Source : Internet
I swear before God this is all true, even though it sounds nuts.
OS/2 is an operating system originally designed by Microsoft starting in 1983. Bill Gates believed that the 40-somethings who traditionally designed operating systems were all idiots, and he was going to put together a dream team of 25-year-old geniuses to build one O/S to rule them all, having gained great experience purchasing Windows 1.0 from a third party. I know this is true because I was present at a graduate seminar at the University of Washington in 1983 when Gates waxed loquacious about it.
By 1989, his miracle O/S was years behind schedule and vastly over budget. It was a mess so horrible it couldn’t be straightened out, but IBM had bet the farm on OS/2 for their new line of proprietary-bus 80286-based PCs. Gates sold the half-written thing to IBM, who spent over a billion dollars (that’s 1e9 dollars!!) to “finish” it.
It happens that at about the same time, Digital Equipment Corp stopped work on the VMS operating system. A group of a dozen core developers became available for hire all at once. Gates hired these 40-something developers who actually knew a thing or two about operating systems to whip together a successor to the unmaintainable Windows 95. This O/S eventually became known as Windows NT.
Which gave rise to the joke WNT = VMS++
It is not a joke.
Digital Equipment Corp (“DEC”) put out the first mini-computer (room size back then) with the VMS operating system.
Later, DEC decided to do a new operating system.
Dave Cutler was the engineer in charge of that.
His development team was far along when DEC realized … “If we put out a new OS we can’t keep selling VMS.”
So they pulled the plug on the entire project and laid off Cutler and his entire team.
Around the same time Microsoft realized that it needed a version of Windows that could handle the new 32-bit processors.
So Microsoft hired Cutler. He then brought on the entire team he had had at DEC.
Regarding the OS names …
In the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey, this is how they came up with the name HAL for the computer:
- H <= I
- A <= B
- L <= M
Considering that his team was working on the next generation of Windows and largely using concepts they had already developed at DEC, Cutler came up with this:
- V => W
- M => N
- S => T
It was easy to say, “Okay, obviously we can say that the W stands for Windows. What words can we use for N and T?”
Hence: Windows - New Technology
Win 2000 was based on the NT kernel. The last glimpse of the 9x kernel was ME (but nobody sensible would confess that system ever existed ;) )
Windows NT being the core of what is all current versions of Windows, if I’m not mistaken.
VMS - move each character on one: WNT
Pure coincidence!
For users, OS/2 was a much bigger mess than Windows 3.1 or WinNT.
I managed a VAX in college at UW, and shortly thereafter someone shared the NT specificaction with me. It had VMS all over its functional implementation. Or, better said, the spec reminded me a lot of VMS. Your explanation makes so much sense.
Can confirm. Sounds nuts.
So Bill sold OS/2 in 1989, and these “expert developers" swooped in and saved his company by building a successor to DOS, Win 3.11, and Win95… in the late 1990′s.
Sounds legit.
Wow. Thank you for enlightening!
I worked with a bunch of ex-DEC people in the early 90s (they called themselves “digits”, but I can’t bring myself to do that :-)). Dave Cutler, the guy who designed VMS, was hired by Microsoft to lead the design team for Windows NT.
Also, Windows NT. WNT. VMS. Think about it…
They didn’t purchase it. Win 1.0 was a crappy GUI shell. You can argue they threw it together after seeing the Alto at PARC, GEM by Digital Research, the original Mac and possibly VisiCorp’s VisiOn. No idea where the OP got the idea of they purchased it.
Well, I wouldn’t cunt on a PR take as told by Gates as 100% true* … you’ll notice that Gates does not start out the DOS story by pointing it was owned by another company they licensed it from and then re-licensed it to IBM.
*Certainly aspects are true …
VMS was a decent OS. And it comes with DECWindows. Never tried OpenVMS. So how in the world did MS come up with that rattling NT. What does New Technology stand for My first experiences where in 1987..
Win NT is a fork of the original OS2 Code. The kernal was the same but they had different interfaces and other things on top.
VMS was fab - it's paying my pension now!
“having gained great experience purchasing Windows 1.0 from a third party” — MS bought 86-DOS/QDOS from SCP but Windows itself was an internal project which was run by Scott McGregor not long after Gates saw the Apple Lisa and Visi-On demoed
Microsoft bought Windows from a third party?
I do know that they bought 16-bit CP/M from a Seattle company and reworked it into MS-DOS and PC-DOS. But I’ve never heard that they bought Windows from another company.
The IBM PS/2 computer and OS/2 were commonly referred to has half a computer or half an operating system.
It was said that Cutler would kick the office furniture on his way out at night due to his frustration in making his new creation back compatible wih DOS.
No comments:
Post a Comment