Comment by mjevans
21 days ago
NT4 started with a kernel mode, user mode, security model and drivers had to be written and validated accordingly.
9x, me, and even compatibility parts of XP (up to some service patch IIRC? Might have been SP2) would still allow dos mode realtime BS for any driver that wanted.
I loath all the dang software modems too cheep to ship a decent device in a single unit and instead slice off the user's already constrained resources.
Heh, who else remembers the golden benchmark, a US Robotics 56k hw modem (the only one I could find locally was an external one too) to get online in either NT4 or Linux. But when I finally did save for one, I could fully leave Windows behind in 1998.