The Computer Chronicles - Windows NT (1993)

[@mornnb]

And to think that most of us are now watching this on a Windows 10 or 11 system, which is just the latest version of Windows NT. And the stability and multi-tasking performance we enjoy today was there from the start in 1993.

[@blendingsentinel4797]

It was there before NT but it wasn't quite as cheap. I mean Sun, SGI and others. These was SCO OpenUNIX but it didn't get a lot of installs.

[@mornnb]

@blendingsentinel4797 how far do you want to go back? Unix on a PDP? But I was talking about NT specifically given it is the OS most people are still using.

[@blendingsentinel4797]

@@mornnb I mean Sun systems so more like 80s. They multi-tasked just fine but like I said, not as cheap. You could have gotten SCO UNIX for a WinPC but that's besides the point.

[@mornnb]

@@blendingsentinel4797 Ok but I was talking about the legacy of Windows NT in modern desktops and laptops... their competitors are not the ancestors of our modern systems.

[@blendingsentinel4797]

@@mornnb Ah I get what you mean.

[@selami32]

NT kernel was lifesaver for Microsoft

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

Yup, without it, they would have been in real trouble after WinME.

[@Dumb_Killjoy]

@@KrunchyTheClown78 I know, I was using ME on a vm today, and every program/popup that was on the screen was frozen when I closed the tab. I had to do a restart to fix it. The vm also has problems with the startup chime freezing and playing the same .1 second over and over

[@askhowiknow5527]

selami32 They just repackaged much of their OS/2 code and screwed IBM though

[@justsomecommentchannel8602]

@@askhowiknow5527 well yeah it was their code

[@valenrn8657]

@@askhowiknow5527 Windows NT kernel is closer to DEC's VMS, not OS/2.

[@murraybragg6091]

The show and the people involved are legends in the pc industry. Thank you for a fantastic show Stewart.

[@saskiavanhoutert6081]

Yes, where would we be without Bill Gates and other programmers, thanks and kind regards.

[@BitcoinTakeover]

I laughed so hard at 20:22 when the guy started playing with the thickness of the phallic-looking design. Master troll, of all the shapes he went for that one.

[@Psythik]

I was looking for this comment. Semi-related but I also find it funny how excited they got over changing colors and making dotted lines disappear.

[@sbrazenor2]

You mean the girth. 🤣

[@RonHelton]

How about when he said "it gives you the power" while he was making it larger and smaller? That is just nutz. LOL

[@BillyBobDingledorf]

I was going to have fun with you and call you sick for seeing such a thing. I just watched it and it's hilarious.

[@JewLorad]

💀💀😂😂 did people notice back in day

[@OldAussieAds]

I used to dual boot my PC in the late 90s with Windows 95 (later 98) and Windows NT 4. I'd use NT for school and Win95 for games. That worked incredibly well for me.

[@b1lleman]

Yeah, loved it too. But even better when NT became windows 2000 which -if I remember correctly- supported much more PnP hardware.

[@OldAussieAds]

@@b1lleman Yeah I used Windows 2000 at one of my first jobs. It was very solid compared to the alternatives at the time (Windows ME and Mac OS 9).

[@ebridgewater]

I didn't realise the NTFS dated all the way back to 1993. As a consumer, my first experience of it was within Windows XP.

[@sontodosnarcos]

Yes, it was introduced together with NT to support features like file access permissions, long file names, etc.

[@Lofote]

The reason why it was called "NT file system" is because it was introduced in the times when the product was called NT ;)

[@TheRus13]

In the beginning, there was HPFS support from OS / 2.Then she was expelled.

[@ZuneTech2008]

​@@Lofote now it's just "New Technology File System" as I heard some people calling it as if it doesn't have anything to do with Windows NT itself anymore considering we also have ReFS.

[@Lofote]

@@ZuneTech2008 it still comes from the Name of the original operating system it was made for ;) refs by the way is no replacwment, you cant boot from it

[@TheTruthKiwi]

Amazing how little has changed in 30+ years. Sure there's been a ton of updates, improvements and functionality added (mainly cloud and virtualization) but at the end of the day, Windows, which is still the most popular OS on the planet on computers, is still based on the NT framework. Those original developers were very smart dudes.

[@patrikfloding7985]

They took the concepts from mainframe computers. The NT team came straight from DEC.

[@tylertyler82]

Actually it’s all built on top of DOS.

[@TheTruthKiwi]

@@tylertyler82 Nope. The last consumer OS that relied on MS-DOS was Windows Me. Windows XP, Vista, 7, and later are all built on the Windows NT architecture.

[@BrianBuresh]

@@TheTruthKiwiAnd to add to that, NT was never ran on top of DOS. NT, 2000, XP, etc etc were all based on NT, which did not use DOS under. Windows 3.1 and 9x (95, 98, ME) were all based on DOS.

[@EssenceofPureFlavor]

​@@tylertyler82It's crazy how people act like authorities on things they know nothing about.

[@Diskoboy1974]

To this day, NT 4 is still my all time favorite OS.

[@b1lleman]

Yeah, loved it too. But even better when NT became windows 2000 which if I remember correctly supported much more PnP hardware.

[@thecoolgames2995]

To this day, we use file system from July 1993 NTFS, jubilee 30 years

[@DavidPigbody]

​@hungrydragowindows 11 is based on NT

[@Valet2]

@@Douglas_HamiltonWin95, 98 and Me are NOT based on NT!

[@hifijohn]

and never forget--dont copy that floppy!!!

[@johndonovan7018]

yeah.. rip that blueray and upload it instead!

[@ramireza6904]

Plus: Never forget that you can talk with them.... ON-LINE..... ON COMPUSERVE!!

[@johndonovan7018]

@@ramireza6904 compuserve was the shiznitz.. for like 4 months

[@burnedoils]

f0k u

[@gregson99]

dont rip that ray

[@kreuner11]

"We're not seriously looking at WIndows NT right now" RIP that business

[@bjpeterdelacruz7091]

They're seriously looking at Microsoft Azure right now.

[@charlesallen4821]

I wonder how long that philosophy lasted.

[@Dan-TechAndMusic]

​@@charlesallen4821 As long as OS/2's feasibility, I'd think... So not all that long.

[@AcornElectron]

Yeah because all the banks and multinationals immediately switched to NT 🧐 oh wait …. They didn’t. In fact it would appear that 3 decades later they’re still relying on COBAL and legacy shite….

[@vocemais721]

Damn, 11 months late to make the joke. I wonder what he felt just 2 years later

[@lordcron]

I remember when this show was on and I remember all these shows that aired back then. My how far we've come.

[@raven4k998]

windows NT was supposed to look like win 3.1 how scary I'm scared hold me

[@raven4k998]

@@vardekpetrovic9716 no no no nt was just another version of windows 10 silly

[@jeffwads]

I remember running multiple simultaneous applications (animations) and being amazed at how well NT 4 handled them versus Windows 95, etc.

[@raven4k998]

I gotta a good feeling about this windows nt thing I think it's going to be Huge!

[@TH3C001]

@@raven4k998 Bah! It'll never take off!

[@raven4k998]

@@TH3C001 ok buy me a new tesla model 3 performance then

[@Chordonblue]

If you'd worked with an accelerated Amiga around this time, this wasn't so amazing. As a server operating system, yes, it worked well... Most of the time. The biggest issues with NT were the various hardware drivers. Like DOS/Windows 3.1, any hardware not detected (gfx card, sound, etc.), had to be installed manually. That meant juggling the IRQs and addresses on the bus. Plug and play wasn't a thing until Win 95, and it didn't exist server side until Windows 2000.

[@MattF340]

@@Chordonblue Yeah, Amiga was doing that 7 years before - just shows how bad Commodore were as a company that they completely wasted that head start in the years that followed.

[@judewestburner]

Windows NT4 was the first grown up Windows. During my early career I was lucky enough to do some amazing things like roll out central PaaS networks of thousands of thin clients using Citrix based on NT4. It was truly amazing

[@windowsxseven]

tf is paas? Pornography as a service? Pizza and a sandwich? Peers as associated shitheads? Elaborate

[@AureliusR]

Only problem with your comment is this has absolutely nothing to do with NT4. This episode Is all about NT3/3.5

[@judewestburner]

@@AureliusR so what?

[@tr1p1ea]

Buggy as hell from my first experience.

[@judewestburner]

@@tr1p1ea NT 3.x was pretty rough. NT4 provided you treated it with respect when it comes to drivers, it was next gen

[@SikoSoft]

Windows NT was the fucking shit. It was so awesome, so stable in a time of really unstable computers. I was maybe 16 or 17 during 1998 when I got a Windows NT 4 workstation from my dad. He worked at Dayrunner, and we were always on computers from an early age. During my high school time when I got this NT computer from my dad, it was my first personal one I kept in my room, and it was amazing. Just stable. Sooooo stable. I learned to build websites and set out of my career path I guess you could say from many of the experiences I had on that computer. It was rock solid. Windows 95 and 98 were notoriously shaky, reboots were always needed, things always seemed to have compatibility issues. But my NT computer was solid as a rock and never gave me trouble and never had to shut down and always performed exceptionally.

[@russellhamner4898]

We're the same age, and I got my hands on NT4 Workstation the same way! I liked the stability but it was harder to get hardware running with the right drivers, relative to Win98SE. And it definitely ran slower! That same parental unit bought me a boxed version of this bizarre OS/cult membership called RedHat Linux 6.1 that - get this - was FREE but worth supporting with an occasional purchase. Life was never the same, THANKS A LOT DAD. Heh. Seriously, glad I got my feet wet with computing at that particular time. My father was an early adopter of a lot of stuff that sometimes went nowhere but sometimes blew up. He used OS/2 and was a true believer, and was on Compuserve and Usenet when those names and ideas were relegated to the nerdiest .1% of the population.

[@MattExzy]

I remember my high school computer class around the same era had a room full of PCs running Windows NT 4.0. Very stable. Then we got a new teacher who also had some say in how things were configured - for some bewildering reason, he convinced the school to replace NT with Windows 98 - hilarity ensued. We were reassured however that '98 was the way to go, despite having no problems with NT. Some people just have to be control freaks.

[@mrsleep0000]

It was fucking shit all right...

[@AliasXZ]

@@vinhtran9308 Windows has always been shit

[@baghdadiabdellatif1581]

Thank you I have a question plz Can i make two programs run at the sam time, like one dos program on background and the ather on windows nt. Because the program on windows nt need that DOS program .

[@comedicsketches]

Starting from about 19:30 they manage to show a phallus on screen for over a minute while maintaining complete seriousness.

[@TheTruthKiwi]

Amazing how advanced dildo design was back then.

[@DBR00]

😂😂😂 Lmfao 😂😂😂

[@gerwin030]

My first NT version was 4.0 and it was such a huge upgrade from Windows 95 that I never went back to 9x (except for same games, kept a dual boot for those). Windows 11 still is NT, great job done by Cutler's team to create something for the future that we still use everyday, 30 years later.

[@OpenGL4ever]

Well, i use Linux everyday. The only exception is for some games for which i keep Windows 10 as a dual boot setup.

[@judenihal]

Windows NT 4.0 was absolute shit, and was incompatible with everything since everything was written for DOS. Nobody wanted it, especially with how difficult it was to customize it. The best Windows NT based operating systems were Windows 2000 and up. Windows 11 is still NT because if they change to a much better kernel, it will be a repeat of MS-DOS abandoning... increase of incompatibility. They did a good job preserving compatibility, even with the transition to 64 bit.

[@Dr.W.Krueger]

@@judenihal professionals like us wanted NT in the mid 90s. no point in running tools like 3d studio max, maya, lightwave or softimage on plain win95 or win98. too slow, too unstable. some of the professional 3d accelerators (glint, intense 3d, wildcat) also had no working drivers for consumer versions of windows.

[@judenihal]

@@Dr.W.Krueger for workstations like that, yes, you absolutely need NT 4 because these high performance applications demand so much, but for email, word processing and gaming, windows 98se was used, even in offices. NT was just too expensive to be put on many computers

[@alanvonweltin6820]

The person talking about Cairo really demonstrates the difference between program and product management

[@lawrencebarras1655]

Ahh, those were the days. We were porting engineering applications from HP Apollo and DOS to Windows 3.1. Developing W3.1 software was BRUTAL until Win NT came along. Huge, huge boost in productivity even when targeting W3.1 and Windows-for-Workgroups.

[@BillyBobDingledorf]

Windows NT was more of a POC. Windows 2000 was the first version of Windows that I found to be worthwhile.

[@theformerkaiser9391]

And to think 30 years later, modern versions of Windows are still based on NT. Tells you how good of a base it is.

[@jorgemoreira2406]

I agree ,brilliant ❤ from portugal

[@olli2591]

All of todays' relevant kernels (Linux, Mach-BSD hybrid kernel) are from that time. NT certainly is by far the worst of them. Microsoft is just lazy and cumstomers are dumb, that's what this shows us.

[@bradstewart7007]

Much like every other mainstream operating system based on the principles of Unix from the early 70s.

[@wysoft]

​@@bradstewart7007 NT's architecture is heavily inspired by Digital's VMS more than anything else, with the head of VMS development David Cutler having been poached from DEC by Microsoft to lead the development and design of NT. Though the NT kernel could have been the basis for a modernized Microsoft flavor of Unix if that was the way the winds did blow. NT separated the APIs and user environments from the kernel itself into subsystems, and one of the subsystems was a POSIX compatible environment. For a time NT essentially had a Unix distribution of its own via the Services for Unix/Subsystem for Unix Applications package, which extended the POSIX subsystem into a full-blown Unix environment running alongside Win32 which spoke directly to the NT kernel - no emulation involved. SUA was based on BSD sources and it was possible to compile and run pretty much any piece of open source software available at the time. Pair it with an X server and you could even run X11 applications directly on your NT system alongside Win32 applications. As far as the Unix applications knew, they were running on a regular old Unix system. The POSIX subsystem abstracted everything from the NT kernel. Applications executed natively just like any other application running through the Win32 subsystem - yes Windows itself was also just another subsystem to the NT kernel, though arguably the most "official" one. There was also an OS/2 subsystem, though IIRC it never supported GUI OS/2 applications and didn't support anything beyond OS/2 2.x, and was eventually dropped as almost nobody used it. Eventually SUA and the POSIX subsystem was replaced by the virtualized WSL package available in Windows today. This is an example of the modularity and flexibility in the NT architecture that led to us still using it today - it truly was a forward thinking OS design, despite all of the clutter that has been placed on top of it over the years.

[@JollyGiant19]

@@bradstewart7007Ehhh I’d say the principals are mostly gone by now. Can’t remember the last time “everything” was a file. Plan 9 does that still, it’s why Plan 9 is more Unix than Unix!

[@retroguy74]

"At Fireman's Fund, system developers prefer IBM's OS/2 Operating System" Sucks for the guy that headed that decision. I wonder if they still have some legacy application running somewhere that's still on OS/2 that some poor guy has to keep running. "It was your idea, Frank, so now you've got to keep it running!" LOL

[@the_expidition427]

Retro Active Actually most atms are running OS/2 and XP

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I've heard of industrial machines still running MS-DOS. And I'm not talking nice DOS 6.22 Oh no, DOS 3 is the thing!

[@ant.upptech]

Retro Active. Exactly, he was so confident. But in 95, two years later, OS/2 misdriven by IBM was fading out quickly. And NT-based systems now run on >90% of PCs. And if nowadays Microsoft were slightly smarter, it would run on most mobile platforms as well. Instead of this sadistic sh!t from google.

[@JonnyInfinite]

Frankie and Bennys use NT 4 on their terminals

[@procastnator]

This was still the wild west of operating systems I doubt no one at the time knew windows was going to come out on top in the end

[@joseph_b319]

I scored myself an unopened copy of Windows NT 4.0 and Server 3.51 on Ebay.

[@blackneos940]

Nice. :D You should make a Workstation, download GCC (to Compile C Code) for Windows, and see if it could work, and make a Server from the Server version! :D

[@joseph_b319]

blackneos940 id like to install it on a pc, but that last part is above my pay grade.

[@judgewest2000]

I have thrown SO many of those away lol

[@blackneos940]

@@joseph_b319 Oof. Well, I guess if it isn't Linux or Unix, I would have trouble setting up an NT-based Server. But now that I've aquired my own copy, I could make a VM and try THAT. :D

[@BrianSmith-yq7ys]

I have a sealed copy of Windows 95 in my closet

[@OhNotThat]

1000 years later, and to this very day I am still copying that floppy. Sue me SPA!

[@RGG800]

It's weird thinking that a few years ago Windows NT was something shiny and new when nowadays it is running in probably billions of machines

[@GaryvanderMerwe]

I remember watching this episode as a kid, specifically I clearly remember the demo showing the sql using multiple cpus. I only got a chance to work on a NT machine in '97.

[@davem45]

I remember being on the beta team for our company testing Windows NT. Probably one of my favorite OS systems and being in IT at the time this was rolled out I could support end-users in my sleep. Ah the Good ole days.

[@SilverBullet93GT]

in soviet russia, the end users support the OS when it goes to sleep :)

[@mcdoogle274]

I'm really missing 3D elements in modern operating systems.

[@programaths]

It was called affordance and is a good UX thing. It will come back because it's just the correct way to do UI! Just a matter of time. Flat UI only work with people who have been introduced to it. If you look at NT (and "classical" windows GUI), affordance is high! The only part requiring user to be thaught is the "menu"...because it's flat! The aqua theme of MacOS was great too in that aspect. I always found it graphically impressive at those times.

[@nickwallette6201]

I recently watched a video of IOS 6. Everyone said "just give the new UI a chance, you'll like it better once you're used to it." Nope.

[@andrewhanson1180]

@@nickwallette6201 you mean 7 right?

[@fluffycritter]

It’s funny, UIs used to be flat, then as soon as non-monochrome displays became a thing UIs gained 3D elements because they could and it was helpful, and then designers slowly ramped up the 3Dness to the point of ridiculousness (Curves! Refraction!) but then suddenly they all decided that flat is where it’s at and made their elements even flatter than they were in the monochrome days. I suspect the pendulum:will swing again.

[@kelleybrown1666]

Yes, a button back then looked like a damn button! Dialogs looked like dialogs! Idk what I'm clicking these days; everything wants to look like a webpage. From an ui perspective, I miss win7. Hell, from an ui standpoint, I miss win 3 and win95.

[@HeadStronger-HS]

look at that massive tower!! Nothing says performance like a massive tower lol...

[@ovsing]

Tower of power!

[@OhFishyFish]

Glorious days of local storage, you need that beast for all those 20MB hard drives. :)

[@mrflamewars]

Says you. I still save everything. Streaming is for suckers who like paying for data.

[@Roggocop]

+John Suckers are those who pay for data.

[@Acoustic_Theory]

@@Roggocop Suckers are those who don't own and control their data, and leave it up to a benevolent corporation to do so. What happens when you're balls-deep into their ecosystem and they decide not to be so benevolent, but to start charging you big-league for access to your data?

[@changkwangoh]

I had a old HP back in the 9-8, slapped NT on it that came for free with Visual Basic, and it was truly the best Microsoft OS!

[@BillyBobDingledorf]

I love how they balanced talking about the benefits of NT with the capabilities of Unix and OS/2. It's a balance that you [sadly] wouldn't see today.

[@captainkeyboard1007]

This show was as excellent as all the other The Computer Chronicles shows. I hope The Computer Chronicles will record shows about computers and peripherals that have been used since the early 2000s score.

[@TheAngelOfDeath01]

Windows NT was an absolute beast for its age. There was absolutely NOTHING like it around.

[@farwestern99]

Well, DEC had some tech that was at least equally powerful on Alpha: Tru64 and OpenVMS were titans of the era.

[@Frostie3672]

Totally disagree, the amiga & workbench operating system was so much better than what the pc had at the time.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@@Frostie3672 You mean when the Amiga crashed because of a lack of being able to utilize simple memory management? Zero networking functionality? Zilch on user security? Let's face it, the Amiga was good for what it was in 1985 but it was a relic toy by 1993. A cheap gaming toy, at most, to give it credit. But had nothing for a real OS.

[@sunnohh]

Least factual comment of all time op, nt was microsoft slapshodily implementing good ideas from real oses

[@alfabètagamma-k7p]

Fileserver was absolutely amateur compared with NetWare. Till Sharepoint and OneDrive took over from Fileshares, Microsoft was still behind. Marketing was very good of Microsoft. As usual, Sales people lied to their customers (read managers without IT knowledge)

[@gjw000]

NT4.0 was rock solid. Impossible to get pcmcia cards working, but was a great OS

[@BojanBojovic]

The times when Windows was more uniformed and aesthetically pleasing than today.

[@ElShogoso]

Windows was always ugly af to my eyes But then again, I was more into amigas and macs back in the 90's

[@raven4k998]

@@ElShogoso what ever floats your boat dude

[@Owen-hg3cu]

No it wasn't

[@BollingHolt]

I remember seeing a poster at a computer store back in Summer of 1993 that was a commercial for OS/2. It said that the "NT" stood for "nice try". LOL

[@BraveFencerLinkMakenshi]

yeh, they were using the same aggressive tactics with home video game consoles as well. I remeber watching (on KZbin) a colecovision commercial from the 80's that was really putting it to Atari and they made a slogan that said "sorry Atari"

[@matthewhall6288]

@@BraveFencerLinkMakenshi Genesis does what Nintendon't!

[@FrankCastleTIG]

@@matthewhall6288 Was gonna reply exactly that lol

[@leepeyton4101]

Poor Cairo, this video is awesome. David Cutler's team did great work!

[@n10cities]

That was back when Novell ruled the network world. Good times.

[@raven4k998]

Novell will rise again!

[@davidsutton9117]

When they talked about scalability, I had a little chuckle. Yes, it basically means the same thing now, but… And I say this as someone who has worked in IT since the mid 90s. It’s amazing watching stuff like this.

[@OneAndOnlyMe]

Even with modern GPUs, no other Windows edition matched the smoothness with which the mouse cursor could be moved in NT4.

[@scottandrew8906]

I love watching this kind of material.

[@raven4k998]

remember to buy an activator from sage for your games dude it's the future I can feel it

[@altaccount8749]

I wish this show still went on

[@christineayres5339]

The ladies certainly do if you skip to 19 min mark LMAO it looks like a Penis ha ha

[@theforsaken127]

@8:10 Fascinating how we take for granted a 12mb excel file these days and how it can pull data from various sources and complete calculations without giving us time to get a coffee....on your desktop/laptop, not even server hardware. What computing power will we have in 30 years time.

[@Aranimda]

21:41 1993: 60 seconds per frame 2018: 60 frames per second. I love the way 3D graphics has advanced over the last decades. The great thing is that Windows NT is still around. It is the core of Windows 2000 to Windows 10!

[@respectforkurt944]

and Windows XP, Vista, 7 and so on. Windows 95 and 98 and definately M.E were abhominations.

[@justiny.1773]

I still use and love 98 SE

[@MF175mp]

if you want to use also Dos regularly and have zero issues it's nice to have a win 98 machine of that era

[@Lofote]

@@MF175mp With DOSBOX I see no use in running DOS at all anymore physically ;)..

[@MF175mp]

@@Lofote I see

[@FlyboyHelosim]

Back when Microsoft tried to make new versions of Windows look like old ones...

[@StevenEveral]

NT Kernel is still around. It got folded into Windows 7, 8, and 10.

[@raven4k998]

why wouldn't it it was a very good Kernel

[@doramilitiakatiemelody1875]

@@raven4k998 yeah

[@BillyBobDingledorf]

12MB is a gigantic spreadsheet. If only they knew... ...how poorly we manage memory today.

[@kamratframjandet]

People still don't realize that "the cloud" was invented in like the late 70ths, and that it was re-hyped in the nineties. (ca 14:15)

[@oldtwinsna8347]

True. The microcomputer revolution purposely pushed the standalone computing concept, so users were free of being under the management control of the owner of the server system. Back then it was mostly about costs, not privacy, but the idea was no different than today (more geared towards privacy or the lack of it).

[@nameistunbekannt7896]

Unix users look all the same... long hair + big beard

[@GeoNeilUK]

I'm bald.

[@nameistunbekannt7896]

GeoNeilUK so, u Windows ?

[@GeoNeilUK]

NameIst Unbekannt No

[@Fiilis1]

propably mac user lol

[@josht4583]

there was an old dilbert cartoon about this - the bearded long-haired unix guy tells dilbert, "here's 25 cents, kid. Go get yourself a real OS."

[@ahmadzahid266]

Windows NT was the backbone of every modern windows version included 11, NT was targeted for servers, workstations and super users, it’s become for normal user since 2001 with windows xp set the end of dos based windows

[@BoothTheGrey]

It became also in many offices the standard OS in the second half of the 90s. When I started as a PC supporter in 99 in a huge german corporation all office PCs were running on NT 4 already for years (since NT4 was released in mid 96).

[@atrocitasinterfector]

i remember this when my dad took me to work I think in 94, I was 8 and just played with the afterdark screensavers, good times

[@frankiethefish73]

I think Windows NT4 was probably the most stable operating system I've ever used. I was using programs such as AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max on a dual Pentium Pro 150 computer in 1996 and I don't think I ever had a blue screen or lockup over several years.

[@knerduno5942]

Stable? LOL!! 1996 Yorktown was used as the testbed for the Navy's Smart Ship program. The ship was equipped with a network of 27 dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro-based machines running Windows NT 4.0 communicating over fiber-optic cable with a Pentium Pro-based server. This network was responsible for running the integrated control center on the bridge, monitoring condition assessment, damage control, machinery control and fuel control, monitoring the engines and navigating the ship. This system was predicted to save $2.8 million per year by reducing the ship's complement by 10%. On 21 September 1997, while on maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Virginia, a crew member entered a zero into a database field causing an attempted division by zero in the ship's Remote Data Base Manager, resulting in a buffer overflow which brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ship's propulsion system to fail.

[@saskiavanhoutert6081]

Thank you for this informational interview-show,called The Computer Chronicles, Kind regards.

[@subzeroarctics1299]

Forward 30 years later and we’re going back to RISC again, because RISC is king

[@BlownMacTruck]

Uh, it never left and you might want to check how modern x86 works.

[@OpenGL4ever]

The x86 is RISC since the Pentium Pro. It does use microops to do the x86 operations.

[@ONRIPRESENCE]

I like watching videos like this on my 3:2 ratio display. The aspect ratio of the video fills up most of the screen. Really nice.

[@joshstucki4349]

For anyone younger than 35, Windows NT is still alive - Windows 11 is merely another successor to this great OS.

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

Say what you want, but the bearded Unix guy is still the coolest kid today, with his SGI Indigo 😎

[@saurondp]

SGIs were awesome.

[@raven4k998]

@@saurondp yeah with there flight simulator os's those things looked so cool

[@krunkle5136]

Amazing that he even developed the software he used for art.

[@87Wayne]

I used NT on a Dual 200 MHz Pentium for a while before switching to Windows 2000. The NT interface was the same as windows 3.1 and 2000 was like Windows 95,98. NT (New Technology) worked very well and did not crash like old windows 3.1 but was nearly completely manual when it came to installing Drivers for, printers, video cards or sound cards many of which had to done in the command prompt mode. Those were the days.

[@Patrick_AUBRY]

Windows NT 4.0 before 2000 was like Win 98

[@GenOner]

@@Patrick_AUBRY wasn't windows 3.5 also like 95/98? either that or i remember it had the option to install the "new shell" aka the windows 95 start menu

[@Lofote]

NT 3.1/3.5/3.51 had the Windows 3.1/3.11 shell NT 4 had the Windows 95 shell 2000 had the Windows 98 shell However both NT4 and 95 could be updated to the 98/2000 shell by installing IE 4.0x with the "Windows Desktop Update". You needed to install IE4 before newer versions back then, otherwise you wouldn't get the new shell, it was only packaged with IE4 back then.

[@judenihal]

@@Lofote Windows NT 3.x has Windows 3.1 shell, NT4 had Windows 95 shell, Windows 2000 had Windows ME shell.

[@Lofote]

@@judenihal 2000 came before ME, so if at all ME had a lousy copy of the 2000 shell (minus the font). ;)

[@inwerp]

Imagine todays engineers come to the television and get grilled like that. "Can you show me if your new macbook device can keep its performance and not throttle"

[@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony]

Well, they’re not demonstrating with a laptop are they? Most laptops throttle. x86 as a laptop CPU won’t be around much longer.

[@inwerp]

@@SteveSteeleSoundSymphony most nowadays apple laptops throttle, that's true und thats exactly the point. But there is no one to answer the question.

[@inwerp]

@@comedicsketches how about people who understand that thermal design issue is one of the main problems in today's laptops? The problem is that two laptops with the same processor, may perform quite quite different. Yes, laptops throttle and yes apple pushes firmware updates to fix it. Yup every laptops might get hot and yet, there is a 12 inch macbook which uses throttling as a main cooling mechanism and fails because of that. You miss the point. I would love to see new products demonstrated by product managers/engineers like that and it would be much more interesting thing to see than todays events.

[@nnnnnn3647]

Thats why Apple go for Apple silicon.

[@soyroberto2527]

The story of NT is interesting, there's a book about it called, 'Showstopper'

[@Todd_Manus]

Brings back memories... I remember installing 3dsMax 1.0 on Windows NT 3.5.1.. those were the days. Now on Houdini 19.5.569 and Windows 11 22H2. Windows has never treated be badly. It has always done what I asked of it. Of course I am just a user. Meaning I use Windows as a means to an end.

[@andresbravo2003]

Happy 30th Birthday Windows NT!

I wish I could go back to 1993 knowing what I know now without the trauma from it. I could relax for a bit then prepare. I was 16...

[@mfaizsyahmi]

The great granddaddy of modern Windows you're using right now.

[@TheRattyBiker]

I never got to play with NT4 but when I upgraded (3.11 - 98SE - 2000) I immediately loved 2000, stable, fast and powerful.

[@brasidas33]

I loved NT, it was reliable, fast and had a clean interface. ❤

[@Valet2]

it still is

[@djquick]

I used an NT4 box in ‘99 on one of the first PC based NLE’s. It was so stable and it all just worked.

[@stefanscherbik2088]

How about that Sega Activator at the end. AVGN and Keith Apicary recently made a video highlighting its functionality... or lack thereof.

[@xerzy]

"recently" that hurts

[@jamesdaneke]

I was one of the first CNE and MCSE types. Those were the days. NT 3.51 was bulletproof.

[@jacobbaranowski]

Blockbuster CD rom movies oh boy how times have changed dam I'm old

[@winterheat]

so it is exactly 30 years ago... I still can't imagine 20 or 30 years later from today, the microSD card is like 4000TB and it is US$20

[@philollenberg]

11:39 Little did that guest know that "SharePoint" would become the name of a crucial Microsoft product a few years later. :)

[@quintas66]

I love how the sponsors actually show a street address and no website url.

[@SilverBullet93GT]

What's a "website" :)

[@heavyaccept]

Ahhaaahah, that right, good old days...

[@heavyaccept]

2:20, to be honest, I'm missing those old days were graphics on the user interface were simpler...

[@SwaggieSteve]

Crazy how nothing has changed

[@invis648]

14:03 How does the guy sitting there even see his monitor so far away like that

[@jacoblessing7929]

It doesn't even seem to be facing him...

[@exec9292]

He's just a joker

[@foch3]

CRT’s had great viewing angles.

[@EnronnSierra]

Its amazing the longevity of the NT kernel, development started in 1989 and its still in use 35 years later and is wide spread. Dave Cutler who was the principal architect mentioned in an interview on Dave's garage channel probably about on 20% of the original code remains in todays Windows 11. It will likely decline in the coming years.

[@diegolara4202]

I noticed the host always asks "show me what you can do with this tool". I am waiting to find an episode when the product presenter answers "well that's pretty much it" lol

[@chriscannon8527]

They wouldn't be a very good presenter if they replied with that lol

[@Drizzt_Do_Entreri]

the host always grates on my nerves by being so pushy and impatient. it's annoying.

[@dominicskywalker]

Win NT4.0 walked so that Win 2000 could jog so that Win XP could run so that proceding versions could fly.

[@danielniffenegger7698]

Amazing the things we just take for granted

[@DITUnited]

It blows my mind how different technology is now vs 30 years ago. And technology changes over the last 30 years is much slower than it will be from now to 30 years from now

[@axa993]

This UI is actually extremely intuitive and pretty.

[@alexeysamokhin9629]

Last 15 years of UI “innovation” was in fact a degradation.

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@alexeysamokhin9629 You can't imagine how long I've waited for Windows to offer out-of-the-box support for multiple virtual desktops. I had to wait for Windows 10.

[@JustAMindlessDrone]

I've been using MS products since dos 3.0, the first time I purchased a product was Windows 10 and still regret it.

[@jeffwads]

The Virtuoso application demo'd at 16:10 was never released.

[@ccopmp]

Sometimes miss these old days

[@gingerblue2265]

Nostalgia 😊

[@bwzes03]

5:52 and onward , Portability... so, NT is portable to MIPS R4000 cpu? Thats nice, you're running a 16-bit application, on a 32-bit NT OS kernel, on a 64-bit cpu... How very forward thinking of Microsoft to run a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit cpu. Most MIPS R4000 cpus were used to power SGI workstations and servers using 64-bit IRIX (UNIX) OS, why run a 32-bit backward system like NT on an expensive 64-bit cpu system?

[@valenrn8657]

MIPS was roadkilled by Intel vs AMD clock speed wars.

[@chriss2295]

Imagine creating updates and then shipping them in a box of 3.5 floppies.

i wonder how much it would suck being an engineer at microsoft, trying to get drivers to work, trying to get it usable for different computers etc...

[@brentsummers7377]

I read somewhere that Microsoft would test/update printer drivers by putting hundreds of printers in one huge room the size of a basketball stadium, and then get to work checking each one.

[@matrix-path-of-neo]

I loved the plethora of computer hardware and software we had in the 70s 80s 90s, the interconnection between them, nowadays we only have Windows, MacOS,, 1000000 Linux distros, and Intel / AMD CPUs,.... oh and Apple Silicon ....

[@laierr]

2:30 you telling me, what file sharing interface is basically left unchanged since Win 3.1? MOTHER OF GOD.

[@redin575]

Your mind is going to blown if you ever use NeXTstep and then compare it to a modern Mac...

[@laierr]

@@redin575 Nah, that kind of a consistency thing, and a mission statement. Windows, on the other hand, just have some ancient tools hidden under the hood for 3 decades. Like Disk Management, that does not support mouse scrolling.

[@redin575]

@@laierr "ancient tools hidden under the hood for 3 decades" also describes the relationship between NeXTstep and modern Mac OS.

[@woodywoodlstein9519]

Don’t copy that floppy”. He had no idea what was coming.

[@LanceHall]

I loved this show.

[@Psythik]

At least you were lucky enough to see it when it was airing.

[@andywolan]

2:02 Woh, that NT computer has a combo 3.5"/5.25" drive! I did not know that they made such drives back in 1993!

[@fightingfalconfan]

Them talking about scalability with a OS and seeing a little of what that OS can do on the hardware of it's time and comparing it all to what we have today. Everything they showed my single i9 system would obviously dominate in speed. They talked about just about a minute to render and image where my i9 would take seconds. Technology has come a long way since the early 90's. In 93 I was 7 years old and just played outside. My dad was the one on the computer all the time. I played some games when I was allowed but mostly played outside with the rest of our neighborhood kids.

[@eurocrusader1724]

"Ooh look at me, I have an i9" 🤣 I've seen too much guys just like you, buying a expensive piece of hardware without using it properly,just for epeen,even in the 80's.

[@fightingfalconfan]

@eurocrusader1724 "properly"? 12900k isn't current gen anymore. What are you defining as properly uses anyway? I use my pc for everything from video games to learning computer networking.

[@changkwangoh]

I had a points of sales (POS) HP comp back then. I took a Visual Basic course and the software came with a NT full install bundle. So I slapped NT on that POS and it gave it new life! Even though the NT was stable there were times that I like to debug, fdisk, format, then reinstall, aka re-slap NT.

[@BastetFurry]

13:00, and then came the neckbeard-cliche...

[@peterfi.]

+Bastet Furry All Unix users without exception are overweight bearded men

[@Vanessinha91Pucca]

+P. Dophile Well at least this overweight beard man was a pioneer of his kind :P the first of many to come... then after the ctrl+c it is ctrl+v till today

[@kuntosjedebil]

Intel? Worst. Hardware. Ever.

[@E_Stew]

I remember this show back in the day...I used to watch it all the time. 😊

[@jeffreymend]

Mike Nash is my uncle! Absolute legend

[@sandmanxo]

It's amazing to see video from when all of this was new. I had forgot that MS supported non x86 cpus back then, compare that to how bad Arm based Windows is now. I remember upgrading from NT 3.51 to 4 on a machine at the isp I worked tech support at the time and we were saying it looks just like 95 and were laughing that it asked to eject the disc before restarting. We were completely unaware of cd-rom booting then and the bios didn't even support it, but it wasn't too much later that was common. Amazing to look back and see how much changed from those days.

[@hanialadham4336]

Man i love the 1990's!!

[@christineayres5339]

I like how huge those old PC towers are , very impressive looking compared to the tiny small form factor PCs we have today in their dull black boxes, bring back grey colour PCs

[@giuseppe74921]

The unix guy with beard ad 12:40 had an Amiga 3000 at the right side of his desk, why they say Atari St?

[@helms7k]

Wow! Really forgot how big computer towers used to be!

[@dukenukem5768]

I've still got one that big. Has four hard drives and a tape drive in it.

[@MaheshWalatara]

I remember when I was at TAFE in Melbourne in the late 90s the computers had NT and it would take 15 minutes to log in and get to actual work