Microsoft plans to start testing a new version of its Windows XP Media Center edition, a customized operating system designed for entertainment-oriented PCs.
Windows Sequel Gets Set to Entertain
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I live in India (south asia) last May when I bought computer I wanted something like medica centre but it was not available in my country (as far as i know) so i had to assemble a computer with different components to fit my needs
pretty time wasting…….. anyways this seems to be a big improvment for MS
Must agree with you here. I think this is what we’ll see in XBox 2, since it must feature a lot more than games… and that will ship worldwide I’m pretty convinced..
> I think this is what we’ll see in XBox 2, since it must feature a lot
> more than games… and that will ship worldwide I’m pretty convinced..
I kind of doubt that. Do you think Windows, or Windows CE will be ported to PowerPC? I think XBox 2 is going to have to have a really basic OS, unless it’s going to be seriously delayed to market.
Both NT and CE have been ported to the PowerPC as well as several other CPUs. XBOX 2’s OS is likely to be similar to the original XBOX’s (i.e., a customized version of the whatever the current or next-to-current NT kernel is).
The only thing I am certain of; A whole lot of open source folks are likely to die of old age attempting to install Linux on XBOX 2.
This might be the only mistake in the entire history of Microsoft that isn’t going to repeat itself.
I can only imagine how many wanna-be genius types are going to create little more than paperweights attempting this one.
if MS does use the same os as on the XBox,a G5 could run windows (with just alittle help) assuming that the cpu is PPC based, but if it is OPteron based well that would be a different story. (IBM was toying with the opteron idea.. much cheaper in the long run for them)
The Windows NT/CE OS is very portable because they both use a HAL. They don’t have recompile the whole OS, just the HAL.dll so it can communicate with PPC CPU and it’s hardware.
” They don’t have recompile the whole OS, just the HAL.dll so it can communicate with PPC CPU and it’s hardware.”
Yes they do, stay in school kid.
MY TIVO cost me 99 bucks and never gives blus screen of death, doesnst have virus issue and never needs reboot. I can do more media stuf on TIVO than windoze xp.
Not tell me again why I need $2000 windoze xp media center.
http://docs.rinet.ru:8083/Registratura/htm/ch13.htm
“Windows NT uses a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to allow NT to communicate correctly with the hardware on the system. The HAL is actually a .DLL (dynamically linked library) file that creates “hooks” so the operating system and the drivers do not have to know anything about the processor, the BIOS, or the system board. When NT wants to send something to the processor, it uses a driver, Registry information, and an API (application programming interface) built into NT, and loaded during installation.
By using the HAL, Windows NT is scalable, meaning that the same operating system can be used on different platforms. There are two HALs for each of the following platforms listed, one for single processor systems and one for multiple processor systems (up to four processors). If you will be using more than four processors, you can get an alternative HAL from the manufacturers for up to 32 processors.
Intel
COMPAQ
DEC Alpha
PowerPC (Motorola and/or IBM)
MIPS (to be discontinued after NT 4.0)
Not only can Windows NT install on any of those platforms, it can also be transported between them. Because the kernel of the operating system only talks to the HAL, you simply need to change the HAL. For example, if you had a current Windows NT Server running as a Domain Controller (holding all the security information) and it had several applications installed, you wouldn’t want to start from scratch and start over again. If you started over, you would have to recreate all your usernames, security information, and applications. Instead of doing that, you could simply move all the files to the new machine by restoring a backup there, and then change the HAL.”
Please read up about Hardware Abstraction Layers before shooting off your mouth at me, thank you.
You seem to do not understand what “compiling” means, you can post all the documents you want, but if basic concepts like compilation and hardware abstraction seem to be all mixed up in your posts.
As I said stay in school… thank you.
Hint, a MIPS binary of NT will not run on a x86 NT machine, get it? You still need to compile the parts above the HAL to target the machine you are running. HAL means that anything below the HAL is machine dependent, anything abobe is not… in the design aspect of it. You still need to generate the binaries needed to run (hint source code is not the same as the final program generated!) the program, which have to be targeted to the specific machine architecture they are intended to run.
The only thing that did not require re-compilation was the FX32! translator from DEC which allowed x86 NT binaries to run on Alpha NT machines. But that is pointless since Alpha NT does not exist any more. HAL for NT meant that I could write aa program for NT and I could port it to any of the supported architectures with a simple RECOMPILATION. But that is prett much pointless since NT is only supported in x86 after 5.0. CE also has its own HAL structure, but you stil need to know which core you are targetting (ARM, MIPS, etc.).
Cheerio.
Question:
Wouldn’t the “original” NT4 release CD from Microsoft install on a all the platforms from the same CD?
You are all getting off the topic at hand, which is Windows XP Media Center. I work on a computer and when I am done I want to be far away from it. Now why would I want to stay behind my computer to be entertained?
My children on the other hand use the computers as entertainment (i.e. games and chat lines) but not me.
When it comes to making a computer to do all things is a market I believe is very small. I wish that MS could really innovate and get out of trying to dominate my life with more MS junk like Media Center.
W
“Question:
Wouldn’t the “original” NT4 release CD from Microsoft install on a all the platforms from the same CD?”
Yes. However, it included seperate binaries compiled for each supported platform. The binaries were placed on the CD in a directory named for whatever platform they were compiled for, such as an i386 folder for x86-compiled binaries, PPC folder for PowerPC-compiled binaries, etc.
Longhorn will make portability of NT even easier because MS could store the code as MSIL and have it automatically compile for the target platform at install time if they wanted to. The only thing that would need to be precompiled for the target platform is the kernel/kernel-level bits which are still unmanaged (and any other unmanaged, likely legacy, code that may ship with the platform), and the HAL and .NET runtime would need to be ported/recompiled. In this case, they could technically have one set of binaries on disc for all platforms, except for the unmanaged/platform-specific bits mentioned above.