> I didn't work much with BWBASIC, as I didn't write a line of BASIC since
> the 90s. But it should be much more useful. And is open source. :)
>
> So, good job.
Thanks. It's really HX where all the magic is. It is
way undersold.
I was thinking about it some more.
So let's take the words Japheth used - something like
"HX is a mere DOS-extender".
Ok, so people here using DOS are happy to use DOS
extenders as far as I am aware. I don't think anyone
is insisting on not running any software that doesn't
fit into 640k.
So - if you're going to use a DOS extender - and the
author himself says it is a "mere DOS extender", then
how about we standardize on HX as the "DOS extender
of choice"?
I would have called it a Win32 mini-clone myself -
but what's in a name?
So depending on your point of view, you're either
still running DOS - by some definition of DOS - or
you're running a Win32 mini-clone - by some definition
of "Win32".
Either way - what's wrong with this as a choice?
And so everyone here "upgrades to Windows", finally,
on our terms.
Any reason not to do that?
freewin2.zip is one example distribution, but there
can be other distributions - and some may prefer to
swap MSDOS 4.0 with Freedos.
And all of these distributions - like all of the
distributions of Linux - exist.
Someone once said to me not to conflate "Linux"
with "distro" and added "the latter are all shit".
Perhaps the "Win32 mini-clone distros" can have
some non-shit distros? Any idea why the comment
would have been made about Linux distros, and
whether Win32 distros could overcome the factors
that led to that comment?
Also, there is another problem - manufacturers
are conspiring with Microsoft to obsolete old
hardware and software.
But if you simply treat a Linux distro as a
"glorified BIOS" and run Virtualbox under it,
also as part of the "glorified BIOS" and then
only run a Win32 distro - is there anything
wrong with that? I don't consider it to be
"cheating". The Win32 distro will run on real
(old) hardware if it is available. And there
are still some new computers that have a BIOS
anyway. If the manufacturers make things
difficult - so be it - just bypass that. And
in fact - new computers come with Windows on
them anyway - just do the same thing and run
the Win32 clone under Virtualbox under Windows 11.
Treat Windows 11 as a "glorified BIOS". Any
harm in that?
And on top of all that, there is probably a way
of using UEFI to present a BIOS to MSDOS 4.0,
now that the full chain of source code is
available. You probably need to disable interrupts
and switch to RM16, but that's probably not
impossible. There may be something I'm missing
though, so it needs to be proven.
So how about we make the move to 32-bit DOS,
with this (HX, basically) as the "standard
definition" of "32-bit DOS"?
BFN. Paul. |
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