back to article When old Microsoft codenames crop up in curious places

Pour a cup of cocoa and settle down for another episode of Microsoft Storytime. Why do codenames sometimes linger on in the implementation of products? "Chicago" was Microsoft's codename for Windows 95. During its development, Microsoft's new operating system went by several names externally – Windows 4.0 and Windows 93, to …

  1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

    Sometimes codenames are just easier to remember. My jag had a ZSD-422 engine, but "puma" sticks in the head

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      Surely not the same 'Puma' engine that's in a Defender (not current model). It was a modified Ford Transit engine.

      1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

        The Defender wasn't a modified Transit engine. The Puma was designed for the Mondeo, the transit version was developed from that, and the Defender also used the Mondeo's Puma, as did the Xtype Jaguar.

        ZSD-420 = 4 cylinder inline 2.0 litre engine, with the ZSD-422 being the 2.2 litre version.

        Infact, all the last Puma to come off the line were going to JLR, as the Mondeo had moved to the DW-10 and DW-12 PSA units for the Mk4 Mondeo.

        Ford diesel codenames:

        1.4/1.6 is the Tiger, 1.8 is the Lynx, 2.0/2.2 was the Puma, then the Panther (Twin turbo normally, badged as "ecoblue"), and the V6/V8 models is the Lion

        1. AMBxx Silver badge

          That makes much more sense. Thanks.

          The earlier Puma in a Defender was a 2.4. Used in anything else?

          1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

            Yeap, the ZSD-424 was a bored out 422 iirc. Defender, Transit, LDV Convoy and for 1 year (2002) the LTI TXII. So your defender and a blackcab could be running the same engine

        2. legless82

          Almost - it was the other way around.

          Ford's European Golden Goose is the Transit. It's basically bankrolled the company for at least 3 decades. And it was the V184/V185 Transit programme that funded the Puma engine development to replace the York 2.5DI 'banana' engine used in the previous generation. Transit then launched with the Puma around 4 months ahead of the CD132 Mondeo back in 2000.

          Launch capacities were 2.4L (for the RWD variants) and 2.0L for the FWD variants. The 2.2L version came later as part of Euro-4 related development.

          Source: I'm grey enough to have been on the Puma programme team (and subsequently the Lion V6/V8 and aborted V10) c.25 years ago now

    2. el_oscuro

      Old Camaros had a 4 cylinder engine option that was called the Iron Duke. It was basically a 1970's V8 sawed in half, and was also used by the United States Postal service for their trucks.

      My old Camaro came with the same engine that they used in full sized SUVs and pickup trucks. Didn't have a cool name like that, but with a 5 speed stick in a light weight sports car, it was quite fast.

  2. Ochib

    It can't be 29 years since Windows 95 was first released. I'm not that old to remember installing that version for the first time

    1. Mast1

      The tragic thing about declining mental faculties is that it is the short-term memory that goes first.

      Long-term memory is often well preserved.

      And having had a close relative decline due to a slow dementia, it is especially not something I would joke about.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Know so well the pain of the 'slow dementia' you mentioned, wishing you all the best and hope you are managing to cope with this horrific thing.

        Most people cannot appreciate the 'real' problems of dealing with dementia, both for the patient & the immediate family who have to cope with something they are usually not prepared for !!!

        In my case both parents, in different ways, they were from a generation who smoked then gave up late in life and it 'came back' to bite them when they were older.

        NHS cannot cope with it well as it requires so much time/effort and is a resource 'sinkhole'.

        Really would not wish it on my worse enemy !!!

        :)

      3. HorseflySteve

        I can't think why your comment has been down voted.

        Having been in the position of looking after my elderly mother as she succumbed to dementia following the death of my father, whilst also working full time as a senior design engineer and looking after my horse & dog all by myself, I know only too well your pain and why you don't regard it as topic for humour.

        Surviving on 3.5 hours sleep every night for 2 years was certainly no joke!

        1. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

          I agree and was going to post the same.

      4. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Why We Joke About It

        I'm sorry for your situation, but many of the rest of us who are somewhere on that downhill slope do joke about it, if only to keep our perspective, or as a coping mechanism.

    2. bernmeister
      Facepalm

      No need for memory

      General availability August 24, 1995. 95 means 95, try and remember when vista, win7 etc were released.

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: No need for memory

        Yes Windows 93 94 95, was released in that year.

      2. MatthewSt Silver badge

        Re: No need for memory

        And of course don't forget Server 2025...

      3. el_oscuro

        Re: No need for memory

        I still remember getting the Windows 95 upgrade CD and upgrading my old Windows 3.1 box with it. Shortly afterwards, it got the BSOD because: Windows. I called support (they actually answered the phone back then) and they recommended I do a fresh install. I asked them how I could do that since my CD only worked as an upgrade from 3.1. They gave me a way to bypass that: From a DOS prompt:

        [code]

        C:\> dir > NTLDR

        [/code]

        Of course NTLDR was part of the Windows NT startup, and apparently all the upgrade checked for was the existence of the file.

    3. FirstTangoInParis Silver badge

      And the second time, and the third time ….. all them floppies installing the world floppiest bit of software. I won’t call it an OS because it was a security nightmare. Anyone could (and usually did, if they were techie) do anything. ANYTHING!!!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > I won’t call it an OS because it was a security nightmare. Anyone could (and usually did, if they were techie) do anything.

        And there we all were, using our single-user microcomputers and PCs, our CP/Ms and DOSes, even multitasking and WIMPing away, blithely unaware that we didn't *really" have an OS at all!

        Even today, our poor sad embedded RTOS is simply lying to itself.

      2. david 12 Silver badge

        It was unix -- the cut down single-user version of multix -- that was 'not an operating system' to the real (IBM) operators of the day, because, amongst other things, it had no isolation or virtualization.

        But did the insult pre-date that? There weren't computer magazines before that, and research publications were before my time.

        1. jake Silver badge

          "There weren't computer magazines before that"

          My dad has a small collection of early (1940s) magazines with articles on computers and computing. He started collecting them when he was at Uni in the early '50s. But it was in the 1950s that actual computer magazines, as such, started taking off. For more, see the somewhat obvious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_magazine

          Regardless, MS-DOS/PC-DOS and the shells that run on it aren't really an OS, they are nothing more than glorified program loaders.

        2. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

          UNIX was absolutely not a 'cut down version of Multics '. The developers used a lot of ideas from Multics, but that's as close as it got.

  3. Frank Leonhardt

    The 1989 Atari STacy portable had some bundled software to compete with the "Sinclair" Z88's Pipedream. As the STacy had no name when it was commissioned, and Atari had no name for the software, the lead developer gave it a working title of Pipebender, which lived on in the name of the configuration file.

    This has never been made public until just now.

    1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

      > This has never been made public until just now.

      Then how would you know....

      Ah. As they say, "username checks out"!

      1. Frank Leonhardt
        Coat

        Busted

        Wasn't me. Very common name in the computer industry. People are always getting us mixed up.

        But if it was, I'd be amazed to learn this wasn't completely lost in the mists of time, and probably very impressed that anyone had found out. Or even bothered to find out.

        I don't think anyone bought the STacy for the bundled software. I never even saw a production sample. I reckon they sold the 30K units to German musicians.

        1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

          Re: Busted

          STacy looks like an interesting machine that I didn't hear much about even when I- briefly- owned an ST.

          But looking at it now, I'm not sure that it was ever "competing" with the Z88, whatever Atari might have thought....? Beyond both being "portable" in the most general sense, they otherwise appear to have been very different machines at different price points with different use cases.

          STacy being essentially a luggable version of a full-size ST that still required mains power versus something much smaller that was obviously designed from scratch with use on-the-go in mind (and nodding in the direction of PDA territory).

          I can understand why the STacy was popular with musicians lugging around an ST-centred MIDI keyboard setup.

          The Organiser software looks interesting- I'm surprised Atari didn't bundle that with the regular versions of the ST. (Though knowing Tramiel-era Atari's cheapskate approach, maybe they just didn't want to pay any more if their license didn't already cover the non-portable ST models?)

          (Also, I'm afraid that I'm quite lazy and my search "skills" were just some quick "join-the-dots" Googling...!)

  4. NoCoffee

    I worked for a company that used Star Trek universe characters as names as codename before rebranding on release, and I was forever finding them in the SDK/API. Chekov.bin was my old firmware nemesis.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Company I worked for used philosophers' names. Turned out, so did a few porn stars. Last time I search for photos of philosophers in work time.

      1. FIA Silver badge

        It's spelt "Immanuel Kant".

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge
          Joke

          I assure you, they can. Oh, they can...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      VMS macro definition files (such as C #includes) tended towards the humorous as well. I remember the various security #defines were in files called kgbdef.h, nkvddef.h, ciadef.h etc.

    3. Ramis101

      Was hoping someone got onto Star Trek characters...

      In the dim & distant past of my memory banks i'm sure i came a cross a file in the Windows dir of NT, i think 4 but could have been 3.5 that was called Spock.xxx

      Anyone know if that was just a random acronym or was actually named after Spock

      1. The Unexpected Bill
        Go

        Re: Was hoping someone got onto Star Trek characters...

        You did. That was the miniport driver for IBM's Micro Channel SCSI adapter with cache, which is commonly identified by its code name of "Spock".

        The uncached version was known as Tribble.

        All of Windows NT 3.1, 3.5 and 4.0 supported those adapters. On NT, both types of IBM's Micro Channel SCSI adapters used the "spock" driver. Windows 2000 dropped Micro Channel support sometime in its various beta releases. (Windows 9x also supported these adapters and its drivers also used the "spock" code name.)

  5. cdilla

    Grimsby

    Inspired by Microsoft's "Chicago" project name we gave our next big project the codename "Grimsby". I still have the documentation of the time. Happy days.

    1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: Grimsby

      The Geordie version of Windows deserves a namecheck too.

      1. that one in the corner Silver badge

        Re: Grimsby

        No, it was Commodore that had the Pet.

  6. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Chicago

    Funny enough the most consistent band for album naming is/was also called Chicago, but it was perhaps fortuitous that they had their only name change right at the beginning(s) of their career: Chicago Transit Authority. Still one of the best albums of all time imho.

    1. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker
      Pint

      Re: Chicago

      Hey there, everybody / Please don't romp or roam / We're a little nervous / 'Cause we're so far from home / So this is what we do / Sit back and let us groove / And let us work on you...

      Yeah, it worked on me, all right. I'll admit my first album of theirs was #9 (their first Greatest Hits), but CTA (#1) was my second.

      ---> A full round for you, me, and all Chicago lovers

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Chicago

      Makes me wonder if Russia ever tried to make their own version of Windows 95 and code named it "Leonid".

  7. frankvw

    "depreciate Chicago"

    "But wait," you say – "couldn't you add win95 as an alias for Chicago and depreciate Chicago?"

    Of course it was never worth much to begin with. I took a good look at it and wrote off its cost immediately, in a manner not approved by the tax man.

    1. dr.k

      Re: "depreciate Chicago"

      Deprecate ... FTFY

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Re: "depreciate Chicago"

        I think the uplevel poster was making a snarky comment about the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA.

        At least, I thought it was funny.

    2. dr.k

      Re: "depreciate Chicago"

      Deprecate -- FTFY

  8. The other JJ

    Similarly the name _vti keeps cropping up in SharePoint

    In a similar vein, hardened SharePoint admins and power users may encounter the restriction that the string _vti can't be used places like folder names, and it becomes apparent that this is because it's used internally by SharePoint for unique internal folder names. But why _vti?

    VTI stands for Vermeer Technologies Incorporated, founded in 1994 to create development tools for that newfangled world wide web, which including FrontPage and Personal Web Server. Sold to Microsoft just two years later those products evolved radically many times indirectly resulting in SharePoint. So a decision made thirty years ago, probably out of expedience and convenience is still embodied in a flagship product today and likely to remain so for a decade or more to come.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Similarly the name _vti keeps cropping up in SharePoint

      ... including FrontPage..."

      That brings back memories. I used FrontPage to run a website for a search and rescue charity many years ago - it (FrontPage) got a lot of flak for being proprietary but I liked it. Back in the days of dial-up, it wasn't feasible to stay online for editing, and also to minimise traffic. I ran the website master on my PC; it was easy to add and edit pages but, more importantly for me, it was also easy to move them around. I'd often want to change the structure to highlight specific things, to keep it fresh, etc. FrontPage allowed me to drag pages around whilst it maintained link integrity. When I was happy with the changes, all I needed to do was click on the publish button and it would dial-up, log in and make the necessary changes to the public version. Sure, FP limited what you could do - but that included everything I really needed. Later editors have more bells and whistles but there's nothing I've ever found *essential* for a site designed to provide information.

      But then, even nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Similarly the name _vti keeps cropping up in SharePoint

        > I'd often want to change the structure to highlight specific things, to keep it fresh,

        And so it began, from the earliest days, the relentless churn of website structure, to keep the Users confused just to in order to amuse the site designer.

        1. Norfolk N Chance

          Re: Similarly the name _vti keeps cropping up in SharePoint

          Luckily it wasn't anything important, or of consequence... !

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Similarly the name _vti keeps cropping up in SharePoint

            OP here - Not to confuse, rather, to keep the site relevant and useful to the visitor: the reorganising was to keep the latest news up front, and move the older stuff into an hierarchical archive. The site carried information regarding natural disasters, SAR status and a focus on current support needs.

    2. Anne Hunny Mouse

      Re: Similarly the name _vti keeps cropping up in SharePoint

      In CUCM physical phones and video conferencing devices all begin SEP =Selsius Ethernet Phone

      Why? Cisco bought Selsius to sell CUCM.

      A lot of their video conferencing devices use MAC addresses which are identified as Tanberg.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    At Dell in the early/mid 90s

    We in the Engineering at Braker-C used to be given t-shirts with images that were the codename for a new product in some weird marketing drug-induced way.

    Quite a number of us would give them away to homeless at the corners around north Austin. Apparently Michael was more than a bit upset by this when he'd be stopped at a junction and seeing them coming up to cars with their begging tins wanting money wearing the code name t-shirts!

  10. s. pam
    Trollface

    Is it true Windows 11

    Was codenamed sCUnthorpe?

    I'll get me coat!

    1. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
      Devil

      Re: Is it true Windows 11

      Maybe, Penistone or Arsenal?

  11. Howard Sway Silver badge

    Microsoft codenames crop up in curious places

    Looking at a list of their codenames seems to confirm this.

    Windows NT 3.1 was codenamed "Razzle", which often cropped up on the magazine top shelf of my local newsagents.

    Windows XP Embedded was codenamed "Mantis", presumably because they were praying that it would work.

    Windows Small Business Server 2008 was codenamed "Cougar", because it was getting on a bit, but was still quite hot.

    Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 was codenamed "Asteroid" which gave a fair description of the impact of many updates that were to follow it.

    1. Michael Strorm Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Microsoft codenames crop up in curious places

      > Windows NT 3.1 was codenamed "Razzle", which often cropped up on the magazine top shelf of my local newsagents.

      Was that an official tie-in? I remember that back in the day Ford used to have magazines dedicated to the "Escort" and the "Fiesta" on that same shelf.

      Though oddly, I don't recall either of them ever featuring their namesake cars on the cover.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SkyDrive and Waffle

    Watch the URL bar of your web browsers carefully when walking around Office 365 and you see other old names. Especially during logon redirects.

    In the OneDrive world many things are still called SkyDrive. The original name until Murdoch complained.

    Also Teams is still correctly called Waffle in many places...

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: SkyDrive and Waffle

      "Also Teams is still correctly called Waffle in many places..."

      Teams is the legendary 1.65 release?

    2. collinsl Silver badge

      Re: SkyDrive and Waffle

      Skype for Business is still called lync.exe

  13. Luiz Abdala
    Pint

    Scorpio instead of Xbox?

    Instead of 7 different flavors of xbox, how about a videogame named Scorpio? It would have been awesome.

    Yes please, leak more codenames into finished products, Microsoft.

  14. Nugry Horace

    The acronym AIRO appears in the system software for the Amstrad PC1512. Apparently it stands for "Alan's IBM Rip-Off."

    Part of "CHICAGO" also appears backwards in the "...IHC" signature that Windows 95 writes to floppy disks.

  15. DS999 Silver badge

    It isn't like they didn't have obvious options

    They could have just called it "Windows" to contrast with "WindowsNT".

    Or knowing that "NT" stood for "new technology" they could have called it "WindowsOT". Or if they wanted to avoid the connotation of calling it "old", perhaps "WindowsOG" - though in 1993 when Microsoft was probably 99.9% white I imagine that designation would have been deemed "too street" to use in even an internal codename. Or in deference to it being targeted at desktops rather than workstations like NT, "WindowsDT".

    1. Test Man

      Re: It isn't like they didn't have obvious options

      No, it's way too close to the "WindowsNT" identifier. When it comes to coding, it's far more advantageous for many reasons to use completely distinct names, it'll lessen the risk of misidentifying for one.

  16. that one in the corner Silver badge

    Windows Chicago

    As many holes as Roxie Hart's fishnet stockings, but never quite that good looking.

    Both can get the old heart racing, but for entirely different reasons.

  17. trevorde Silver badge

    OS/2 - gone but not forgotten

    Did some quite low level Windows (NT) development many years ago. A lot of the Windows error messages/codes had vestiges of it's OS/2 roots.

  18. MCPicoli

    The next version

    Worked at a place that once decided it needed a new home-made ERP system to replace its old, obsolete an incomplete home-made ERP system. I was chosen to lead this project and provisionally named it "NextGen". Left the decision to the question "What should it be named?" to other departments. Development took a few years and went well, system went live, relatively few problems, everyone mostly satisfied, but nobody ever bothered to find a better name than "NextGen". So, the name stuck and remained that for the entire life of the system and now, more than 12 years after as it is being slowly decomissioned (the company got acquired) its name still is the same.

    P.S.: No, none of the off-the-shelf ERP systems of the time were even remotely suitable for this company and even today most aren't, not without paying some eye-watering fees for customization.

  19. Lee D Silver badge

    Your executables still start with the letters MZ.

  20. spold Silver badge

    Goose Crap

    The IBM AS/400 - known as "Silver Lake" - the pond in the middle of Rochester, MN down the road from the now deceased IBM manufacturing plant referred to as the "Blue Zoo" because of the building colour. The Silver Lake was fed by cooling water from the local power plant, so the pond never froze even in the -1 gazillion winter temperatures, hence it was constantly covered in birds even then. So the "Silver Lake" project was also referred to as "Goose Crap".

  21. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Data General codenames

    We got to make up our own at DG:

    The D200 terminal was PEGASUS

    Our first Ethernet board for the NOVA/ECLIPSE was KANGAROO and the one for the smaller microNOVA/microECLIPSE was JOEY

    The intelligent async board was WOMBAT

    The (never released) voice messaging board was PARROT

    The Ethernet terminal server project was JUPITER and the terminal server boards were CALLISTO, CARME and SINOPE

    The budget VME Token Ring board for the 88K systems was VILYA

    1. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
      Windows

      Re: Data General codenames

      At Prime there was a product called DSM, allegedly Distributed Systems Management, though the head of the project was a psychologist and I reckon named after a certain manual used by that profession

  22. skiew

    Interesting article, thanks!

    This is the kind of story that is published in the blog Old New Things from Raymond Chen: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

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