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0 pointsgaius16y ago0 comments

I'm guessing you're very young. NT used to be available on x86, MIPS, AXP and PowerPC. It was developed not on x86 but on i960, a RISC processor from Intel. There were plans for a SPARC version too but endianness issues in the HAL meant it was never performant.

The only reason Windows only runs on x86/x64 now is that customers weren't interested in it on other platforms. Microsoft really tried to make it cross platform.

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4 comments · 3 top-level

pohl16y ago· 1 in thread

There are alternate histories regarding that: like how non x86 versions of NT were subpar and had a dearth of available software, and likely only existed to freeze the market for open-systems unix vendors, all of which had those CPU architectures as a strategic advantage.

rbanffy16y ago

I played with NT on Alpha. It was a blazing-fast workstation that had almost no software except Softimage.

Lack of Office killed the desktop Windows on RISC.

On PPC, I remember SQL Server had some weird network bugs too.

rbanffy16y ago

> Microsoft really tried to make it cross platform.

They just forgot to port Office. IIRC, the then-current release of Visual Studio would run on x86 but compile to supported RISC platforms. That turned it into a server-only platform. No Office and no development tools before the dawn of the web application means certain desktop doom.

wallflower16y ago

Highly recommend the book "Showstoppers" about Dave Cutler and the making of Windows NT

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