NT 3.51, the unknown MS OS

[789]

NT 3.51, the best MS ever had.

nt351 shots

Released in May 1995, but MS did not promote it, did not install it on anybody's desktop or laptop. They wanted us to wander for the next five years in the DOS 7 deadend street to nowhere.

Edited April 8, 2019 by 789
link

[Dave-H]

I've got this installed on my original 1993 PC, dual booting with Windows 98SE!
A Windows NT system that looks like Windows 3.1, what's not to love?!

[jaclaz]

14 hours ago, 789 said:

NT 3.51, the best MS ever had.

nt351 shots

Released in May 1995, but MS did not promote it, did not install it on anybody's desktop or laptop. They wanted us to wander for the next five years in the DOS 7 deadend street to nowhere.

Mah.

I had NT 3.51 running on most of my office machines[1] one month after its release, and surely 13 moths later every machine was running NT 4.0, and another 40 months later or so everything was upgraded to Windows 2000.

I am sorry to learn that you wandered for five years on DOS 7, but you weren't actually forced to it, in practice I never used 95 or 98 machines, let alone Me[2][3].

jaclaz

 

[1] admittedly a couple machines were kept running Windows 3.11
[2] which for the record I got once pre-installed on a laptop and that I soon made into a dual boot with 2000
[3] and that - unlike what the common perception is - was not as bad as it is often depicted

[Tripredacus]

The notebook I had in college, a Compaq LTE 440 CX, had NT 3.51 installed.

[789]

On 4/9/2019 at 5:20 AM, jaclaz said:

I am sorry to learn that you wandered for five years on DOS 7, but you weren't actually forced

Really;  somehow you think I made wind 95/98 a financial success;  I put wind 95 on 95% of desktops ?

There was a several million dollar ad campaign and road show to promote Windows 95;  I have not seen one NT 3.51 ad.

The stores had stacks of Windows 95 installation packages, OS/2 packages, not one NT 3.51.  Not one computer with NT 3.51 pre-installed.

Yes, servers had the option of NT, but not the household machines.

 

And for five years the whole planet wandered in the MS dos 7 deadend street to nowhere;  it took Microsoft that much time to weave into the NT 3.51 code their nefarious purposes.

[jaclaz]

Sure, the Windows 9x series (and Me) was targeted to final users/home users, it was far easier to install/setup it was (on same hardware of the time) definitely faster or if you prefer requiring less resources, it was simple, it could run games, etc. 

NT on the other hand (remember that plug 'n play was introduced only several years later with Windows 2000) was tough to install/configure, it was less "widely compatible" with different hardware, drivers were made only for much more expensive cards, or motherboards, etc., etc., the storage subsystem was typically SCSI (much more expensive) and thus it was only aimed at the professionals/businesses.

Up to Windows 2000 they were simply two completely separated "channels", business and home, each with the OS with the features that were more suitable for the intended use.

XP broke this separation, by imposing to the pro's unneeded bells and whistles and by imposing to the common users senseless restrictions and or "features" that made (and still make in later NT versions) no sense whatsoever.

jaclaz

 

[789]

This morning I installed NT 3.51 on an IBM z60m laptop.

http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-thinkpad-z60m-review-pics-specs/

 It functions, now I need a driver for ATI radeon x300 card.

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by 789

[jaclaz]

Wouldn't these do?
https://download.cnet.com/ATI-MOBILITY-RADEON-X300/3000-2108_4-131387.html

Otherwise, the most you can have is VBEMP:
https://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/vbemp.htm

jaclaz

[789]

Thank you.

With the help of VBEMP there is now true color 1280x1024.  Not full screen but a lot more than 640x480.

 

[Dave-H]

NT 3.51 on my 1993 system!

Just because.