My favorite part is how NT didn't directly use CONFIG.SYS — but, if you edited C:\CONFIG.SYS from an OS/2 editor, NT would render a "stub" CONFIG.SYS file from the OS/2-specific settings from the Registry; then, when the editor saved the file, it would translate those settings back into appropriate Registry keys!
Another interesting tidbit: Up through NT 4.0, Microsoft sold the "Windows NT Add-On Subsystem for Presentation Manager" that let 16-bit OS/2 GUI apps run on NT.
So much work went into the OS/2 subsystem, but I can't imagine it was important at all to NT's eventual marketplace success.
It wouldn't surprise me if that was done to satisfy some large entity's contractual requirements. Perhaps some part of the government that invested in OS/2.
> So much work went into the OS/2 subsystem, but I can't imagine it was important at all to NT's eventual marketplace success.
It was even the reverse that is true. MS support of Win32 instead of OS/2 PM was a strategical choice, and the market and dev strategy was structured in concert. OS/2 did not had a good enough market share, compared to the Win API - hypothetically and then in practice. For Win16 it was not a concern because both could run that well (enough) - and OS/2 used a licensed Windows 3 copy to do that, but then came Win32. Given codevelopment between MS and IBM was not working well, MS used NT retargeted mainly to Win32 in part to kill a competitor, from after they parted ways, on that market.
Yes, I saw you were talking about the subsystem, but I think this is highly related to the whole picture. The OS/2 subsystem in released NT was neither a critical component, nor was it actually interesting for MS that it became too good. However, it was possible at all, for a lot of reasons, because NT was originally intended to be NT OS/2.
My favorite part is how NT didn't directly use CONFIG.SYS — but, if you edited C:\CONFIG.SYS from an OS/2 editor, NT would render a "stub" CONFIG.SYS file from the OS/2-specific settings from the Registry; then, when the editor saved the file, it would translate those settings back into appropriate Registry keys!
Another interesting tidbit: Up through NT 4.0, Microsoft sold the "Windows NT Add-On Subsystem for Presentation Manager" that let 16-bit OS/2 GUI apps run on NT.
So much work went into the OS/2 subsystem, but I can't imagine it was important at all to NT's eventual marketplace success.