Amazing 1993 Video of Windows NT 3.1


Recommended Posts



Alot of the features in the first Windows NT 3.1 are still in the Windows we use today, it is really amazing. Windows NT was ahead of its of time back then and so much that many computers could not run it (like Vista)!
Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1148884-amazing-1993-video-of-windows-nt-31/
Share on other sites

Only thing that bothered me about Computer Chronicles was how fast the subject changed. Five minutes of Windows NT, segue to a short bit on Mac OS and OS/2, go back to NT applications, etc. The better episodes where the ones that only focused on a single OS or product.

Cool video, though. Seen it before but it's a nice trip down memory lane.

I had no idea that NTFS was so old.

Might even be older than 1993. OS/2 was originally designed to be the powerful, multi-tasking OS that NT would eventually become. It wasn't until the success of Windows 3 in 1990 that Microsoft decided to cease OS/2 development, at which point IBM took over it solely.

Might even be older than 1993. OS/2 was originally designed to be the powerful, multi-tasking OS that NT would eventually become. It wasn't until the success of Windows 3 in 1990 that Microsoft decided to cease OS/2 development, at which point IBM took over it solely.

Amusingly, IBM back then was considered a slow, lumbering, committee-driven conglomerate of suits, yet there's no escaping people who deluded themselves into thinking we would've been better off with OS/2 than Windows.

Amusingly, IBM back then was considered a slow, lumbering, committee-driven conglomerate of suits, yet there's no escaping people who deluded themselves into thinking we would've been better off with OS/2 than Windows.

From what I've read, IBM and Microsoft were opposites, especially in code design. IBM wrote long, bloated code and paid by lines of code. Microsoft went for small, faster code. The documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" had an interview with Steve Ballmer about how IBM didn't seem to follow the mentality of paying a developer more if they were able to write a program in fewer lines, making it smaller and faster.

That, among other technical differences, was a big reason why OS/2 eventually become IBM only. I've never actually played with the Warp releases, but they sure look interesting, from what I've seen demoed.

Windows NT could run OS/2 1.0 applications all the way up to NT 4.0 I believe, as well as supporting the OS/2 HPFS file system.

The OS/2 1.x sub-system was part of NT until version 5.0, better known as Windows 2000. Additionally there was an add-on for NT up to 4.0 IIRC which allowed you to use OS/2 1.x Presentation Manager applications, as shown below.

1265456138.or.105738.PNG

Amusingly, IBM back then was considered a slow, lumbering, committee-driven conglomerate of suits, yet there's no escaping people who deluded themselves into thinking we would've been better off with OS/2 than Windows.

IBM's problem wasn't OS/2, but letting OS/2 flounder while Windows 95 was in development (after the OS/2-NT split).

OS/2 in general, and OS/2 2.x in particular, had an opportunity, even after Microsoft started replacing Windows 3.1 with Windows for Workgroups in shipments to OEMs (starting with Gateway, then followed quickly by Dell and HP) - IBM's OS/2 business had even admitted as such, and released OS/2 for Windows, which let customers add an existing Windows 3.x - even Windows for Workgroups - to OS/2. However, IBM's Systems Group - primarily their mainframe and nascent services business - wanted no part of ordinary consumers, or even SMBs, and starved the OS/2 unit of marketing funds. OS/2 required no more, in terms of hardware than Windows 95 - which itself required little more than Windows for Workgroups. (I would know - I dual-booted the two while Windows 95 was in beta.) True - Windows 95 had an ace in the hole that would not become evident until after it launched; it could run not merely Win32s applications, but even full-fledged Win32 (as in normally targeting NT) applications. That was something OS/2 could NOT counter without hefty royalty payments to Microsoft - and heaping helpings of crow. IBM under Trammel, and then Gerstner, was very prideful - could you see them going back to Microsoft, hat in hand and with a fat royalty check?

From what I've read, IBM and Microsoft were opposites, especially in code design. IBM wrote long, bloated code and paid by lines of code. Microsoft went for small, faster code. The documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" had an interview with Steve Ballmer about how IBM didn't seem to follow the mentality of paying a developer more if they were able to write a program in fewer lines, making it smaller and faster.

That, among other technical differences, was a big reason why OS/2 eventually become IBM only. I've never actually played with the Warp releases, but they sure look interesting, from what I've seen demoed.

IBM was (and still is) heavily enterprise-oriented - a legacy of their mainframe business. They didn't even market LAN Server (the server side of OS/2) very hard. Ordinary consumers and SMBs? They willingly - practically gleefully - steered those to Microsoft and LAN Manager (and eventually NT) before, during, and after the split - they wanted no part of such a plebian customer base. (I had, in fact, personally told IBM Mid-Atlantic's marketing mavens that if they didn't get their act together, Microsoft and Windows 95 would eat their lunch - in June of 1995.) OS/2 - as far back as 2.1 - was a squandered opportunity; OS/2 3.x - and even Warp (OS/2 4.x) were simply more obvious. (Look at eComStation - it is, in fact, OS/2 4.52 at the core. It's as least as viable as any Linux distribution, and supports more hardware than quite a few of them. However, even Ubuntu has a bigger word-of-mouth push then eCS does.)

IBM's problem wasn't OS/2, but letting OS/2 flounder while Windows 95 was in development (after the OS/2-NT split).

OS/2 in general, and OS/2 2.x in particular, had an opportunity, even after Microsoft started replacing Windows 3.1 with Windows for Workgroups in shipments to OEMs (starting with Gateway, then followed quickly by Dell and HP) - IBM's OS/2 business had even admitted as such, and released OS/2 for Windows, which let customers add an existing Windows 3.x - even Windows for Workgroups - to OS/2. However, IBM's Systems Group - primarily their mainframe and nascent services business - wanted no part of ordinary consumers, or even SMBs, and starved the OS/2 unit of marketing funds. OS/2 required no more, in terms of hardware than Windows 95 - which itself required little more than Windows for Workgroups. (I would know - I dual-booted the two while Windows 95 was in beta.) True - Windows 95 had an ace in the hole that would not become evident until after it launched; it could run not merely Win32s applications, but even full-fledged Win32 (as in normally targeting NT) applications. That was something OS/2 could NOT counter without hefty royalty payments to Microsoft - and heaping helpings of crow. IBM under Trammel, and then Gerstner, was very prideful - could you see them going back to Microsoft, hat in hand and with a fat royalty check?

IBM did try to market OS/2 to consumers. The older ones of us will remember the Warp 3-era commercials. Here in .de two of the biggest OEMs at the time - Vobis and Escom - even pre-installed OS/2 Warp 3 instead of DOS/Windows for a while in 1994/early 1995.

One reason which killed OS/2 was the lack of good native applications for it. Ironically you could say Win-OS2 (the Windows 3.x sub-system built in to OS/2 from version 2.0 on) was one cause for this - why would 3rd party developers port applications to OS/2 when you can simply run the Windows version on it?

IBM did try to market OS/2 to consumers. The older ones of us will remember the Warp 3-era commercials. Here in .de two of the biggest OEMs at the time - Vobis and Escom - even pre-installed OS/2 Warp 3 instead of DOS/Windows for a while in 1994/early 1995.

One reason which killed OS/2 was the lack of good native applications for it. Ironically you could say Win-OS2 (the Windows 3.x sub-system built in to OS/2 from version 2.0 on) was one cause for this - why would 3rd party developers port applications to OS/2 when you can simply run the Windows version on it?

Europe in general, and Germany/the Low Countries in particular, were the exceptions that, unfortunately, proved the rule. IBM didn't have a big Systems Group business in Europe - however, they DID have a solid relationship with NIXDORF (a major wheel in the PC business in Europe) which was responsible for a major part of the German OS/2 push.

There was no mirror to NIXDORF in North America, however.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Who is paying for this 30x scale-up? Its sounds expensive.
    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
    • Glad these prices are starting to come down, but that is still crazy. I bought the 2TB 9100 Pro (slightly more expensive version with PCIe 5.0) last year for $240.
    • The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months by Sayan Sen Yesterday, we covered a really good deal wherein you can get a 4TB TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD for a low price of just $400 with a special discount coupon. That's just $100 per TB, making it a very good offer during these hard times. The deal is still live, so you can check it out in its dedicated article here if you do not want to miss out. Meanwhile, if you don't have that kind of budget but still wish to buy an SSD for a good price, the 2TB variant of the TeamGroup SSD at $280 its lowest price in over three months. Meanwhile, those seeking 2TB but faster performance can check out Samsung's 990 PRO, which has hit the lowest price also in the last quarter or so, as it's on sale for $370 (purchase links under the specs table down below). Thus, you want a faster drive, get the 990 Pro, or you want more capacity, grab the TeamGroup 4TB linked in the first para. The 990 PRO is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and still one of the fastest drives available today for under $500. Speaking of fast, sequential reads and writes are rated at 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s, respectively. The random throughputs for reads and writes are 1400K IOPS and 1550K IOPS, respectively. The 990 PRO is based on Samsung's 7th Gen V-NAND flash, and it too is TLC. It packs 2 gigs of LPDDR4 DRAM cache, which helps the random performance. The endurance rating for this is 1200 TBW (terabytes written), which should be sufficient for most users. The Samsung 990 PRO is compatible with the PlayStation 5, but if you are going to use the 990 PRO on a PC, check out the Samsung Magician app that lets you track your drive's health, update its firmware, customize various settings, and more. The tech specs are given below: Specification TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 2TB Samsung 990 PRO 2TB Interface PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Controller InnoGrit Controller Samsung In-house Controller NAND Flash 3D TLC 3D TLC DRAM Cache None (HMB supported) 2GB LPDDR4 Sequential Read (Max) 5,000 MB/s 7,450 MB/s Sequential Write (Max) 4,500 MB/s 6,900 MB/s Random Read (4K) Up to 600,000 IOPS Up to 1,400,000 IOPS Random Write (4K) Up to 700,000 IOPS Up to 1,550,000 IOPS TBW (Endurance) 1,300 TBW 1,200 TBW MTBF 3,000,000 hours 1,500,000 hours Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistance 1,500G / 0.5ms 1,500G / 0.5ms Heatsink Patented Graphene Heat Spreader No Get them at the links below: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM): $369.99 (Sold and Shipped by Amazon US) TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 2TB SSD (TM8FFE002T0C129): $279.99 (Sold by TeamGroup, Shipped by Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      522
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!