Microsoft Windows: Difference between revisions

The last minor update to the series, [[Windows for Workgroups 3.11]] was released in 1993 and introduced 32-bit disk access as well as removed the Standard mode, raising the minimum required CPU to a 386. A 32-bit TCP/IP stack was ported from an early version of [[Windows 95]] and released in 1994 as a downloadable plugin for Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

In 1988, Microsoft hired Dave Cutler, a former DEC engineer, to create a portable 32-bit version of [[OS/2]], the operating system that the company worked on in collaboration with IBM. At the time, OS/2 was a 16-bit operating system very much tied to the x86 platform with considerable DOS heritage. The new operating system intended to be a preemptive multitasking system with multiprocessing support. The design included a portable kernel with executive services layered on top of a hardware abstraction layer, and multiple environmental subsystems running in user mode offering support for multiple APIs. Portable OS/2, or NT OS/2, would have included support for both 16-bit and extended 32-bit variant of the OS/2 API, as well as virtual DOS machines and an implementation of the POSIX standard, which would allow Microsoft to run for US government contracts. Commercial release was planned for the early 1990s with NT shipping as OS/2 3.0, while IBM was adding 32-bit support to the original OS/2 codebase to create [[OS/2 2.0]].<ref name="PX00194">http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00194.pdf</ref>