Windows NT

    (Windows New Technology, NT) Microsoft's
   32-bit operating system developed from what was originally
   intended to be OS/2 3.0 before Microsoft and IBM ceased
   joint development of OS/2.  NT was designed for high end
   workstations (Windows NT 3.1), servers (Windows NT 3.1
   Advanced Server), and corporate networks (NT 4.0 Enterprise
   Server).  The first release was Windows NT 3.1.

   Unlike Windows 3.1, which was a graphical environment that
   ran on top of MS-DOS, Windows NT is a complete operating
   system.  To the user it looks like Windows 3.1, but it has
   true multi-threading, built in networking, security, and
   memory protection.

   It is based on a microkernel, with 32-bit addressing for up
   to 4Gb of RAM, virtualised hardware access to fully protect
   applications, installable file systems, such as FAT, HPFS
   and NTFS, built-in networking, multi-processor support,
   and C2 security.

   NT is also designed to be hardware independent.  Once the
   machine specific part - the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)
   - has been ported to a particular machine, the rest of the
   operating system should theorertically compile without
   alteration.  A version of NT for DEC's Alpha machines was
   planned (September 1993).

   NT needs a fast 386 or equivalent, at least 12MB of RAM
   (preferably 16MB) and at least 75MB of free disk space.

   NT 4.0 was followed by Windows 2000.

   Usenet newsgroups: <news:comp.os.ms-windows.nt.setup>,
   <news:comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc>.

   (2002-06-10)