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32-bit MSDOS (Announce)

posted by kerravon E-mail, Ligao, Free World North, 29.06.2021, 00:34
(edited by kerravon on 29.06.2021, 05:08)

> > I guess the first thing that should be asked is
> > what 32-bit MSDOS should look like.
> >
> > There are multiple 32-bit DOS-extenders. DOS32A
> > comes close to what I decided was "clean" myself.
>
> Just implement DPMI.
DOS32A executables are not particularly
dependent on DPMI. They use segment registers
a bit (no idea why DOS/4GW chose to do that),
but they don't directly call INT 31H. And why
should they?

> Come on, DPMI was hashed out by a committee
> comprising Microsoft, Borland, IBM, Intel, Rational Systems, etc., etc.,
> etc. There is a formal standard for it. And there is a sizeable body of
> software that implement DPMI hosts and DPMI clients.
> Basically you are now saying that we should throw away all this prior work
> because you, in your infinite wisdom, have cogitated up your own new
> "clean" vision of "what 32-bit MSDOS should look like".
Even Microsoft didn't follow what is apparently
their own standard. They created a new Win32
standard instead. Why did they do that if DPMI
was so great?

I'm not saying they are right or wrong, I'm just
asking what the underlying philosophy is. It would
be good if the proper API could be mathematically
proven (I'm not a mathematician, but that's what
gives me the most confidence), but in the absence
of that, I'd like to know what the mechanism is
for creating APIs.

I know that Linux executables have "INT 80H" in
them, while Win32 executables do not. Now that
I know I would like (as an option) to run
PDOS/386 under Windows 10, or Linux, I "know"
that I cannot have any "INT" instructions in
my application executables, because I do not
have control of the interrupt vectors when
PDOS/386 is running in user mode.

But I've never heard anyone make the argument
"Windows is technically better than Linux because
its executables aren't tied to interrupt vectors".

In the absence of mathematical proof either way
for the above hypothesis, what tools should be
used to answer it? The only tool I have at the
moment is my "bios" proof of concept that calls
"generic PDOS". I can look at it and say that
it won't work if anyone does an INT instruction.

BFN. Paul.

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