Technical information

Reviewer’s Guide Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51 15
Account Lockout
The account lockout feature is the ability to lock a user’s machine account after a specified number of unsuccessful
logon attempts. This feature makes Windows NT Workstation secure from unauthorized users who try to log onto
the machine by guessing passwords of valid user accounts. The machine administrator can lock the user account for a
pre-specified period of time, or until the administrator manually resets the account.
File System
Long Filenames with the FAT File System
In Windows NT Workstation, file and directory names on the File Allocation Table (FAT) file system are no longer
restricted to the 8.3 naming convention. Instead, file and directory naming rules are similar to those of the NTFS file
system; names can be up to 255 characters, with support for upper and lower case. This capability is supported both
within File Manager and at the command prompt. If you refer to file names with embedded spaces at the command
prompt, enclose them in quotation marks.
Note: Many 16-bit Windows-based programs do not support long file names. In such cases, Windows NT Server
provides these programs with a short version of the long file name. For example, “This is a long file name.doc”
becomes “Thisis~1.doc” to applications that expect 8.3 filenames.
Additional System/Device Support
Updated Multimedia Drivers
Windows NT has always had some built-in multimedia features with its ability to natively display AVI clips. This
new version of Windows NT Workstation extends this capability significantly with support for Video For Windows.
In addition to the Video For Windows tools, this support includes native drivers for multimedia images that have
been compressed using the Cinepak and Indeo compression technology. The inclusion of these drivers enables many
additional multimedia applications to run properly.
Plotters and Scanners
With Windows NT 3.1, many workstation application vendors (such as Intergraph and Parametric Technology)
wrote their own simple plotter drivers for use with their applications. Windows NT Workstation includes drivers for
a number of common plotters, as well as several scanners that support SCSI interconnection.
Windows NT Workstation also includes support for absolute input mode, which is used by many digitizers, touch
screens, and other similar input devices. There are device drivers available for some of these devices from a few
third-party vendors, but these are not yet built into the packaged version of Windows NT Workstation.
Type 1 Font Support
Windows NT Workstation supports applications that use Type 1 fonts. The standard font installation applet in the
Control Panel now has the ability to install Type 1 fonts onto the Windows NT system in a format that the Windows
NT rasterizer understands. In essence, it translates Type 1 font outlines and hints into their functional TrueType™
equivalent. This eliminates the need to use an additional, external font installer and rasterizer, such as Adobe Type
Manager
®
.
At this point, Microsoft is working with vendors who have developed Type 1 fonts so that their names can be
included in the registry of Type 1 fonts that can be automatically installed on Windows NT Workstation. If a vendor
is not listed in the registry of Type 1 fonts, then an alternate font is used for screen display, adjusted to correspond to
the Type 1 font’s text metrics, and the Type 1 font is used for printing to PostScript compatible devices.