From: brian DOT hawley AT bigfoot DOT com (Brian Hawley) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: DPMI 0.9 vs 1.0 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 22:08:39 GMT Organization: MegsInet, Inc. - Low Cost, High Performance Internet Services Lines: 43 Message-ID: <700j0l$6du$1@news.megsinet.net> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.133.79.240 X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com In article , djgpp AT delorie DOT com wrote: > >On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, ajschrotenboer wrote: > >> I was wondering why, if there is a 1.0 standard, why do most DPMI >> servers (I think this includes CWSDPMI, I may be wrong) only support >> 0.9?? > >Because Microsoft, who have created DPMI, shortly afterwards decided >it wanted DOS to go away. So they don't want to support any API that >will make the life easier for DOS programs. Actually, 1.0 came out before 0.9. The original spec (1.0) generated a lot of outcry from the other DOS-extender vendors (remember those?) that MS was trying to kill their market, so MS came up with a broken version of the spec (0.9) which they are required to use. Quarterdeck released a buggy version of the 0.9 DPMI in their extender, and most of the other vendors released 1.0 DPMI servers. This is an excellent example of the legal system making our lives better by protecting us from innovation :( As I recall, the main difference between them that got the other guys nervous was the ability of 1.0 to coexist with VCPI programs. By the time Win95 was released, most of these programs had switched to DPMI compliant memory access so this had become somewhat of a moot point, as had the competing DOS-extender vendors. This is an excellent example of MS getting its way despite the legal system and lack of innovation :( >The bugs in the DPMI server built into NT (which are more numerous and >nasty than those in Windows 9X) clearly show the trend. Fortunately, >they cannot live with too buggy DPMI in Windows 9X because a major >part of Windows itself loads as a DPMI client inside a DOS box. As for NT, there are certain (supposed) features of the NT kernel that make working DPMI very difficult to implement. I believe this has to do with DOD security ratings or something like that. MS has good reason to want to rid itself of DOS, but I'm not sure I like what they're trying to saddle us with instead. brian DOT hawley AT bigfoot DOT com