plummer got overconfident and clicked the Start Menu, and Windows responded by falling over into a heap.
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But he had won the bet, and the dollar was his. Day paid up.
"I went to put it in my pocket," Plummer said, "but he immediately said 'Don't put it in your pocket, it's your lucky dollar!'
"I asked him, 'Well, where do you want me to put it?'
"Anywhere, but not in your pocket. Or it will get mixed in with the others and become just a dollar. Which it is."
Perhaps more No Country for Old Men than war stories for old developers. ®
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[1] https://twitter.com/davepl1968/status/1773043393167581547
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZgWiK4rn-sDdqlvovhZLZQAAAI4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/windows_format_dialog_temporary/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/spending_microsoft_money_on_a/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/25/windows_usb_cart_of_death/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/21/remembering_the_time_windows_accidentally/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZgWiK4rn-sDdqlvovhZLZQAAAI4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Disappointed
Was hoping for something like in 'Trading Places'
Windows used to work well!
Both operating systems were very easy to use originally, eventually I saw some issue with NT running an independent mail server but initially every function issue was very easy to fix - the tech developers at Microsoft were very efficient back then, they are not worse these days they are just working in a much worse software and malware environment. Eventually we started to see a few DLL hacking efforts but running everything behind a firewall box (not thinking that firewall software might always work) stopped all the attacks - but attacks were not common back in the old days.
I've still got the original multi user NT installation, I might be able to install it again to play with it but I need to find a PC with both a floppy disk drive and a CD drive.
> might regard peak NT as Windows NT 3.51
Indeed. Though perhaps it was due to it being the only Windows release with a feature freeze for ~9 months where they focused entirely on bug fixes. This opportunity only came about because they were waiting on IBM to release their PowerPC hardware.
Some more info here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100604082534/http:/www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winserver2k3_gold1.asp
NT 3.51
I had a Explorer 95 style "preview shell" on NT 3.51. The eventual NT 4.0 was less stable and easily BSOD by a dodgy printer or graphics driver because of the stupid decision to put GDI into the Kernel for about 10% performance increase on video in an era when performance was doubling for video in less than a year. Stupid. So till late 1990s we continued to use NT 3.51 for servers.
Even the 3.5 to 3.51 was due to win95 adding Win32 calls so Office 95 wouldn't work on Win3.11 / WFWG3.11 with Win32s installed, because Office 95 wouldn't work on NT 3.5.
It took IT and MS years to recover from Win9x which should never have been sold to businesses. It was best for games.
Re: NT 3.51
It took IT and MS years to recover from Win9x which should never have been sold to businesses
A lot of software didn't work on NT4 when it first came out - only Windows 95. Once we could get drivers & software for NT4, it became obvious it was a way more reliable OS than Win95 and we started to move to it. We still stumbled upon the odd piece of software which would only work on Win 95/98, but NT was the future for business.
Nah.
Peak Microsoft was Win2K.
It's all been downhill from there.
Re: Nah.
Oh, I don't know.
I was quite fond of both Vista* and Windows 7. It seemed to be time when MS were actually trying to make an OS that worked, was reliable for users by not BSOD'ing if you as much as glanced at it the wrong way and looked quite pleasant on the eye. It feels like it's been downhill ever since.
I think we look fondly on 2000 because it was the first business class OS from MS that had things like plug and pray.
*As long as you ran it on a machine capable of it, of course. All the "Vista Ready" bullshit was...well just that. Bullshit.
Inflation correction
That dollar must be worth a whole lot more after inflation correction. At the same time, you'd probably get less for the inflation corrected money as your subscription software will fail to recognize real money.
Okay that's really nice and wholesome. :)