On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 13:46 +0100, Liam Proven wrote: > > *sigh* I'd forgotten about that 64k limitation. :( > > There is a /reason/ why people dropped Windows 3 like a hot potato > once they had a better alternative! > > To be honest, Windows 9x or NT 3 are far more interesting retro OSs to > play with now, which can do vastly more. The 32-bit transition was > /long/ overdue.
Well, yes people needed more resources to do more things. > > But there still is a > > need for display drivers for WFWG users; there are a lot of new graphic > > hardware out there that have no display drivers available for WFWG. > > It is a long-dead OS. I really don't think there is such a "need", no. > The fact that there are some usable VESA drivers is enough, I think. > > > If that was a long time ago, dare I hope you might have some sample > > sources for me to look at? I still want to write graphic device drivers > > for WFWG. > > I installed and supported many many such machines, but I was never a > developer, so no, I have no "sources", I'm afraid. My sources of > information, as a sysadmin, were magazines, not the Internet back > then. I was online, but there was no Web yet, so really it was just > email & Usenet. Usenet is still there & Google has the archives. :¬) OK, fair enough I'm sure there's more than enough information to write one. Thanks. > >> If you want to get a feel for Win3-era Windows on a big desktop, use > >> NT3. NT 3.51 was the last and best version & was a very good OS in its > >> way. It was fast, stable, lean & efficient, it supported whacking > >> great screens without issues, it ran most Win3 apps, it had a network > >> stack & TCP/IP support out of the box, supported VFAT with LFNs and > >> NTFS and OS/2's HPFS, and was generally a pleasure to work with. You > >> could run Netscape 4 32-bit on it, too, for a pretty good Internet & > >> Web experience - for 1995. > > > > I seem to remember there was once a port of NT 3.51 for Sun > > UltraSparcs. :) > > An unofficial one which I think was never commercially released. > Officially, NT ran on MIPS, Alpha and later (and briefly) PowerPC as > well as x86-32. I think I'll cut my teeth on writing graphic drivers on NT 3.51. I need to learn how to write them, for fun :) > Now, it is x86-32, x86-64 and IA64, but soon, IA64 will be dropped and > I suspect x86-32 will follow before too long. On the other hand, there > are consistent rumours about an ARM port, which I find hard to believe > but would be interesting... I think Intel had a hand in that, it ensures a monopoly. It would have been a different world if Microsoft had succeeded in porting to all sorts of architectures (and far less bugs IMHO). Now we have Linux and its success in finding its way into most 32bit platforms. There is an ARM port, it's called WINCE. :) -- http://www.munted.org.uk One very high maintenance cat living here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
