Windows NT 3.1
Version of the Windows 3.1x (1992) | |
Succeeded by | Windows NT 3.5 (1994) |
---|---|
Support status | |
Unsupported as of December 31, 2000[2] |
Windows NT 3.1 is the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, released on July 27, 1993.
At the time of Windows NT's release, Microsoft's
Windows NT began as a rewrite of the OS/2 operating system, which Microsoft had co-developed with IBM in the 1980s. For several reasons, including the market success of Windows 3.0 in 1990, Microsoft decided to advance Windows rather than OS/2, relinquished their OS/2 development responsibilities. First publicly demonstrated at Comdex 1991, NT 3.1 was finally released in 1993, available in two editions: Windows NT 3.1 for workstations, and Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server for servers.
When Windows NT premiered, their sales were limited by high system requirements, and a general lack of 32-bit applications to take advantage of the OS's data processing capabilities. It sold about 300,000 copies before it was succeeded by Windows NT 3.5 in 1994. On December 31, 2000, Microsoft declared Windows NT 3.1 obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system.
Development history
The origins of Windows NT date back to 1988,
The operating system was first developed as a revised version of
Both Microsoft and IBM wanted to market an operating system that appealed to corporate "
To this end, Microsoft began by developing and testing their new operating system for a non-x86 processor: an emulated version of the Intel i860. Alluding to the chip's codename, "N10", Microsoft codenamed their operating system NT OS/2.[9] DEC preemptively sued Microsoft, alleging that they stole code from MICA for use in the new operating system. In an out-of-court settlement, Microsoft agreed to make NT OS/2 compatible with DEC's Alpha processor.[5]
The development team originally estimated that development would be complete within 18 months. By April 1989, the NT OS/2 kernel could run inside the i860 emulator. However, the development team later determined that the i860 was unsuitable for the project. By December they had begun porting NT OS/2 to the MIPS R3000 processor instead, and completed the task in three months.[9] Senior Microsoft executive Paul Maritz was targeting a release date in 1992, but the development schedule was uncertain. The company was eager to silence naysayers who speculated that NT wouldn't be on the market until 1994, and had planned to present the new OS at COMDEX in 1990.[6]: 84–85
As Windows NT
In May 1990, Microsoft released
Due to these changes, NT was not presented at COMDEX 1990 as was originally planned.[4]: 102 Neither the general public nor IBM knew about the transformation of NT OS/2 into Windows NT at the time.[4]: 108 Although the companies did agree to a revised partnership where IBM and Microsoft would alternate developing major versions of OS/2 instead of collaborating on each version,[12] IBM eventually learned of Microsoft's Windows NT plans in January 1991, and immediately ended the OS/2 partnership. IBM would solely develop OS/2 2.0 (as was planned under the amended version) and all future versions, without any further involvement from Microsoft.[6]: 108–109 [11]
In October 1991, Windows NT received its first public demonstration at COMDEX. In an effort to ensure software taking advantage of Windows NT was available upon its release (scheduled for late-1992), Microsoft also distributed a 32-bit
At Microsoft's
Microsoft began releasing public beta builds of NT in October 1992, and a month later at COMDEX, a presentation focusing on third-party software for Windows NT was held.[19][20][21] The final pre-release version of NT was released in March 1993, alongside the unveiling of the server version, LAN Manager for Windows NT. Although its stability and performance had improved, there were still fears that the OS could be released in an unfinished state or delayed further into 1993.[22][23]
Release
Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server (so numbered to associate them with
During the product's lifecycle, Microsoft published three service packs: Service Pack 1 was released on October 8, 1993; Service Pack 2 followed on January 24, 1994; and Service Pack 3's release date was October 29, 1994. The service packs were distributed on CD-ROM and floppy disk, and also through bulletin board systems, CompuServe, and the Internet. Microsoft terminated support for the operating system on December 31, 2000. Support for Windows NT 3.1 RTM (without a service pack) ended on January 8, 1994. Service Pack 1 support ended on April 24, 1994, and finally, Service Pack 2 support ended on January 29, 1995, only 1 year after general availability.
Windows NT 3.1 was localized into various languages. Besides English, it was available in Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. The version for workstations, but not Windows NT 3.1 Server, was additionally available in Danish, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.[28]
Operating system goals
Cutler set three main goals for Windows NT. The first goal was portability: in contrast to previous operating systems, which were strongly tied to one architecture, Windows NT should be able to operate on multiple architectures.[4]: 53 To meet this goal, most of the operating systems, including the operating system core, had to be written in the C programming language.[29] During the planning phase it was clear that this would cause Windows NT to have higher memory consumption than all previous operating systems.[4]: 55 Besides the graphics system and parts of the networking system, which were written in C++, only parts of the operating systems which required direct hardware access and performance critical functions were written in assembly language. These parts were isolated so that they could easily be rewritten when porting the operating system to a new architecture.[6]: 89
The second goal was reliability: The system should no longer crash due to a faulty application or faulty hardware.[6]: 9 This way, the operating system should be made attractive for critical applications.[4]: 54 To meet this goal, the architecture of Windows NT was designed so that the operating system core was isolated and applications could not access it directly.[4]: 56 The kernel was designed as a microkernel and components of the core were to run atop the kernel in a modular fashion; Cutler knew this principle from his work at Digital.[4]: 57 Reliability also includes security, and the operating system should be able to resist external attacks.[6]: 9 Mainframes already had a system where every user had their own account which was assigned specific rights by the administrator, this way, users could be prevented access to confidential documents.[6]: 157–158 A virtual memory management was designed to thwart attacks by malware and prevent users from accessing foreign areas of memory.[6]: 10
The third goal was called personality: The operating system should be able to run applications designed for various operating systems, such as
Despite all these goals, the performance of the operating system was optimized where possible, by adapting critical sections of the code to fast execution speed. To improve networking performance, large parts of the networking system were moved to the operating system core.[6]: 12
Windows NT was designed as a networking operating system. In this branch, Novell had a lead with its product NetWare, mostly because of a lack of competition, and Microsoft failed to develop a product which could challenge NetWare's lead. Cutler hoped to gain additional customers with a reliable networking operating system.[4]: 65 Bill Gates already dominated the market of desktop operating systems with MS-DOS and Windows and hoped to do the same in the networking market with Windows NT.[4]: 3 He especially hoped to find a market in the emerging number of servers, while at the same time he did not expect a success in the desktop market until 1995.[4]: 151
Therefore, Windows NT was positioned as a high-end operating system in an interview with the product manager David Thacher. It was not designed to replace Windows 3.1 completely, but it should rather supplement Microsoft's product palette with an operating system for critical applications. The expectations were 10% to 20% among all Windows sales[27] and a market share of 10% in the high end market, which amounted to one million copies.[30]
Features
Architecture
While Windows NT 3.1 uses the same graphical user interface as Windows 3.1, it was developed anew. The operating system is not DOS-based, but an independent 32-bit operating system; many concepts were taken from Cutler's previous operating system, VMS.[29] The architecture of Windows NT takes some ideas of the client–server model, like the modular structure and the communication between the modules.[6]: 20 System resources like memory, files or devices are viewed as objects by the operating system, which are all accessed in the same way through handles and which can in this way be secured against unauthorized access.[6]: 22–23
The operating system was designed for multiprocessor systems; it supports
The operating system is designed to combine certain elements of a
Positioned above the operating system core are the subsystems. There are two types of subsystems: one are the integral subsystems, which perform important operating system functions. One such subsystem is the security subsystem, which handles the logon process and monitors the security of the system. The other type of subsystem is the environment subsystem, which exposes the operating system functions to applications via
The
System
Windows NT 3.1 provides a
Every user has to log on to the computer after Windows NT 3.1 is booted up by pressing the key combination
Windows NT 3.1 introduced the new
Designed as a networking operating system, Windows NT 3.1 supports multiple
Windows NT 3.1 supports the then-new
The
The Advanced Server is designed to manage the workstation computers.[33] It can function as a Domain controller, where all users and groups as well as their rights are stored. This way, a user can log on from any computer in the network, and users can be managed centrally on the server. Trust relationships can be built to other domains to be able to exchange data cross-domain.[33] Using the replication service, files like logon scripts can be synchronized across all computers on the network. The Advanced Server supports the AppleTalk protocol to allow connections to Macintosh computers.[33] Hard drives can be combined to RAIDs in Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server, the supported configurations are RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5.
Included programs
Windows NT 3.1, for the most part, comes with 32-bit versions of the components featured in Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups. However, it also included applications specifically aimed at the needs of Windows NT, like the User Manager, the
Windows NT 3.1, being an all-new operating system for which no previous drivers could be used, includes a wealth of drivers for various common components and peripherals.
Windows NT 3.1 could be installed either by using the CD-ROM and a provided boot disk, or by utilizing a set of twenty-two 3.5" floppies (twenty-three floppies for Advanced Server). Windows NT 3.1 could also be installed over the network.[33] A coupon was included that made it possible to order a set of twenty-seven 5.25" floppies (or twenty-eight floppies for Advanced Server).[44] Compared to the floppies, the CD-ROM contained additional drivers and applications.
System requirements
Windows NT 3.1 supports multiple platforms: Aside from the x86 architecture, it runs on computers with
Minimum system requirements on x86 systems include a 25 MHz
Windows NT 3.1 supports dual processor systems, while the Advanced Server edition supports up to four processors. Due to an error in the processor detection routine, Windows NT 3.1 cannot be installed on Pentium II or newer processors. Microsoft never fixed the problem, but unofficial patches are available.[46]
Reception
Windows NT 3.1 sold about 300,000 copies in its first year.
RISC systems with Windows NT 3.1 had an even bigger disadvantage: even though they were more powerful than x86 systems,[31] almost no 32-bit applications or drivers were ported to these platforms.[48] 16-bit applications ran much slower under RISC systems because of the 80286 emulation compared to x86 systems which could run 16-bit applications natively,[31] and DOS and 16-bit applications which depended on 386 calls could not be run at all on RISC systems.
However, not all reception was negative; the multitasking capabilities of the operating system were rated positively, especially compared to Windows 3.1.[33] Compared to the size of the operating system, the installation turned out to be very easy, even though installing from floppies was a very time-consuming task.[52] The Advanced Server, intended to be the successor to the unsuccessful LAN Manager product, was technically much superior to its predecessor, and only failed to gain success because it shared the same problems with its workstation pendant, such as the low performance running 16-bit applications.[53] The Advanced Server provided a financial advantage for large networks because its price was not dependent on the number of clients, unlike its competitor Novell NetWare.[47]
With Windows NT, Microsoft entered a market it could not previously address and which was mostly dominated by Unix, Novell NetWare and OS/2.
Even though the operating system's actual success was only moderate, it had a huge lasting impact. Developers of Unix derivations for the first time strived to standardize their operating systems, and Novell was so concerned about its market share that it bought a Unix vendor.
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External links
- Guidebook: Windows NT 3.1 Gallery – Gallery of UI screenshots of Windows NT 3.1