On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 17:37:29 +0100 Liam Proven <lpro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > This typical Microsoftish genius idea, makes you jump through all > > kinds of hoops that include a third party online repartitioning > > tool to install it on an NTFS partition bigger than 2Gb. > > That's unfair. I think it's connected with the way NT <5 bootstrapped > an installation. > > Relevant digression: you can start NT installation from DOS. This was > a very useful feature and I urged IBM to copy it, but the techies I > spoke to could not understand why. > > NT 3.x predates EIDE; indeed I ordered and returned a bunch of very > early EIDE Pentium 1 PCs because NT could only see the first 512MB of > their 540MB disks. We had to swap them for SCSI machines. > > When NT 3.1/3.5/3.51 came out, most PCs could not boot from CD. Many > CD drives were attached to sound cards via proprietary interfaces; > Panasonic, Mitsumi and Sony were common: > https://goughlui.com/2012/11/12/tech-flashback-before-atapi-cd-roms-were-proprietary-interfaces/
You could get NT 4 just on floppy disks. > No OS could boot off these, and most only supported DOS and Win9x in > DOS compatibility mode. > > This also made it possible to install over the network without a > local CD drive. > > So, you could boot a PC under DOS, make a FAT partition, copy the NT > files from the CD or a network server onto the FAT partition, run > WINNT.EXE *under DOS* and it built a very minimal installation system > on the hard disk. The folder name varied but it was something like > C:\~$win.nt$\ > > Then it rebooted the PC into that, where a 2nd stage setup ran and > built the real NT system. Then it rebooted into _that_. If you picked > NTFS that now ran `CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS` on your drive. > > I don't think MS was trying to be awkward, and this functionality was > a lifesaver. It allowed me at one corporate client to bring up a whole > roomful of dozens of NT 4 machines with only a single optical drive on > the server, which saved so much money it paid for about 2-3 more PCs. > > You could bypass the DOS step by booting from 3 special NT boot > floppies, but the DOS method was quicker, easier and more versatile. > > Under OS/2 2.x and later, you only had the floppy method, and you had > to get your CD working under those boot floppies, adding drivers, > editing its vast multi-hundred-line CONFIG.SYS file to suit... it was > a major pain. If there were no OS/2 drivers for your CD, then you had > to copy the install files to a partition that the boot floppies could > access. The setup program only ran under OS/2 2 itself and couldn't > start from DOS. > > But the 2-stage NT setup is why it went through this > format-as-FAT-then-convert process. It limited your Windows system > drive to a max of 4GB until PartitionMagic came along, but it worked > and it meant it was easy to get NT onto machines that OS/2 only > installed upon with great difficulty, or not at all. > My perspective on this is different because I also had experience with other OSes back in those days that did better in that regard. I don't see any good reason for not just offering the option to directly format the drive as NTFS and install to it from the start in addition to offering the option to install on FAT from DOS and than later convert to NTFS when needed like you explained. It's truly a pity since the NTFS version shipped with NT 4 can handle much larger partitions. I still have a real hardware NT 4 install with a second 160Gb SATA drive formatted with it that works great. I don't consider saving money by not paying programmers to make it possible to install directly to NTFS to be a good reason especially since they were already swimming in cash back in those days. In contrast, BeOS could install itself directly from crummy Windows 9x by popping the CD in and running a Windows installer (or somehow transferring the files from the CD to the PC) and also had it's own native installer. Pretty sure Be had less programmers working on BeOS than M$ had working on NT. Linux even back in those days of pppd shell scripts and weekly kernel compiles could also be installed on FAT with umsdos if you wished so for some reason. And it could even emulate permissions on top of FAT. You could also of course install it from the network. If all else failed, you install it entirely from floppies. M$ has a history of always doing the bare minimum. Like MS DOS vs PC DOS vs Dos Plus/DR DOS. I'll concede though that the worst installer ever by far in my experience is the one for NeXTSTEP. Solaris with it's nightmarishly slow java installer was pretty bad as well. Happy new year, -- _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
