Windows NT 4 launched on an Apple computer with a PowerPC chip – less than a quarter of a century has passed

An enthusiast developed a method that made it possible to run Windows NT 4 on older Apple computers with PowerPC processors, overcoming technical limitations that had existed for more than 25 years.

Image source: Microsoft

Windows NT was originally designed as a multi-platform OS capable of running on various processor architectures, including PowerPC. However, due to firmware differences between PowerPC-based computers from different manufacturers, Windows NT could not run on Apple computers.

A developer known on GitHub as Wack0 created the maciNTosh project, which allows the Windows NT 4 operating system to run on Apple computers with PowerPC processors (RISC architecture created in 1991 by the AIM alliance) of the mid-1990s. Wack0 was able to overcome the limitation by porting the PowerPC version of the ARC firmware and developing a bootloader to run it in RAM. In addition, he created basic drivers to support the keyboard, mouse, IDE controller and framebuffer, writes The Register.

Image Source: Apple

Project maciNTosh allows you to run Windows NT 4 on the iMac G3, PowerMac G3 Blue and White, PowerBook G3 Lombard, and PowerMac G4 Yikes. Although the system performance on these computers leaves much to be desired, the very fact of its performance cannot fail to impress.

Computer expert Andy Tanenbaum once said, “The great thing about standards is that there are so many of them that there are always more to choose from.” This phrase perfectly describes the situation with firmware for PowerPC in the 1990s. By the way, for PowerPC machines there was also another firmware standard – ratified IEEE Open Firmware, which Apple used. As a result, Windows NT for PowerPC could not run on Apple PowerMac.

Although the project has no practical value today, it demonstrates the power of open source software and the enthusiasm of individual retrocomputing developers. For many fans of old technology, this is an opportunity to see “what could have been” if Windows NT had been available on Apple computers back in the day.