Hi,

But why is it so difficult for Microsoft to achieve backwards compatibility with older win9x games??

Is it really a huge technological/coding challenge? Or is it just pure laziness?

I'm afraid we'll have to wait for "WinBox" in order to play old win9x games... 🙁

Ciao.

Originally posted by Leolo But why is it so difficult for Microsoft to achieve backwards compatibility with older win9x games??

Because Win9x was a DOS-Based OS and many games on Windows still used resources like DOS did (horribly over-simplified due to laziness).

There is no DOS in NT. There is a world of difference between Win9x and NT.

Leolo wrote:

But why is it so difficult for Microsoft to achieve backwards compatibility with older win9x games??

Is it really a huge technological/coding challenge? Or is it just pure laziness?

Actually, it's impossible to achieve 100% compatibility with Win9x. When Microsoft designed Windows NT around a "classic" operation system architecture, with clearly separated tasks for the OS itself and for the user mode programs, they made a choice not to support the original DOS/Windows model. Their goal was to create an OS with secutiry fetaures, such as memory protection, permissions for accessing files and directories, etc, and also a more stable OS. This choice leads to some drawbacks. You can no longer let a single process take large amounts of CPU time. You cannnot let a process get low level access to a hardware device bypassing the OS, or execute any instruction provided by the CPU.

Games for DOS and Windows 9x were mostly written in ways that required low level access to devices (video cards, sound cards, CD-ROMs, game controllers), strict timing for interrupt handling and so on. This is not possible if the game is running under Windows NT/2000/XP. It's not a matter of laziness, it's a corollary of a decision made back in the early '90s when they started to develop NT.

Regards,

MajorGrubert wrote:

Actually, it's impossible to achieve 100% compatibility with Win9x. When Microsoft designed Windows NT around a "classic" operation system architecture, with clearly separated tasks for the OS itself and for the user mode programs, they made a choice not to support the original DOS/Windows model. Their goal was to create an OS with secutiry fetaures, such as memory protection, permissions for accessing files and directories, etc, and also a more stable OS. This choice leads to some drawbacks. You can no longer let a single process take large amounts of CPU time. You cannnot let a process get low level access to a hardware device bypassing the OS, or execute any instruction provided by the CPU.

Games for DOS and Windows 9x were mostly written in ways that required low level access to devices (video cards, sound cards, CD-ROMs, game controllers), strict timing for interrupt handling and so on. This is not possible if the game is running under Windows NT/2000/XP. It's not a matter of laziness, it's a corollary of a decision made back in the early '90s when they started to develop NT.

Regards,

Also, the NT family was meant for servers/companies so there was no reason to support games either.

[vEX] wrote:

Also, the NT family was meant for servers/companies so there was no reason to support games either.

But M$ can't use that excuse any more since they decided to make XP the new be-all-end-all Windows home operating system. Compatability with old games is a legitimate issue, but not support for new games.

Oh and for bonus reference, here is how the Windows family developed from what I've been able to gather:

Windows 1.x -> Windows 2.x -> Windows 3.0 -> Windows 3.1 -> Windows 3.11 for Workgroups

Version numbers then split off between Win9x and NT:

Win3.11 -> Windows 95 (Windows 4.0) -> Windows 98 (4.1) -> Windows 98 Second Edition (?) -> Windows ME (4.11 or 4.2?)

Win3.11 -> Windows NT 4.0 -> Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) -> Windows XP (NT 5.1)

I doubt that much actual Win 3.x code was used in NT4, but they still continued the version numbers. Also, it kind of shows the parallel development of Win9x and NT.

HunterZ wrote:

Win3.11 -> Windows NT 4.0 -> Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) -> Windows XP (NT 5.1)

Actually it is:

Windows NT 3.1 -> Windows NT 3.5x -> Windows NT 4.0 -> Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) -> Windows XP (NT 5.1) -> Windows 2003 (soon)

Note that NT 3.1 was a complete new operating system written from scratch, not a follow-up to a previous one.

I doubt that much actual Win 3.x code was used in NT4, but they still continued the version numbers. Also, it kind of shows the parallel development of Win9x and NT.

Eventually some code from Win 3.x went into the part os Windows NT that provides support for 16-bit Windows applications, called WOW (Windows on Windows). But most of the support provided by WOW is actually mapping old API calls into new Win32 API calls. Anyway, they started the version numbering with "3.1", which was the current version for the 16-bit, DOS based version of Windows at the time.

Later on, MS ported some code from the Windows 95 desktop to the NT branch, for NT 4.0 actually. The previous versions of Windows NT, up to 3.51, used the old Program Manager interface.

Update: Yes, I confess. I have used all Windows versions since 2.1.

Originally posted by MajorGrubert Update: Yes, I confess. I have used all Windows versions since 2.1.

2.1? You have my sympathies...

HunterZ wrote:

But M$ can't use that excuse any more since they decided to make XP the new be-all-end-all Windows home operating system. Compatability with old games is a legitimate issue, but not support for new games.

That's why I typed "was" in my post. It WAS intended for servers/companies only in the start since those need safe servers that can keep going forever.

Wow thanks for the lowdown MG. It's obvious that I don't have experience with older versions of NT 😜

I've used a 2.x version of Windows as well. It was really just a little Program Manager with some ability to run primitive GUI applications. I remember there was a reversi (othello) game with a green board and red and blue circles for game pieces. I also remember that I tried running it on subsequent versions and as time went on and new versions of Windows were released, backwards compatability for Windows 2.x was lost and it wouldn't run any more.

Oops, I'm pulling the conversation off-topic now 😜

Windows 2003 exists now, BTW...

I'm going to test this on the Win32 Constructor executable, since it didn't work before.