Windows NT definition
<operating system> (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: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.setup,
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc.
(2002-06-10)
Nearby terms:
Windows Messaging « windows messaging « Windows Millennium Edition « Windows NT » Windows NT 3.1 » Windows NT 3.5 » Windows NT 4
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