{"id":44193,"date":"2015-04-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2015\/04\/21\/what-was-the-starting-point-for-the-panther-win32-kernel\/"},"modified":"2019-03-13T12:14:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T19:14:53","slug":"20150421-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20150421-00\/?p=44193","title":{"rendered":"What was the starting point for the Panther Win32 kernel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I presented a list of cat-related code names from Windows 95<\/a>, commenter dave wanted to know whether the Panther kernel was derived from the 32-bit DOS kernel or the Windows\/386 kernel<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Neither. <\/p>\n

Here’s the table again, with some more columns of information: <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Component<\/th>\nCode Name<\/th>\nBased on<\/th>\nFate<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
16-bit DOS kernel<\/td>\nJaguar<\/td>\nMS-DOS 5<\/td>\nMorphed into Windows 95 boot loader \/ compatibility layer<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
32-bit DOS kernel<\/td>\nCougar<\/td>\nWin386 kernel<\/td>\nMorphed into VMM32<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Win32 kernel<\/td>\nPanther<\/td>\nWindows NT kernel<\/td>\nCancelled<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
User interface<\/td>\nStimpy<\/td>\nWindows 3.1 user interface<\/td>\nBecame the Windows 95 user interface<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

The original idea for the Jaguar and Cougar projects was to offer a 16-bit MS-DOS environment that could be “kicked up a notch” to a 32-bit protected-mode MS-DOS environment, with virtual memory and multiple virtual machines. They used the MS-DOS 5 and Win386 kernels as starting points. (Why wasn’t Jaguar based on MS-DOS 6.0? For the same reason NASA didn’t use the Space Shuttle to rescue the Apollo 13 astronauts<\/a>.) This project as originally envisioned was cancelled, but the work was not lost. The projects took on new life as the Windows 95 boot loader \/ compatibility layer and as the Windows 95 virtual machine manager, respectively. <\/p>\n

The idea for the Panther project was to start with the existing Windows NT kernel and strip it down to run in 4MB<\/a> of RAM. This project did not pan out, and it was cancelled outright. It was replaced with a Win32 kernel written from scratch with the 4MB limit in mind. <\/p>\n

The Stimpy project survived intact and became the Windows 95 user interface. <\/p>\n

I doubt the code name was the reason, but it’s interesting that the ferocious cats did not carry out their original missions, but the dim-witted cat did. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That one started from Windows NT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-44193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

That one started from Windows NT.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}