Back to home page

DOS ain't dead

Forum index page

Log in | Register

Search:  
Back to the forum
Board view  Mix view

PCI phased out? (Announce)

posted by RayeR Homepage, CZ, 15.02.2011, 15:15

> Well, turns out there is no real hurry, since while the integrated GPU is
> praised in all publications, it is still 5+ times slower than the cheapest
> ati or nvidia card, and we are not terribly pricesensitive there.
Really? I read that this GPU should compete with low level external VGA but didn't tested. But I prefer VGAs from nvidia bevause quite good drivers compared to intel where I had some problems before.

> Another big advantage of 64-bit is that the minimal CPU gets lifted to
> something Pentium-D like. This simplifies compilers considerably. copro is
> always integrated, ppro instructions (cmov) are, and SSE2 is always there
> (and SSE3 too if you are not too strict)
Understand. But it's similar effect when you write in specification that application's minimum system req. is P4D-x64 or e.g. PIII x86. It depends on you how much older CPU you want support.

> For me it usually worked. My fairly new ATI 5770 worked fine with 4xxx
> drivers.
Hm, seems ATI is more compatible around it's architecture, you had a luck but it's not general rule.

> I haven't seen mini disks for sale in ages, and when I did they were more
> expensive than white label DVDs. On 6GB there is room for a couple of MB
> of drivers. Specially something that everybody has, like a screen.
Here they are still available and cheap.
http://www.alza.cz/SearchAdvanced.asp?EXPS=cd-r+8cm
You can burn e.g. Tinycore or DSL on it.

> I was saying that nobody really expects VESA implementations to become
> better, only less, based on the current use that is used for. Namely to
> provide a minimal base for GUI during installation of an OS (be it Windows
> or *nix).
From this:
>> can use EFI for loading but who will rewrite DOS? This is
>> what I call end of IBM PC compatible.

>Thank god! :-)


I interpreted that you are pleasured about kill all legacy inluding VESA, BIOS, etc.

> There are multiple possibilities. Selecting hardware that actually works,
> participating in FreeDos, Coreboot. Anything but passively pining away on
> some forum bitterly complaining how everybody left poor old Dos alone, and
> that the programs that you still have are so perfectly good, and decide to
> wing it another year. But the end is inevitable, unless the remaining Dos
> users actively carve out a livable niche.
I already do. Not directly on FD kernel (except one my small patch) i rather do some low-level utils interacting hardware. My tools are freely available at
http://rayer.ic.cz/programm/programe.htm
Some of them like MTRRLFBE can gain performance x-times. But need update for new core i*.
And I brought FreeDOS inside ROMBIOS
http://rayer.ic.cz/romos/romose.htm
As DOS still works on my current PC I didn't have forced into kernel work.
But there are people who did much more for DOS, my respect goes to Japheth, Jack Ellis and others...

> I don't see why. It is still the current incarnation of this architecture.
> That Dos stopped the evolving with it and clings to standards that are
> slowly being phased out, is not the problem of the architecture.
When BIOS will be dropped and replaced by EFI without comsaptability module it will affect not ONLY DOS but also all Windows up to XP, maybe Vista but they use same/similar loader like win7 which supports it.

> I never said that. But Dos did nothing. It didn't go away, and didn't
> evolve anymore. It's that uncertainty why there probably never grew
> communities like even OS/2, Amiga, C=64 etc. And then I'm not even talking
> about the multi-billion Linux racket.
It was just my speculation where we would be when DOS was ended long time and instead PC use OS/2 (or another advanced OS).

> Win9x has the same problem. Once the most popular platform on the planet,
> nobody seems to mourn its demise. I haven't seen any usergroups springing
> up that actively keep win9x alive.
You're blind. There's live commuity on MSFN around Win98SE who e.g. backported USB 2.0 drivers from XP and even developing kernel NTAPI extension (kernelex) and also generic VESA driver was developed for those who are out of luck with too modern VGA absenting drives. I also did some minor fixes to INF files for support newer chipsets and succesfully make RAM limit solution for systems with >1G RAM to not crash (even there's better solution supporting up to near 4G but commercial).

> It's strange that I have to hear dos news on Unix conventions (some
> mentions about improved freedos support in a Coreboot session). It seems
> that nothing much happened on the Freedos site after januari-march 2010
> (except the news posts about new packages)
True, but I'm not FD kernel developer to tell more about it.

> I don't know. Maybe you could base it on low power industrial x86 CPUs,
> that generally have a long life. Not cheap, but heavy duty FPGA's are
> probably more expensive.
The problem of most industrial boards are that don't support SB compatible soundcard or it is some poor crap. Also BIOS on such board may have more incompatabilities...

> And so the Dos community waits for a saviour. Again :-)
Hm, we both have full time job (I expect you too) so it's not so easy to put enough effort and time as I want. And you will agree that making such complex HW design is not a piece of cake (like for 8-bit computers). Manufacturing and prototyping is expansive here much more than in china where is cheaper work and there are a lot of people that can spend some time on it.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Post reply
 

Complete thread:

Back to the forum
Board view  Mix view
22632 Postings in 2109 Threads, 402 registered users, 393 users online (0 registered, 393 guests)
DOS ain't dead | Admin contact
RSS Feed
powered by my little forum