I just recently did a video about os21.3 which had a UI that sharedremarkable resemblance to Windows 3.xbeing both a child of IBM and Microsoftthe latter was in the best position tobring their Windows software over to os2and so they did with Microsoft WordExcel and even the windows 3.0 appletstoday we're gonna look at an earlyversion of Windows NT but did you knowthat Windows NT actually merged from os2and was rumored to become anti os2version 3.it's obsolete technology no one usestoday but I'll bring it back to life I'mthe Vintage collector and these are mystories[Music]when digging around when willpc.com Istumbled across this interesting bithere the presentation manager add-on forWindows NTin case you're not familiar with thepresentation manager that was the nameof the graphical UI of os2 release 1.1through 1.3now why would Microsoft support the os2presentation manager on Windows NT asthe PM package is only offered fromWindows and T 3.51 and NT 4.0 I'm givingit a shot with NT 3.51 firstmy guinea pig is the expert 286 machinethat was previously featured on thisvideo hereI don't want to fiddle around with 22floppy disks so I took a CD-ROM versionand copied the i386 folder onto the harddrive to perform a local disk to diskinstallyou'll find given nt.exe in the i386directoryit offers various options even to createa floppy disk set but we're not gonna dothat instead I'll run with nt.exe withthe slash B parameter for a directinstallduring this era Windows NT was stillinstallable directly from dos so here wesee the initial preparation routinewhich will eventually perform a rebootbefore it comes up in the actual NTdriven setupthis one again will perform some filecopying actions so we get to see yetanother progress bar before we finallyhit the graphical UI not without goingthrough yet another reboot of courseand this is where the madness began as Iforgot to connect the mouseso I did reset reconnected the mouseonly to find this message on the nextrebootoh well I should have known betterWindows NT 3.x did obviously not yetfeature resuming capabilities for the OSsetupso I went back to Dawson rerun withnt.exe which in fact claimed to clean upsome temporary installation files henceI ran through the same procedure onceagain eventually even getting to seesome of the GUI setupbut wait a second it didn't ask meanything not even to set a new passwordI don't know what exactly setup is doinghere but I have a bad feeling about itand I stand confirmed once the systemrebooted I do get a login prompt but asI have no credentials I'm essentiallystuck hereso all good things are three I went towipe Drive C completely and start overagain but eventually I end up on thegraphical UI as I had expected in thefirst place if only I didn't bail outfrom it before but at least you get tosee the third file copying progress baras if the two before weren't enoughalready and finally we end up on thelogin screen again which this timeadmits me into this system if you knewwindows 3.x then Windows NT 3.51 willlook very familiar except that it comeswith another accessory group for theadministrative toolsfrom here you can manage your systemuses the hard drives have a look at thesystem performance and even diagnoseyour systemnow if you're wondering why NT startedonly with release 3.1 and why there wasno releases 1.0 or 2.0 here's the answerMicrosoft intentionally released Windowsnt7 workstation has released 3.1 to putit on par with the then current dosbased Windows 3.1that was not the only reason if anythingthey claimed that there was no previousrelease of Windows NT is not fullycorrect at least in a broader senseit is correct that windows and T is forthe most new operating systemdevelopment mostly driven by David NCutler of deck Fame whom developed theVMS operating system as a consequenceWindows NT Builds on many fundamentalDesign Concepts found in VMSbut that's only half the story WindowsNT included various subsystems oroperating system personalities four atthe very beginning to run classic 16-bitWindows applications Through the Windowson Windows subsystemdos applications yrd dos vdmposix text mode applications sobasically a unique subset and finally16-bit os2 text mode applicationsit would be wrong to say that Windows NTis built on those two technology but inthe broader of all senses one may thinkof os2 releases one point x still asbeing a precursor to NT to add to thisclaim many resources State and whenMicrosoft and IBM parted ways from theirprevious joint development on os2 rbnwent on to developers to release 2.xwhereas Microsoft took what once wascalled ntos2that's also the reason why do is tosubsystem in Windows NT is limited tothe release 1.x as Microsoft had thesource code only for that and not thelater os2 release 2 branchand to come back to the reason why NTlaunched as release 3.1os2 released 2.x was already out at thetime when NT 3.1 came alongso it was only natural to put theversion 3 in here to say hey we're oneaheadand while NT eventually ended up beingsomething entirely different he tooksome Heritage alone not only the os2sub-system but also support for os2'shbfs the high performance file systembut on a timeline perspective this allhappened in the period of around 1988 to1993. now it's interesting the Microsoftreleased the presentation manager add-onfor Windows NT only for NT 3.51 whichcame in May 1995 so roughly four monthsbefore the release of windows 95.and again for Windows NT 4.0 coming in1996 the presentation manager addon wasalso made availableto my best knowledge though there wasnever a version of the presentationmanager for NT 3.1 or at least none thatis available and documentedwho makes it interesting though is thatos2 was surely not strategic anymore forMicrosoft in 1995 except maybe for onereason to win over a deal for certaincustomers whom have previously investedinto os2 1.x and should be given atransitional optionthat's the only reason I can imagine whythis add-on exists it comes on fivefloppies and as opposed to other markersof products it doesn't really look verypolished as it features only this verybasic text mode batch installer andwhile it seems a bit weird seeing how istoo fast being installed into Windowsyou'll end up with a new program groupfor the PM subsystem in program manageras usual reboot is required to get it upand runningas opposed to the real os2 which had itsown application launcher this is fullyreplaced with the Windows NT programmanager and the icons appear here asshownbut you have to be aware that the PMshell has to be running as otherwise ifyou try running just any random appletyou'll get this error so just be sure torun the PM Shell First and you'll befinerunning the PM shell just like this willswitch over to another desktop where youwon't find muchas opposed to the real os2 where you'dhave the desktop manager kind of thesimilar thing to the windows programmanager to launch your applications thisis totally absent when running an NTit's no big deal to run yourapplications from Windows programmanager however if you intend to startmultiple applications you'd be alwaysjumping forward and back between the twodesktop environments which you can do bysimply clicking the small Windows NTicon on the lower rightnot exactly the way I'd Define usabilityit's a pity they didn't invest intoseamless windowing mode kind of similaras to what os2 did with Windows 3.xapplications in later releases to havethem appear on the native desktopnow the install disk for thepresentation manager includes a readmefile which gives also some hints oninstalling the real os2 file managerwhich unfortunately is not included withthe packageof course Windows NT has its own filemanager but as a comparison I took theos2 file manager and copied the filesover manuallyI'll also create the program iconWindows own program exe already providessome icons though I believe none issuitable let's see eventy's ownwinfolder DXE has something moreappealingokay this one looks decent let's firethem up both and have them side by sidethis is really awesome don't you thinklast time when I played around with os21.3 I went into installing the os2presentation manager versions ofMicrosoft's word in Excel let's see howgood the compatibility of the os2subsystem on NT really is as if you canactually run these two applicationsthis setup process looks just about finethe installers run through like a charmas noted earlier on the PM desktopmanager is absent so I'm curious to seewhat happens now as it's asking tocreate the program iconsnow that's really nice Microsoftobviously extended DPM subsystem in away that the program group creation isintercepted and redirected to windowsprogram managerso the icons are created here althoughwith some very generic icons evenreferring to them being MS-DOSapplicationsthat's sort of a missed opportunity asat least they should have been includinga genericos to icon in my opinionand still I think it would have beenreally nice to have the desktop manageron the presentation manager as welldon't tell me this couldn't have beenco-existingto put it even further on trial let'salso install the windows native versionof excel 3.0 as implied by the technicallimitations how presentation managerapplications are run on Windows and T Icannot put them side by side directly soI need to use again some video trickerynevertheless it's totally fascinating tosee literally one empty same applicationcompiled for different operating systemsrunning side by side on the same host OSand this for 1995 technologyone may say many things about Microsoftbut these guys have really done a nicejob here to make that workalso wanted to give it a shot with thepresentation manager version ofMicrosoft Word and while it did actuallyinstall whenever I try running it itwould quickly switch over to the PMshell and immediately drop back to theWindows desktopsomething is definitely wrong here butlet's leave it at thatat least that's what I thought though onthe next reboot I get this error whichis directly related to Windows NTfailing to load some dependency that wasintroduced by the os2 version ofMicrosoft WordI recovered from this situation usingthe last known good recovery option onnt's boot managermy last video now is 2 1.3 also featuredthe windows 3.0 applets for os2 whichwere made to run using the willowcompatibility layer not too differentfrom the wine API implementation inlater yearsit totally fascinated me how this madethe windows native apples run in os2 andI wanted to really push it now and seeif I can actually install in Romney'sapplets on Windows NT as well I knowthat this is kind of pointless asWindows and T 3.x includes the very sameapplets already but it's all about thedemonstration purposesthe installation again is CLI drivenunder arms through but guess my surprisewhen I saw the applets running on theWindows native desktopI would have expected them to switchover to Ronaldo is 2 presentationmanager insteadbut just by seeing this it implies thatthe compatibility layer introduced byWillow on os2 just intercepts of in 16API calls with the applicationsremaining widely unaltered otherwise Icannot reasonably explain why theapplications would remain on the Windowsenvironment to which they are nativemaybe it's worthwhile to drill down ifthe actual binaries are the originalones that came with Windows 3.0unaltered or if they were in fact linkedagainst both the windows dlls and TheWillow dlls making them real hybridbinaries actually the installer claimsexactly this that the binaries werespecifically linked correct but evenwithout exploring this at this point Ibelieve that this statement is only truefor things like the included main dllfiles like kernel GDI user but notnecessarily the included applets I'mpretty certain that only the mainlibraries were linked against os2specific dlls whereas the amplitsthemselves just linked to the standardWindows dlls thus making them an oldthird I may be wrong and probably am andit definitely goes too far for thisvideo as there's one more thing I'd liketo exploreso far you saw the PM subsystem must bestarted manual before you can run anyapplicationsthe already mentioned Remy file on thePM setup disk also covers some means ofstarting the presentation manager as aservicewhile the mentions were the requiredfiles are found on floppy disk numberfour it's odd that one of the two phonesis actually installed and the other onenotI do as told and create a new servicenamed os2pm subsystem like sothe readme provides additionalinstructions on what must now beconfigured in the system registry I'lladd the parameters key and the twovalues for app directory and start PMshell as all I want is to pre-start thepresentation manager subsystemstarting this service while the servicescontrol panel seems to have the desiredeffect running it now as a persistentserviceand now I can simply run any applet likethe PM control panel which will thenlaunch into the PM shell as usualwith the presentation manager nowrunning as a service let's see whathappens when I log in with a differentusersee how the pmshell icon appears in thelower left cornerand I can jump directly into the PM filemanager right away without needing tocare if the PM shell is already runningor notsame goes if I look back into theadministrator account with that beingdone I do hope that it will now startthe PM shell automatically so I can useit right awayand here it is on the next startupos2.exe is being launched automaticallywhen I log inbut what's that this screen suddenlywent darkokay it's not an issue with the monitorbut I think I crashed my NT can it bebut even the second attempt ends up inthe very same situationSo eventually I was going again for thelast known good configuration to bringthe system up again and revert thoselast service related changesI guess I need to dig in further on whatwas going wrong hereokay okay I was pushing it to the limitsso it's no surprise it broke but I brokeit like four times through the entireprocess can you believe it still I thinkyou got the idea but the multio'spersonalities that David Cutler and histeam envisioned for Windows NT it'squite Progressive for the time to havean operating system with no less thanfour personalities windows on Windows 16and tvdm os2 1.x and posix and WindowsNT 3.51 did not only feature these16-bit windows API but also the rewind32-bit API which was about to beintroduced with Windows 95 and yes thisis an original Factory sealed itemnowadays we can do literally everythingusing virtualization but for the mid 90sthis was really ahead of the time solong I'm the Vintage collector and thiswas my story on Windows NT 3.51thanks for watching and see you againnext time[Music]future count this Channel's Communitytab you'll find some polls on potentialupcoming videos you're very welcome toupload on upcoming topics or drop in newones you'd like me to chase down[Music]foreign