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5 Sep 2024 19:24:11 EDT (-0400)
  Windows Graphic Programming (Message 18 to 27 of 47)  
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From: Neeum Zawan
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 20:10:17
Message: <4a7387e9@news.povray.org>
On 07/31/09 15:27, Darren New wrote:
> Only if you want to take advantage of it. Find an old copy of MS-DOS,
> boot it, and suddenly programming will be easy again.

	Are you kidding?

	I'd love to see what happens if I boot MS-DOS on my P4 2.53 GHz. How 
will it handle my video card? RAM? I suppose that 640K thing is there, 
but what if I want to use stuff like smartdrv and access higher memory?

	Heck, the "complicated" programming of today may be easier than booting 
to DOS.

	(And yes, DOSBox is cheating).

-- 
Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach him to use the Net 
and he won't bother you for weeks.


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From: David H  Burns
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 21:26:25
Message: <4a7399c1$1@news.povray.org>
Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 07/31/09 15:27, Darren New wrote:
>> Only if you want to take advantage of it. Find an old copy of MS-DOS,
>> boot it, and suddenly programming will be easy again.
> 
>     Are you kidding?
> 
>     I'd love to see what happens if I boot MS-DOS on my P4 2.53 GHz. How 
> will it handle my video card? RAM? I suppose that 640K thing is there, 
> but what if I want to use stuff like smartdrv and access higher memory?
> 
>     Heck, the "complicated" programming of today may be easier than 
> booting to DOS.
> 
>     (And yes, DOSBox is cheating).
> 

I suspect that he's kidding, but I've often though about it. Hmm... I 
may have an old copy
of DOS, if I can find it, and a computer that I wouldn't be afraid to 
try it on. I suspect it won't
boot but it may be worth a try. Finding the disk will be a long term 
project, I'll report results, if any,
eventually. But one couldn't use the high resolution graphics -- or 
could one??

Of course one can do a certain amount of "system" programming even on XP 
and
and it is much easier--and faster. Maybe I should take another look at 
that assembly programming
site I ran across a while back.;)

David :)


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 21:45:01
Message: <web.4a739d727b75ea1f5ea616ae0@news.povray.org>
Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, he also admits to using RAM chips over core.. As well. I'm
> guessing it was quicker to use a chip that build a memory core from
> scratch ;)

Quite a deal quicker, I bet... cheaper as well I reckon (let alone that I'd have
no idea where to get some thousand tiny ferrite cores...)

(Interestingly, from all I know, core memory has never been produced with
automated machinery...)

But at least he's using wire-wrap technology. Does anyone happen to know whether
that's still in normal use these days? I heard much to my surprise that it's
more reliable than PCBs, at least when using thru-hole technology...?


> > (not that I could blame that guy in any way - that type of ROM required manual
> > programming - *literally* >_<)
> >
> >
>
> Heh. Bit, by bit... fun stuff.

Yeah. Probably makes you wish you had listened when your grandma tried to teach
you needlework...


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 22:55:00
Message: <web.4a73ad9d7b75ea1f5ea616ae0@news.povray.org>
Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>  I'd love to see what happens if I boot MS-DOS on my P4 2.53 GHz. How
> will it handle my video card? RAM? I suppose that 640K thing is there,
> but what if I want to use stuff like smartdrv and access higher memory?

You'll not run into trouble with *those*:

- Video cards are all still VGA compatible (if only to interface to the BIOS).

- RAM will be 1 MB, minus whatever is occupied by hardware; contiguous memory
will be 640K of course.

- XMS drivers like HIMEM.SYS used Intel's Protected Mode architecture to access
memory above 1 MB; of course the Protected Mode is still there in modern
processors.


However, you forgot one thing that could ruin your day:

.... do you have an old PS/2 keyboard, or is it USB already?

You may also want to think about whether you can access any of the installed
hard drives. NTFS won't do of course, but also FAT32 won't do. Forget LBA mode,
to be DOS-accessible your hard disk partition must be somewhere near the
beginning of the disk and small enough.


To be able to still play around with DOS, on my last computer (Pentium 4, 2GB) I
had installed one of those parallel-IDE-to-CompactFlash adapters, and used an
old 256MB CF card. That, combined with the old PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse,
did the job.


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 23:10:24
Message: <4a73b220$1@news.povray.org>
clipka wrote:
> .... do you have an old PS/2 keyboard, or is it USB already?

I just booted a Windows 98 rescue floppy burned onto a DVD on a USB keyboard 
on an x64 machine with 6G of RAM. Worked well enough to bring up a DOS 
prompt and "more readme.txt" worked, so it can't be *too* hard.

No, it couldn't see the NTFS drives. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 23:40:00
Message: <web.4a73b8c57b75ea1f5ea616ae0@news.povray.org>
Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I just booted a Windows 98 rescue floppy burned onto a DVD on a USB keyboard
> on an x64 machine with 6G of RAM. Worked well enough to bring up a DOS
> prompt and "more readme.txt" worked, so it can't be *too* hard.

Yeah, Windows 98 did come with integrated USB support already.

I wouldn't expect MS-DOS 6.0 (for instance) to do the same stunt.


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From: Neeum Zawan
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 23:48:50
Message: <4a73bb22@news.povray.org>
On 07/31/09 20:26, David H. Burns wrote:
> eventually. But one couldn't use the high resolution graphics -- or
> could one??

	Sure you could. 1024x768 on Fractint. And some DOS games. Likely not 
easy, though.


-- 
When the lion was given his courage, he promptly ate up the Wizard, 
Dorothy, the scarecrow and the tinman.


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From: Neeum Zawan
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 31 Jul 2009 23:50:54
Message: <4a73bb9e$1@news.povray.org>
On 07/31/09 21:51, clipka wrote:
> However, you forgot one thing that could ruin your day:
>
> .... do you have an old PS/2 keyboard, or is it USB already?

	PS/2 (or whatever it's called).

	In any case, aren't there adapters to convert USB to PS/2?

	Never knew what the benefit of a USB keyboard was...

> You may also want to think about whether you can access any of the installed
> hard drives. NTFS won't do of course, but also FAT32 won't do. Forget LBA mode,
> to be DOS-accessible your hard disk partition must be somewhere near the
> beginning of the disk and small enough.

	Along with whether it can handle huge HD's...

-- 
When the lion was given his courage, he promptly ate up the Wizard, 
Dorothy, the scarecrow and the tinman.


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 1 Aug 2009 06:41:38
Message: <4a741be2@news.povray.org>
Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> On 07/31/09 20:26, David H. Burns wrote:
> > eventually. But one couldn't use the high resolution graphics -- or
> > could one??

>         Sure you could. 1024x768 on Fractint. And some DOS games. Likely not 
> easy, though.

  One of the major problems nowadays in running an old DOS game from DOS
is that you will most probably not get any sound. While display cards still
preserve old VGA compatibility, most soundcards and soundchips have long
ago dropped any SoundBlaster backwards compatibility. And even if that SB
compatibility could be somehow emulated, I bet you would have to fine-tune
those environment variables settings for hours before you get anything.
(I bet you will never get it working.)

  Also many old DOS games simply crash or hang when run in a modern PC
because modern PCs are so fast that it messes up the timing routines in
those games. The older the game, the more probable that they didn't expect
PCs to become thousands of times faster.

  There may also be other minor problems with XP's and Vista's DOS simulation
which may make the game unable to run or unstable.

  DOSBox has the advantage that it fully emulates a SoundBlaster card with
all the environment variables already set up correctly, so most if not all
DOS games supporting SB will work out-of-the-box.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Windows Graphic Programming
Date: 1 Aug 2009 06:43:17
Message: <4a741c45@news.povray.org>
Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>         Never knew what the benefit of a USB keyboard was...

  Try hot-swapping a PS/2 keyboard and you'll see the benefit.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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