Inside Windows NT
by Helen Custer · first published 1993
43% recommend57% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Deep technical walkthrough of the Windows NT 3.1 architecture and kernel design, written with extensive access to the development team; suits readers wanting an undergraduate-level OS internals view.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Microsoft Windows NT is the foundation of the new 32-bit operating system designed to support the most powerful workstation and server systems. The initial developer support for Windows NT has been phenomenal--developers have demonstrated more than 50 Windows NT applications only months after receiving the pre-release version of the software. This authoritative text--by a member of the Windows NT development group--is a a richly detailed technical overview of the design goals and architecture of Windows NT.
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If you're interested in the design and implemention of the NT kernel, check out David Solomon's Inside Windows NT. The book's technical level is roughly at that of an undergraduate class on operating systems, going a little deeper than this article.
on “Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)” ↗…DCE RPC or otherwise. * The design of Windows NT threads pre-dated the existence of 1003.4a draft 4 (dated 1990-08-10). By years. For far better things than Wikipedia to read on this subject, see: * Inside Windows NT. Particularly page 92 of the 1st edition. * Cutler's own Windows NT Mutant Specification, written in 1989. * Mark Russinovich's writings on the subject of Windows NT and its VMS heritage. * Any good…
on “GNU Make Jobserver Implementation” ↗…Thanks; I was aware of that when I wrote my comment that you replied to. I was around in tech when NT was released, so I had read the expansion of the acronym then in the media. In fact I had read the book Inside Windows NT (the one by Helen Custer, a good one) some time after it came out. Remember it talking about Dave Cutler as the main NT architect, his DEC VMS background, etc. And it had a fair amount of interesting…
on “Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate” ↗There was also a book called Inside Windows NT by Helen Custer, IIRC. Had some good tech details. Had read it.
on “The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan” ↗For a deep technical dive into the architecture of Windows NT 3.1, I highly recommend the book "Inside Windows NT", the very first edition, by Helen Custer. She had extensive access to the development team, including key architects, during development, and the book was published at the same time as Windows NT 3.1…
on “Windows NT 3.1” ↗Inside Windows NT, the 1st edition, by Helen Custer, is one of my all-time favorite books! A forgotten gem. It's good to see it being praised.
on “Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison” ↗…really different OS like, for instance, IBM i, it becomes clear. The Windows-Unix affinity is so great that you even interact with devices through file handles by Read, Write, and IoCtl methods. Check "Inside Windows NT" by Helen Custer, an official account. She explicitly credits the handles to Unix. That's not surprising - not only was Unix fresh on the minds of the NT developers, with quite a few of them having Unix…
on “Why not object capability languages?” ↗…Speaking of books, you might enjoy "Showstopper!" about the development of NT, even tough it is a bit shallow on the technical side. For the technical aspects, you might want to get it together with "Inside Windows NT" (first edition) by Helen Custer. You might also enjoy: "Another Boring Topic" [3] YouTube channel, covering (among other things) early Windows development in excruciating detail and "Old Computers Sucked"…
on “Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?” ↗I had this book when it first came out and it was fantastic, coming from a pretty hard core Unix background. Inside Windows NT from Microsoft Press https://a.co/d/1lxwnQt
on “On leading underscores and names reserved by the C and C++ languages” ↗Windows Internals is the book you want. Or Inside Windows NT, if you want "version 1" of the Internals series. Or read the Windows NT OS/2 Design Workbook - https://computernewb.com/~lily/files/Documents/NTDesignWorkb.... Yes, Win32 is just one personality, but…
on “Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU Kernel Deep Dive” ↗Yeah this is definitely a hell of read which probably has more historical values than real ones. The book "Inside Windows NT" also gives a good overview about Windows NT 3.1. There is another one called "Understanding Windows NT File System" which talks about the fs I think. The biggest problem is NT is not open-source, and…
on “Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook” ↗…http://www.amazon.com/Gigabit-Networking-Craig-Partridge/dp/0201563339/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267858462&sr=1-1 6. Networking Software by Colin B. Ungaro: http://www.amazon.com/Networking-Software-Mcgraw-Hill-Data-Communications/dp/0076069699/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267858495&sr=1-1 7. Inside Windows NT by Helen Custer: http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Windows-Network-Helen-Custer/dp/155615481X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 8. Operating System Concepts, 6th Edition by Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg…
on “Tell HN: Free books for HN members” ↗David Solomon (author of inside windows nt) used to call it “task mangler” for this very reason :)
on “Do Not Use Task Manager for Memory Info” ↗…the 1995-1996 time frame. "A better Unix than Unix", "The Best Designed Operatings System", stuff like that is almost totally illogical, just an emotional appeal really. If you read Helen Custer's "Inside Windows NT" you might have been excused for thinking you were reading about Mach 2.5, but I'm not sure what relation the OS described by "Inside Windows NT" (1st ed) had to the real Windows NT 3.1. So I'm still…
on “The Day They Almost Decided To Put Windows NT On The Mac Instead Of OS X” ↗If you mean NT, then he also worked on VMS before it, right. So I remember reading in the book Inside Windows NT.
on “Jeff Dean takes over as Google’s AI chief” ↗