[REQUEST] Office 4.2 for NT - PPC and MIPS versions exist?

calvinb

I'm not entirely sure. On the dis[ck]s, there's the x86 and Alpha versions, and the 16-bit PowerPoint. The box for 4.2 says that they're coming later and you can redeem a coupon included inside of the box. However, I'm not sure if the other RISC versions ever shipped. This was when MS was still "committed" to RISC NT that wasn't Alpha - those commitments stopped around just after NT 4's release.

thinkpadman

I've been under the impression that PPC and MIPS versions weren't ever shipped. I suspect any customers that filled out the coupon for a copy, would have ended up with a refund instead. NT 3.x's marketshare was already low enough, so potentially the business case to continue developing for those platforms didn't add up.

02k-guy

Can we take it up one point in versioning?
http://windowsitpro.com/windows/motorol ... ck-risc-pc

"My test system had only 64MB of RAM, which is just enough to allow NT to come into its stride. When you launch applications such as Microsoft Word, the first instance takes only a few seconds to execute, and each subsequent instance comes up even faster--in less than a second--because it's cached in the system memory. "

"Motorola's PowerStack RISC PC shows its processing prowess right out of the box with some sample programs, such as Microsoft Office 4.3 and SoftMPEG. I don't have formal benchmarks for the Motorola PowerPC, such as the BAPCo SYSmark I used for the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Vectra in the January issue. However, I was able to make a reasonable value judgment about the PowerStack: It's very fast. (See the sidebar "How Does the PowerStack Stack Up?" on page 50)."

calvinb

They could be running the 16-bit version. I'm not aware of a 32-bit Access 2.x. They could be prerelease versions, but I doubt Motorola would show those.

02k-guy

Motorola took the Microsoft C Intel source code and produced the working PowerPC rendition of NT. They would have also been allowed to rewrite those 2 Office apps for 32 bit operation on that platform.

I know you'll will ask to cite proof, but yeah, Microsoft handed it off to Motorola - Motorola had the deeper pockets back then.

In other news: Since Windows 3.1 (intel code) operated as a subsystem in the NTVDM, then the 16bit off the shelf versions would have run without incident anyway.

I don't remember much now, but Microsoft had hella time trying to produce Office code for the other RiSC platforms. Something about memory mapping and data structure alignment.

One CPU architecture book I have, I distinctly recall the author saying it was easier to port the OS onto the various RiSC platforms than it was to try to port high level code for any one given application.

I mean, lets not forget that not only did NT have a 16 bit Windows subsystem, but also OS/2 16 & 32 bit, and POSIX.

I tell you what - seriously, that's why I fell in love with NT. It was such an amazing "you can do anything" base platform at the outset.

Then Microsoft realized they had the world by the tail and shut down all the options ASAP.