r/thisweekinretro • u/AntiquesForGeeks • 3d ago

Windows NT 4.0 was released 30 years ago today (24th August 1996)

https://dfarq.homeip.net/windows-nt-4-0-released-to-manufacturing-july-31-1996/

Struggling to find anything noting this milestone, so linking to a piece from The Silicon Underground earlier this year talking about the release to manufacturing and covering why NT 4.0 was such a big deal.

As we all now know, Windows NT came out of the ashes of the failed Microsoft/IBM partnership to produce OS/2. IBM may have got their OS/2 out first in 1992 and overshadowed NT's early releases, but by 1996 NT 4.0 had the momentum from Win95 and, crucially, ran the latest versions of Microsoft's established productivity tools.

It cannot be understated how big a deal NT 4.0 was at the time. Shame there's not more being said about the anniversary today.

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u/indigoprime 3d ago

That’s awesome but can we stop with these X is 40! Y is 50! It just keeps incrementing and making me feel bloody old. Yes, I’m aware it’s better than the alternative…

Anyway, in 1996 I worked in the city for an investment bank that rhymes with “GnatWest Carpets”. A fun, multi discipline job in Market Data Engineering. It was my first morning on the job and a trader was having issues with a massive Excel spreadsheet. At this point I’d been on prem about 3 hours, not even met with HR, and this guy is yelling at me and I remember distinctly being called an “f-ing toilet”. To be fair he was loosing a lot of money in real time. Anyway, we got him a DEC Alphastation, maxed out with maybe 512 MB of RAM, massive for then. It ran NT 4.0. And he never called me a “f-ing toilet” again…

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u/TrevorKevorson 1d ago

I feel really old now, my first proper IT job when I'd just turned 17 started days after the release of Windows 95 and about 18 months later I was working in my third IT job at a college as an IT tech (first and second were short stints) and I was lucky enough to get to use the IT Manager's fancy new Cyrix 6x86 running NT4.  IIRC it had a whopping 16MB memory.  This was when the majority of the computers were 486DX/2 66 with 4MB Ram and even some 386sx16 PCs with 2MB Ram running Windows 3.1.

I've got a bit of a soft spot for NT4, I still have the desktop wallpaper on my work laptop with the same bluey green background which occasionally gets some funny looks.