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Sixteen years ago (1993)

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Sixteen years ago, we were busy finishing up Windows NT 3.1.  On NT, I worked on the browser (network neighborhood) and the CIFS network filesystem, they both had their own challenges. 

The NT browser (the computer browser service and bowser.sys (yes the name is NOT a typo)) were my first (and so far only) attempt at building a true peer-to-peer replicated system.  It was surprisingly hard and I learned a great deal about how to build distributed systems while working on it.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    um... when you say "NOT a typo", do you mean "Not a typo in this blog" or "not a typo then" ?

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    It was not a typo then. The legend is that it got that name because the driver was "such a dog".

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Gwyn: No legend.  It's not because the driver was such a dog though - the driver was just fine.  My manager at the time just had major issues about us implementing ANY code in a driver. There were worse, for instance the AFD.SYS (the WinSock Ancillary Function Driver)  had a completely different name internally.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Not named after this guy then? :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowser_%28character%29

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Totally unrelated to the content of the post, I have to say I love the double parentheses.  I use them all the time, except my inner parens are usually brackets. :)

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Rats! Not Another F___ing Driver!!!?!?!?!?

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Our manager was colorful :)

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Obligatory backreference: http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2006/03/14/551368.aspx

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    The "Collared is Bowser" opera I cited (in a comment to the Pi Day post) is mentioned in the "Report From Hoople:  P.D.Q. Bach On The Air" album (track 5.) http://www.schickele.com/shoppe/pdqrec/ontheair.htm

  • Anonymous
    October 20, 2009
    An anti-trust exhibit of an email written by Aaron Reynolds himself 16 years ago that basically sums up exactly what this blog says on AARD: http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/px04372_b.pdf I do agree with some parts; just because this code is in five different executables do not mean that five different people wrote it.