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PCI phased out? (Announce)

posted by marcov, 14.02.2011, 10:29

> > I killed off all Dos use on normal windows systems in 2002-2003 when I
> > moved to Win2000. (Since dos fullscreen apps are much slower on NT than
> > win32 stuff)
>
> Except for LZMA-FPC, I've never seen any significant slowdown with 32-bit
> DOS apps. So nyah.
Note that I noted fullscreen. Dos textwindowing seemed to be (much) slower on winNT than using windows read/writeconsole functions.


> > Sorry. The word bloat is meaningless without context, since it is a
> > relative term, and it is not clear in what context. A Full Live DVD
> > typically (because of its compressed filesystem) in the range of 6GB of
> > binaries.
>
> Home users never needed 4 GB before, and I doubt they need it now.

Who are you to say what they need? The last time I checked they happily bought 2TB discs. I didn't see one asking the stewards if they have some older 200MB lying around, because 2TB is such a terribly bloatty thing to do.

> That is
> bloat.

That's what you like the call bloat yes. But that is your problem :-)

> Something is wrong when you need that much RAM. And an OS should
> never need even 1 GB of space for itself. A gigabyte is a lot of
> space.
Strangely enough I agree with you there mostly. Specially if you compare Win2000 to later variants (that don't add THAT much).

But while I agree, I don't make such issues the center of my universe to justify any nostalgic feelings that I might have.

> > No problem, but the point I was trying to make is that the C=64/Amiga
> > community doesn't expect current vendors to tailor to their wishes. It
> is
> > the desire and illusion to run old software on new hardware ad infinitum
> > that causes the (self inflicted) pain.
>
> Blame Intel for the 386 (V86 mode). Blame MS and Bill Gates for calling the
> 286 "braindead" for lacking it. Blame PharLap and Borland and Watcom and
> DJGPP for bringing DOS extenders to the masses. Blame DOSEMU (even x86-64),
> FreeDOS, DOSBox for giving free alternatives. And blame MS for Win9x
> (DOS-based) and WinNT supporting NTVDM at all (despite bugs they refused to
> fix). Blame those who wrote all those famous DOS apps (Desqview, MASM,
> TP/BP, Doom). Blame DOSMinix and old Linux 2.4's UMSDOS. And blame those
> who still sell DOS software (esp. games, Gog.com or Sierra or id).
I don't see why? They wrote it, released it, and served their warranty period. The users that still use it are now responsible for it themselves.

But they are reluctant to take that responsibility, and prefer to nag how everybody left them behind to operate ridiculously bloated systems, and not much new happens.

At the same time, the even older Commodore oldtimers are trying to recreate their old systems using FPGA means.

See the difference?

> > That is self delusional. Like the C=64 community, the dos community must
> > stop whining and take charge itself, since there is nothing to be
> expected
> > from PC vendors despite the similarity of new computers to the old ones
> dos
> > used to run on. This similarity has been a blessing, but is at the
> slowly
> > getting a curse since it provides no clean break where people say "now
> we
> > have to fend for our own", and tempts people to try to prolong it just a
> > little bit longer. That together with the fact that Dos itself doesn't
> > evolutes is hopeless.
>
> MS thinks you can just (re)buy everything. Linux thinks you can just
> (re)compile everything. Mac doesn't care, they deprecate faster than
> anyone. According to popular opinion, no other OS matters (not even your
> precious FreeBSD, sorry). So it's all a losing battle (or constant war)
> anyways.
Probably. But that was not the point. If you want to resist it, what are you (and the dos community at large) going to do about it except nagging and whining?

The other nostalgic groups are creating their own hardware platforms as contigency. I don't see any efforts in the Dos community. (or any form of organization other than DJGPP for that matter)

Since otherwise Dos on new hardware will die very abruptly if e.g. the BIOS or 32- bit mode disappears. And while EFI might incorporate a legacy bios for a while, when that stops to be commercial interesting (read: XP and other 32-bit versions are totally irrelevant), it will be essentially unmaintained. And way buggier than current bios, since that at least uses certain compatibility modes for the booting process, that will then go through native EFI modes.

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