I used NT on P1 to P3 class machines in 2000-2001ish on a school network with a domain.
2000 is 10x as usable today, we used it on some machines (the ones above actually, had P4s for XP) long after XP was released.

Try it for the sake of a complete OS history lesson, but I would not dedicate a machine for it.

In my mind the Pentium Pro is the perfect NT4 machine. I wanted to make a Pentium Pro machine, but with 95C instead so I could still do some DOS gaming. NT4 can definitely be used for some early 3D gaming. The NTVDM is worthless, so DOS is out of the question. Most 3D games like Quake, Doom, Duke 3D, and even Maxis titles have some sort of version on NT. If you do make a Pentium Pro machine for NT4, you might find some nerdy interest in doing a multi socket build. If you can find a good multi socket board on the cheap, it might be a neat idea. Not much use for it though.

My planned PPro build was a 512k 200Mhz PPro with 128MB of EDO RAM, an Ati Mach 64 PCI, 4MB Voodoo 1, and an SB AWE32 CT3670. This in my opinion is probably the spiciest combination for early 3D gaming, and mid to late DOS gaming. The Pentium Pro was rubbish at 16 bit code execution, but with a 32 bit OS it could out perform some early Pentium 2s no sweat. You may even be able to get away with something like a Voodoo 2 SLI with Half-Life running on there, they were that good at 32-bit code execution.

The only reasons that the Pentium Pro flopped tremendously was that it was too expensive and too weak compared to the Pentium MMX for consumers to buy it, and with very few advantages compared to the DEC Alpha and MIPS based workstations of the time for professionals to take an interest in it. My fascination with the platform resides in it's oddity, it's strange performance, and the snazzy gold/purple FCCPGA package it comes with that would make any retro computer geek horny for some sweet obscurity.

Maybe I'm going a bit too hard, but definitely, if you want an NT4 machine, the Pentium Pro is probably the coolest option. You may also be interested in earlier versions of NT. They are even odder, having full Win32 support, but a Win3.x UI. They were incredibly strange. If you want to go even crazier, OS/2 is probably as nuts as you could go with perfect Win16, DOS, and native OS/2 support. It's truly the Cadillac of operating systems, and can do everything as good as it's respective counterparts can. It actually may be a more fitting choice for the Pentium Pro, because like the PPro, OS/2 was too expensive and too useless compared to the consumer offerings for most consumers to buy it, and it was too strange, and too useless for most professionals to buy it, outside of the embedded market. Most professionals were running Unix based machines at the time on the aforementioned DEC Alpha/MIPS platforms, and just didn't care about any of these strange half way options.

Good luck on your machine, because this, IMO, is probably the coolest, strangest, and most awesome configuration you could think of for retro machines.

I have a machine with similar specs (Dell PowerEdge 2100) but it's primarily a DOS machine. There's a Windows NT partition on it but it's only used for networking purposes.

With beefier hardware NT will run all the classic OpenGL games like GLQuake, Quake II, Half Life and Quake III Arena.

RJDog wrote:

Not really a gaming OS, I suppose, but worthy of a spot in vintage scenes?

Meaning you're going to install it, poke at it for half an hour, and then never use it again..?

DirectX support for NT4 ended at version 3, and while OpenGL might work, an ATI Rage II is rather terrible when it comes to anything beyond the most basic 3D.

If you have never setup a system around NT4 before you will probably run into quite a few driver issues and tweaking needs. In my experience, NT4 was probably the least consumer friendly in terms of setting it up, but once you have everything properly configured, it was a really stable system, at least it was for me from 1998 to 2003. Nowadays, I tend to install NT4 along with Win9x, either on a separate partition or a second hard drive. I used NT4 for so long because I found it quite a bit snappier than W2K, even on a PII-400.

Are you considering a dual-boot system? If you like playing around with operating systems and to compare how your hardware performs on various Windows operating systems, you could setup a quad-boot system with NT4, W9x, W2K, and XP. e.g. The Ultimate Multi-Boot Windows Benching Machine

There is software which lets you use a few specific USB devices on NT4, like mice and flash drives.

Definitely go with SCSI.

In my limited experience with games, I found GLQuake and Quake 2 ran at a similar speed on NT4 as they did in W9x.

I know the Radeon 9000 series had NT4 drivers with OGL support. The Mobile Radeon 9000 was the last video card I tested with OGL and NT4 and it worked well but if you want the widest compatibility then you'll probably want a Voodoo card handy for glide games. (Obviously not period correct but you could always keep them handy and throw in when needed)

I always liked the PPro as used them back in the day. Though the biggest issue with NT4.0 as a gaming OS is limited software. Manny of the good games that can run on NT4.0 such as Quake III and Half Life work much better on a quicker CPU. Personally I would look at a late PII or better still PIII.

If you have the hardware lying around why not? NT4 is good place to use up some not so great gaming hardware.

I would use the motherboard without USB. Onboard Audio will be good enough for basic sound, and doubt USB will be much use in particle terms.
Video, both of those were used in servers for years so good match. All you need is something with enough memory to display whatever resolution you want.
SCSI, Definitely!

I Like NT4 for home servers, If you set it all up and leave it alone its relatively stable and less resource intensive then 2K
I had a NT4 server around 2000 built from parts for file storage and share out my dial up internet! (it was slow but worked)
and Workstation which was mare stable then 95c when it was demoted to simple Word/Execl use

Now I have NT4 server installed on a Proliant 1600, Even though its a duel P3 600, it doesn't have USB or ATX so feels more correct.

Yeah, in my years I've never used NT4 (I did use NT 3.51 in a production environment, ironically, in very early 2000s), and I never had a Pentium Pro in the time of Pentium Pros, so I'm kind of looking forward to the build. For the naysayers, yeah, this is obviously not really a gaming machine, so yes, this might be a case of getting it together, saying "cool", using it for half an hour, and then maybe never using it again, but... my enjoyment is primarily in the build process and getting it all working... drivers, configuration, etc... so I think this will be good for me. All in all though, it looks like for everything I want to use, NT4 drivers are fairly easy to come by, so maybe not a huge challenge?

OS/2... holy crap. I forgot that operating system even existed. I remember my dad came home one day and was all happy he upgraded to OS/2 Warp... he had an OS/2 Warp mousepad, and a bunch of other swag... I think he may have even brought a machine home from work one night/weekend so I could see it and play with it. Good times. Years and years ago I tried to install OS/2 in a VM and was mostly successful, but seem to recall I never got the display working exactly right. Looking around, it seems that good sources of drivers for OS/2 are going to be hard to come by... now we're talking about a build challenge! Dual boot OS/2 and NT4, anyone?

That said, maybe that will help with the hardware selection. I have been able to determine that OS/2 drivers exist for the Symbios 53C875, but haven't seen any yet for the Adaptec 2100S, so I think that dictates I should use the older Symbios card for this build... similarly, I see drivers for the onboard Intel soundchip of the 440FX motherboard with audio, but not for the Yamaha YMF719, so that sets that. No problem for drivers with the NICs, of course, and it seems that with Scitech Display Doctor, both video card options are viable, so I think I will go with the Rage II, just to be different (I already have another system with a S3 Trio).

A dual boot OS/2 and NT4 would be spicy.

RJDog wrote:

Storage: I feel like SCSI is appropriate for NT4... I have a SymBios 53c875 (very basic Ultra2 HBA) and Adaptec 2100S (much more full featured RAID Ultra160 HBA). I have a few 73GB SCSI disks.

I chose to use the SymBios 53c875 SCSI card, with a 36GB 15k RPM SCSI disk I had lying around. No problem (or, very little) finding drivers for this card for OS/2 and NT4. However, now that I have the computer all assembled, I discover the SymBios card has absolutely no BIOS. Therefore the OS/2 installer doesn't recognize it as a valid "C" drive (it does see the drive with the driver loaded, so I know the card and disk are working fine), but it also means that I can't use this card to boot from the SCSI disk!! 😠

So, I guess we're going with the Adaptec 2100S that I have, see if that works for this purpose. I really wanted to use a SCSI disk with this build... but I can't seem to find OS/2 drivers for the Adaptec card...

RJDog wrote:

RJDog wrote:

Storage: I feel like SCSI is appropriate for NT4... I have a SymBios 53c875 (very basic Ultra2 HBA) and Adaptec 2100S (much more full featured RAID Ultra160 HBA). I have a few 73GB SCSI disks.

I chose to use the SymBios 53c875 SCSI card, with a 36GB 15k RPM SCSI disk I had lying around. No problem (or, very little) finding drivers for this card for OS/2 and NT4. However, now that I have the computer all assembled, I discover the SymBios card has absolutely no BIOS. Therefore the OS/2 installer doesn't recognize it as a valid "C" drive (it does see the drive with the driver loaded, so I know the card and disk are working fine), but it also means that I can't use this card to boot from the SCSI disk!! 😠

So, I guess we're going with the Adaptec 2100S that I have, see if that works for this purpose. I really wanted to use a SCSI disk with this build... but I can't seem to find OS/2 drivers for the Adaptec card...

There are plenty of cheap 2940 series cards on ebay and they have os/2 support. You can go up to 29160N if you don't want PCI-X cards.

I've used NT 4 on much lesser hardware than what is being recommended here, so I'd say the proposed spec seems fine.

Back in the early 2000s, I had NT 4 Workstation running nicely on a pair of 486SX 33MHz systems - though they both had 64MB RAM installed which probably accounts for why they weren't unbearable to use. At the time it was a nice stable alternative to Windows 95 and seemed to peform a lot smoother than 98 on the same hardware and could even still browse the web back in the early 2000s.

I also had NT 4 Terminal Server Edition installed on a 486 DX4 120MHz PC, that was mostly just a novelty though.

lazibayer wrote:

There are plenty of cheap 2940 series cards on ebay and they have os/2 support. You can go up to 29160N if you don't want PCI-X cards.

Hm... I was hoping to not spend any more than I had to and just use parts I had on hand... we'll see how the 2100S I have goes, but thanks for the lead! Looks like they go for $15-$20 on eBay which isn't too shabby.

I had an NT workstation back in the day. I didn't look up the info but back then we were installing DirectX from the beta Windows 2000. It worked so I'd look into that.

This is turning into almost a build log 🤣

So the Adaptec 2100S I have seems to be working, at least in its own right; I was a little afraid for it after having sat in a box for 10 years and been through two house moves in that time. I'm also a little hopeful that it might just work in OS/2 where it has an Int13h intercepter -- the card works for DOS this way (DOS is a "supported" OS for this card) so maybe it will work for OS/2 the same way without specific drivers?

Anyway, the card detects the drive I have no problem, and I can get in to the System Manager on ROM (SMOR) interface built into the card's BIOS to see everything is okay, but I guess drives aren't made into Logical Storage Units (LSUs) by default and presented to the Operating System. Okay, no problem, except the SMOR interface appears to only allow you to make RAID (i.e. 2 or more drives) LSUs, and I only have one SCA to 68-pin drive adapter, so no go (all the drives I have are SCA). Reading the manual, it is definitely possible to have a single drive (no RAID) LSU, but I guess I just can't do it through the limited BIOS interface.

So, I'm now going to try installing NT4 on an IDE drive, install the Adaptec Storage Manager program, create the LSU, then re-install NT4 on the SCSI drive, hopefully removing the need for the IDE drive be present altogether.

This build for both OS/2 and NT4 would probably be a lot easier without the SCSI stuff... but where would be the fun in that? 😀

RJDog wrote:

This is turning into almost a build log :lol: […]
Show full quote

This is turning into almost a build log 🤣

So the Adaptec 2100S I have seems to be working, at least in its own right; I was a little afraid for it after having sat in a box for 10 years and been through two house moves in that time. I'm also a little hopeful that it might just work in OS/2 where it has an Int13h intercepter -- the card works for DOS this way (DOS is a "supported" OS for this card) so maybe it will work for OS/2 the same way without specific drivers?

Anyway, the card detects the drive I have no problem, and I can get in to the System Manager on ROM (SMOR) interface built into the card's BIOS to see everything is okay, but I guess drives aren't made into Logical Storage Units (LSUs) by default and presented to the Operating System. Okay, no problem, except the SMOR interface appears to only allow you to make RAID (i.e. 2 or more drives) LSUs, and I only have one SCA to 68-pin drive adapter, so no go (all the drives I have are SCA). Reading the manual, it is definitely possible to have a single drive (no RAID) LSU, but I guess I just can't do it through the limited BIOS interface.

So, I'm now going to try installing NT4 on an IDE drive, install the Adaptec Storage Manager program, create the LSU, then re-install NT4 on the SCSI drive, hopefully removing the need for the IDE drive be present altogether.

This build for both OS/2 and NT4 would probably be a lot easier without the SCSI stuff... but where would be the fun in that? 😀

Does SMOR allow you to set the drive in JBOD mode?

lazibayer wrote:

Does SMOR allow you to set the drive in JBOD mode?

It doesn't appear so... go to Create RAID (the only apparent option to do anything) and it complains there are not enough devices present to create a RAID...

If I were you I wouldn't make a build specifically for it. Maybe dual boot it, or find some old machine made for it.