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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition (2011)
10729287 wrote 8 min ago:
Never used OS/2 Warp. Is the Document shredder icon the recycle bin ?
Love it.
seanmcdirmid wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
I did my first internship at Boca Raton in the OS/2 device driver
support group. They announced OS/2 PPC while I was there, and also BeOS
was dropped around the same time. Suffice it to say it was an exciting
time for PPC hardware that I could never afford on my own (Windows 95
also came out that year, it was all so nuts).
jmspring wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
I miss OS/2 a lot. For what it was at the time (intel, not ppc) it
worked really well. When I was at Netscape, my build machine was OS/2
so I could do windows builds and still actually work. Machines then
were much less capable than now, but I rarely had any bogging down of
the system.
dhosek wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
I remember at the time there was also going to be the wonderful new
kernel that would allow OS/2 and MacOS to coexist on the same machine.
As someone who had a Mac and an OS/2 machine side-by-side on his desk,
this seemed like it could be a wonderful thing, but alas, it was never
to come to be.
linguae wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
I was just a kid during the 1990s when all of this was happening, but
a few years ago I remember reading about an IBM project named GUTS
where one kernel would run multiple OS "personalities": [1] The 1990s
were quite a time for personal and workstation computing.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS
aryonoco wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
Microsoft technically delivered something very close to OS/2âs
âPersonalitiesâ in Windows NT 4. They called it "Environment
subsystems". Each subsystem could run applications written for
different operating systems, the 3 available ones were Win32, OS/2
and POSIX. Then there was the "Integral subsystem", which operated
system-specific functions on behalf of environment subsystems.
But every subsystem other than Win32 was kneecapped mostly due to
politics and market positioning.
In late 90s Microsoft bought a company which had developed a more
enhanced Unix subsystem and rebranded it as Interix and marketed as
Windows Subsytem for Unix (SFU).
I believe the original WSL was a resurrection of SFU before WSL2
pivoted to a VM-based approach.
LeFantome wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
This was the same design goal that Windows NT had. In fact, it
launched with Win32 (Windows), OS/2, and POSIX (UNIX).
I think the OS/2 subsystem was 16-bit OS/2 1.x so nobody cared and
the POSIX subsystem was just compliant enough to win government
contracts.
This design is why we have the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (a
name everybody hates) because "Windows Subsystems" were already a
thing in Windows.
Docker, Distrobox, and even Flatpak are one kernel with multiple
"personalities" but they are all still Linux I guess.
You can also argue have this on our desktops today with things like
KVM in Linux and Hyper-V in Windows.
nxobject wrote 6 hours 20 min ago:
Iâm always curious how these projects come about and survive: why go
to all of the effort to port for a dead-end product line? As
technically sweet as it is? I imagine they wouldâve found a decent
market if theyâd ported to Power Mac.
(Also, was the x86 emulation implemented in-house? I wouldnât be
surprised if some niche small company had a x86 emulator for PPC
product that they could be paid to port.)
ch_123 wrote 1 hour 53 min ago:
The plan was for all operating systems on top of IBM's POWER/PPC
hardware to be rehosted as "personalities" on top of the Workplace OS
microkernel, but in the end, OS/2 was the only personality that saw
any real work.
The Workplace OS would also have been used on Apple hardware as part
of the abortive Taligent project.
(It also would have been used on x86 and other platforms, but they
started with PPC)
eddieroger wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
I'm not sure I agree with "dead end" outside of the benefit of
hindsight, or maybe don't get the point you're making. Neither the
PowerPC nor OS/2 were dead-end in 1995, and competition in the OS
space was still happening. Why wouldn't IBM want to have PowerPC
survive, let alone thrive, with OS options? And surely they'd have
loved something to take on Microsoft at this point in history.
twoodfin wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
I think oddities like this were a consequence of a hardware world
that was rocketing along the heart of Mooreâs Law, alongside a
software world that hadnât matured past multi-year product cycles.
When OS/2 for PowerPC was set in motion, that Intel would âMake
CISC
Great Againâ with the Pentium was far from clear.
bombcar wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
I remember that the "general consensus" was that RISC was gonna
win, it was just a matter of when (and when it could be
affordable). What was NOT certain was which RISC architecture would
come out ahead, so there was a bunch of porting to "remove the
risk" - later they would unport most everything and "remove the
RISC".
Pentium shook that tree a bit, and Pentium II really razzle-dazzled
it.
LeFantome wrote 21 min ago:
Well, the thing is that RISC did win. It is just that the RISC
that won is the one that Intel baked into their x86 chips.
The Pentium introduced the idea of micro op codes though the
Pentium Pro was the first chip to really run with it. The CISC
x86 instructions were converted into simpler instructions
internally. These micro op codes could be pipe-lined, executed in
parallel, and executed out-of-order.
If the Pentium II really razzle-dazzled, it did it with RISC
architecture at its core. The CISC instruction decoder added a
bit of die size but that did not matter much and Intel had
leading-edge manufacturing tech.
The internal parallelism was also put to good use by adding SIMD
instructions (MMX). These first appeared in the Pentium MMX and
Pentium II but the Pentium III did it much better and of course
Intel has continued to add more powerful SIMD stuff over time.
RISC did not win only inside Intel chips of course. Every
successful ISA since the 90's has been RISC including ARM and
RISC-V. But even RISC chips feature some complex instructions
these days.
SoftTalker wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
There was definitely VirtualPC for PowerPC Macs, I used it to run
TurboTax way back in the day.
sedatk wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
Didnât know that OS/2 had a PowerPC port, but more surprisingly,
Windows NT also had a PowerPC port. Never heard of those.
gattilorenz wrote 22 min ago:
It gets weirder.
Nintendo GameCube and Wii are also PowerPC based. And somebody
managed to have them run Windows NT:
URI [1]: https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes
inferiorhuman wrote 2 hours 37 min ago:
Solaris (2.5.1 at least) had a PowerPC port as well.
kristopolous wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
It was also on mips and alpha. There was an intergraph port as well
that never went out
giobox wrote 6 hours 54 min ago:
One of the original design requirements for NT was that it be
portable between different CPU architectures, it was one of the
driving forces behind its creation.
So much so in fact, Microsoft developed NT 3.1 first on non-x86
architectures (i860 and MIPS), then later ported to x86, to ensure no
x86 specific code made it in.
NT supported quite a few architectures:
> [1] "Windows NT 3.1 was released for Intel x86 PC compatible and
PC-98 platforms, and for DEC Alpha and ARC-compliant MIPS platforms.
Windows NT 3.51 added support for the PowerPC processor in 1995"...
NT is a pretty interesting bit of PC history, I can highly recommend
the book "Show Stopper!" by G. Pascal Zachary that recounts its
development, and also dives a bit into why making the OS portable
across CPU architectures was so important to the team at the time.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported_platforms
olgs wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
One of my first job out of school was as a sales support for the
then bleeding edge NT 3.1 MIPS box for a company in Canada. Fond
memories of loading stacks of 1.44 floppy disks for NT 3.1 and
mangling ARC paths (Advanced RISC Computing, boot firmware). This
was pre-internet and documentation was often hard to come by,
incomplete etc.
I remember demoing the machines to astonished clients by running a
stupid number of Clock apps on the desktop without a hitch.
Fun times.
LeFantome wrote 13 min ago:
My first real job out of school was supporting Windows NT on Dec
Alpha for a company in Canada.
Things were so weird and wonderful back then. You could get GCC
from Microsoft for Windows NT 3.1 for Alpha (crazy). And when
Windows NT 4.0 came out there was the FX32 subsystem that ran X86
apps on Alpha (very similar to Apple Rosetta but much earlier).
I did not realize Canada was such a hotbed of Windows NT RISC.
spijdar wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
Something I didn't realize until recently was that the original
MIPS version of Windows NT was Big Endian. I'd always heard it said
that WinNT was strictly, 100%, absolutely always little endian, and
the fact that every CPU that got a port (or was going to get a
port) was either little or bi endian confirmed this.
Well, it is true, but Windows did run BE on the original MIPS R3000
platform. And only on the R3K[0]. The CPU architecture flag is
still defined on modern Windows as IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_R3000BE.
There's an early test build of Win3.1 + GDI somewhere that runs on
this platform.
The actual first release of WinNT 3.1 only supported MIPS R4000 and
higher, I think. In little endian mode.
[0] I know the Xbox used a modified NT kernel, I've seen claims
that the Xbox 360 also was, which would make it the second NT
system to run big endian. Not familiar enough with sources better
than wikipedia to trust that it actually was.
sedatk wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
I know, I was a Windows engineer, I knew it had been ported to many
architectures, but somehow I missed PowerPC :)
tiahura wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
What could have been. If the respective parties had just gotten their
acts together on the PPC 615, OS/2, WordPerfect, and Lotus.
thw_9a83c wrote 49 min ago:
> What could have been. If the respective parties... on the PPC 615,
OS/2
There was never a chance at that time because x86 chips were produced
in such volumes that PowerPC chips couldn't compete price-wise. Also,
OS/2 became an instant outsider once Windows 95 was released. Two
underdogs don't make a winner. The article says it all:
"The OS was clearly unfinished and not entirely stable. Worst of all,
there were about zero applications. Because OS/2 PPC was never truly
in use, PowerPC versions of OS/2 applications were never sold."
twoodfin wrote 5 hours 54 min ago:
Was there any act that would have overcome the synergy of Intelâs
commodity hardware economics and Microsoftâs ecosystem dominance?
Synaesthesia wrote 3 hours 39 min ago:
Apple somehow managed to claw it's way to releavance from a weaker
position in 1998 (with PoserPC!) So if they had their act together
they could have done better in the early 90s.
hey squandered their early lead in the US among consumers and
education and also ignored the international market.
Not gonna lie Wintel was a formidable force. Microsoft was ruthless
in cornering the market.
But technically, OS/2 and MacOS gave Windows a run for it's money,
arguably superior on some respects, and you could say the same for
PowerPC and Intel.
bombcar wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
Yes, getting stuff together and getting it out there.
Windows 95 ate the world because the world was mainly still DOS;
look at the numbers. It wasn't people upgrading from Win 3.1.
linguae wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
Additionally, while this is US-centric, there were still many
households in the mid-1990s whose first computers were PCs
running Windows 95, just in time for the World Wide Web to be
widely available, which created demand for personal computers.
Additionally, this was during the time when Apple was struggling;
its Performa lineup geared toward home users was not in the best
of shape in 1995 ( [1] ). By the time Steve Jobs returned and
Apple released the first iMac (1998), it was just about time for
Windows 98.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_5200_LC
BLKNSLVR wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
Being at the right age when Windows 95 came out, I didn't really
know that there was a "Windows" prior to 95. My dad's computer
ran DOS and used something called Powermenu as an organiser for
executing programs. I think I had to run Wolfenstein in a tiny
window for it to be fast enough to be playable, and may have, at
one point, deleted one of the required DOS system files in order
to try to tweak the life out of it to try to get it playable full
screen. I think that was a 286. More years ago than I care to
admit.
esseph wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
Hey give Windows 3.11 FOR WORKGROUPS some respect ;)
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