Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by glhaynes 3355 days ago
Some interesting info on the OS/2 subsystem is here: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsnt/....

My favorite part is how NT didn't directly use CONFIG.SYS — but, if you edited C:\CONFIG.SYS from an OS/2 editor, NT would render a "stub" CONFIG.SYS file from the OS/2-specific settings from the Registry; then, when the editor saved the file, it would translate those settings back into appropriate Registry keys!

Another interesting tidbit: Up through NT 4.0, Microsoft sold the "Windows NT Add-On Subsystem for Presentation Manager" that let 16-bit OS/2 GUI apps run on NT.

So much work went into the OS/2 subsystem, but I can't imagine it was important at all to NT's eventual marketplace success.
2 comments
Moto7451 3355 days ago
It wouldn't surprise me if that was done to satisfy some large entity's contractual requirements. Perhaps some part of the government that invested in OS/2.
link
yuhong 3355 days ago
MS still had to sell OS/2 1.3 until NT was released.
link
temac 3355 days ago
> So much work went into the OS/2 subsystem, but I can't imagine it was important at all to NT's eventual marketplace success.

It was even the reverse that is true. MS support of Win32 instead of OS/2 PM was a strategical choice, and the market and dev strategy was structured in concert. OS/2 did not had a good enough market share, compared to the Win API - hypothetically and then in practice. For Win16 it was not a concern because both could run that well (enough) - and OS/2 used a licensed Windows 3 copy to do that, but then came Win32. Given codevelopment between MS and IBM was not working well, MS used NT retargeted mainly to Win32 in part to kill a competitor, from after they parted ways, on that market.

The strategy has been successful.

link
glhaynes 3355 days ago
To be clear, I was talking about early NT's OS/2 subsystem - not about the IBM/Microsoft OS/2 project in general, which I think you're talking about?
link
temac 3355 days ago
Yes, I saw you were talking about the subsystem, but I think this is highly related to the whole picture. The OS/2 subsystem in released NT was neither a critical component, nor was it actually interesting for MS that it became too good. However, it was possible at all, for a lot of reasons, because NT was originally intended to be NT OS/2.
link