I think vdos32 is his solution for 64bit Windows. Don't really know how feature complete it is compared to GliDOS. Supposedly it runs TR about the same as GliDOS.

64bit Windows doesn't have the ability to run 16bit code natively so he had to write an emulator to do so. Whereas GliDOS basically layed on top of NTVDM in 32bit Windows and provided audio/video emulation services.

From my testing there are still some games that do not run under 64bit so it isn't really that wise to remove your 32bit Windows unless you know for sure that ALL of your games work and that any game you aquire in the future will work with 64bit Windows.

For instance if your using 64bit Vista then you have 2 strike's against you since Vista itself is already much less compatible than previous versions of Windows and alot of games aren't compatible with the 64bit OS.

Yeah, that's more or less it.

I believe Glidos runs fine under 64bit Windows, but its not a lot of use when the games wont run. VDos32 was intended to solve this by providing a way to run the games, so that they can pipe their graphics to Glidos. Trouble is there is one thing missing under 64bit Windows that VDos32 needs, and so far I've found no way to support it.

Thanks for your replies guys 😀. Your info was helpful.

I wasnt able to get VDos32 to run Tomb Raider under XP x64 either. But as you guys say its more to do with the game itself rather than Glidos or VDos32, although VDos32 doesnt want to unlock over the net in x64. Keeps asking me repeatedly to unlock it.

As for game compatibilties in x64 I havent run into too many problems. Most older 32 bit windows games that came with 16 bit installers were a problem, but I got around that by installing them on a virtual machine and then burning the files, folders and registry entries to a CD/DVD, for permanency, and then copying them over to x64. A pain I know, but worth it. 😀

As for 16 bit games, most of those that I have are DOS games and DOSBox takes care of those. The Duam Cafe Build of DOSBox has been pretty helpful in getting Tomb Raider to run with Glide, but it aint no Glidos. The quality of Glidos graphics is far superior.

I know nothing about programming, so I cant speak from experience, but I would have thought that Microsoft could have provided better support for older software on 64 bit windows, especially Vista. As time goes by and hardware technology improves, and required hardware specifications increase, especially RAM requirements, the need for a 64 bit OS becomes more and more essential. Therefore I believe backwards compatibilty is also essential for all that software that people have invested their hard earned money into over the years.

Anyways I'll keep playing around with things. If you guys have any further suggestions, please feel free to let me know.

Thanx.

Best thing might be for me to look at providing support for Glidos running with the DOSBox. Something I might have a look at.

Now that would be something to look forward to - getting it to work with DOSbox would be a fantastic idea. 😀 Hopefully its not too difficult to do.

The one thing I like about Glidos is that I can run Tomb Raider at 1280x1024 whereas with DOSBox I have to run it at its usual resolution.

I may be stating the obvious, but does this mean that Redguard can't work in Glidos even with vdos32 under XP64?

That would be a shame.

When I try to load Redguard through Vdos I get a 'not an LE file type' error, and if I try to load it with Glidos, even with vdos32 in the Glidos folder, I click 'start game' and nothing happens.

Cheers,
Cal

If you get "not an LE file" then something odd is going on. You should be running RGFX.exe.

But, yes it wont work on XP64. It's bloody patch guard. I need to control the LDT, and patchguard stops me doing that. I've found no way around it to date.

But, yes it wont work on XP64. It's bloody patch guard. I need to control the LDT, and patchguard stops me doing that. I've found no way around it to date.

But for someone as brilliant as yourself, I'm sure that it will happen someday. Most people aren't up to using a 64-bit system yet, although it would be wonderful to get support for that soon.

Because I'm going to be upgrading to 64-bit pretty soon, I'm going to wait to purchase my Glidos keys until there's some emulator to support that. (And thank you for being so courteous about my email.)

If you *do* make Glidos support DosBox, I think it would be nice to make sure it'd work in fullscreen very well. I'd hate to see what would happen with the comparably high-res texture replacements in that bitsy window. So long as no features are lost, DosBox would be pretty cool.

Do you have a place where you post the things you're working on in Glidos? Especially if you decide to support DosBox, that would be very great to kind of see how the progress is going.

I have just released v1.45 of Glidos. v1.45 can make use of an altered version of DOSBox so as to work on both 32bit and 64bit XP, Vista and W7.

There are a few teething problems: Descent II wont run, and Redguard has to be in Windowed mode, but besides that it seems mostly working. `