Not too retro, but i have modified my DOS GUI system to work with 1 bit graphics cards.

XcomGUI wrote on 2022-08-08, 17:48:

Not too retro, but i have modified my DOS GUI system to work with 1 bit graphics cards. […]
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Not too retro, but i have modified my DOS GUI system to work with 1 bit graphics cards.

1 bit ...so monochrome ? though I guess they would technically be two bits 0 and 1.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-08, 17:49:

1 bit ...so monochrome ? though I guess they would technically be two bits 0 and 1.

Yes. It only works on cards with VGA-style video bios right now. I have also made the code paths for Hercules, and EGA, but for some reason, i am not getting any picture with those.

XcomGUI wrote on 2022-08-08, 17:52:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-08, 17:49:

1 bit ...so monochrome ? though I guess they would technically be two bits 0 and 1.

Yes. It only works on cards with VGA-style video bios right now. I have also made the code paths for Hercules, and EGA, but for some reason, i am not getting any picture with those.

hmmm perhaps your video card isn't able to switch to Hercules or EGA modes though I would be surprised by this.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-08, 17:54:

hmmm perhaps your video card isn't able to switch to Hercules or EGA modes though I would be surprised by this.

I have tested it with dosbox too (mode=hercules and mode=ega), but no luck so far. Maybe a compatiiblity issue with dpmi.

Azarien wrote on 2022-08-07, 17:10:

gdjacobs wrote on 2022-04-03, 16:42:

Or DOS.

What is "based on DOS" in Windows 11?

Kind of the point.

DOS was extended into Win 1.x-ME. From there, APIs were ported into NT. Most of the older legacy APIs began to be retired as Windows moved to 64 bit, predominantly starting with Vista (I don't consider XP 64 bit to be mainstream). In addition, Windows can't run legacy 8086 code or V86 mode while in 64 bit, so traditional DOS VM as available in 32 bit NT can't be used.

There is a historical or familial relationship, but there is no longer any architectural or code relationship.

gdjacobs wrote on 2022-08-21, 17:24:

Kind of the point. […]
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Azarien wrote on 2022-08-07, 17:10:

gdjacobs wrote on 2022-04-03, 16:42:

Or DOS.

What is "based on DOS" in Windows 11?

Kind of the point.

DOS was extended into Win 1.x-ME. From there, APIs were ported into NT. Most of the older legacy APIs began to be retired as Windows moved to 64 bit, predominantly starting with Vista (I don't consider XP 64 bit to be mainstream). In addition, Windows can't run legacy 8086 code or V86 mode while in 64 bit, so traditional DOS VM as available in 32 bit NT can't be used.

There is a historical or familial relationship, but there is no longer any architectural or code relationship.

I think the same that the DOS part was merely synthetic and not a crucial part of Windows NT (for NT itself).
What Windows NT had was an emulated/modified version of MS-DOS 5, which ran in NTVDM. On top of that, a cut-down version of Windows 3.1 (WoW session).
And by comparison with OS/2 Warp, both NTVDM and WoW were very limited. OS/2's OS2VDM was using a full copy of DOS, along with all (almost) the DOS utilities.
It even had its own folder. Likewise, Win-OS/2. It was a full copy of Windows 3.1x and could be upgraded to WfW 3.11, even.

However, if Microsoft really wanted, it could have had used NTVDM/WoW without V86.
if memory serves, some hackers did start porting NTVDM (based on the knowledge gained by a leaked source) to the new Windows x64 just a while ago.
The project is called NTVDMx64, I believe. I won't provide links, though.

The inability to provide a 16-Bit system because of Long Mode lacking V86 is a lame excuse by Microsoft, I think.
Microsoft used this argument over and over, because its so convenient for getting rid of legacy components.
As if today's AMD-V and Intel-VT based hardware-assisted virtualization won't be of any help.
Digital Research's Concurrent DOS supported DOS VMs on a 286 in 16-Bit Protected Mode without any V86.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiuser_DOS#CDOS286

And Long Mode does allow the execution of 16-Bit Protected-Mode code just fine.
At least the Windows 3.1 Standard Mode kernal could have been virtualized that way.
- Wabi accomplished the same on Linux way back in the 90s, by virtualizing the 386 Enhanced Mode kernal. Without DOS.

In fact, it went even further:
"Wabi was released for both x86 and SPARC systems and also on PowerPC for AIX.[2]
In order to run an x86 Windows environment on SPARC systems, a code translation layer was also provided, which dynamically converts x86 instructions on first use into SPARC instructions.[3]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_(software)

I think it's a shame that such a mega corp like Microsoft is unable to archieve something like that 25 years later in the future.

Anyway, another possibility would have been to continue to use the NTVDM of the Alpha/Mips/Power PC versions of Windows NT.
They had a working NTVDM running on a full emulator, based on SoftPC.
And when performance of the emulation was okay in the 90s, it must now be almost stellar with current technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftPC

Edit: These are just my two cents. I'm sure you already know that and didn't mean to annoy or educate you whatsoever. Such topics do simply fascinate me. 😅

I think it's a shame a mega corp like Microsoft can't actually finish porting their Windows control panel functionality over to the new UI after 10 years.

Both 32-bit OS/2 and 32-bit NT had MS/PC Dos as vms.

Of course in OS/2 you where able to boot different Dos variants in windowed sessions. NT nope not without extra VM software.

XcomGUI wrote on 2022-08-08, 17:48:

Not too retro, but i have modified my DOS GUI system to work with 1 bit graphics cards. […]
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Not too retro, but i have modified my DOS GUI system to work with 1 bit graphics cards.

Looks a lot like Calmira III. That will run on 4meg of ram on a 386 plus cpu just fine.

Have you contacted Nathen Linebech from http://toastytech.com/ about it at all? Would go nicely on his GUI page.

Nice work. 😉

MarkP wrote on 2022-08-23, 00:19:

Both 32-bit OS/2 and 32-bit NT had MS/PC Dos as vms.

Of course in OS/2 you where able to boot different Dos variants in windowed sessions. NT nope not without extra VM software.

OS/2 was so far ahead of its time, it's unbelievable..

FreeSCO FTW, that's fucking rocks that they still have their webpage after all this time: https://www.freesco.org/

This was a cool 1 floppy router linux OS, some ipchains glories from those early days!

Anyone remember a homebrew OS in the 2000s called StormOS? All trace of it is gone but was a cool project someone had.

Interesting desktop environment to look at for Linux nerds with older PCs (not to say it only works on older PCs)
https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
Fork of KDE 3.5 that is maintained to this day, has old school themes and lots more for a retro experience. Packaged on all major distros (Debian, Fedora, SUSE, Arch, Gentoo).

lolo799 wrote on 2019-06-02, 21:24:

Today, we will reach the sky with SkyOS, a one man project from Australia started in the late 90s as free, the system became commercial after a point, but the author decided to release the latest beta version publicly after stopping its development.

Austria, not Australia.
It basically was a one man project by Robert Szeleny.
However, for a time C. Resl, a good friend of Robert and class mate of me, worked on a network stack or driver and tested it in our school network. He got our attraction because at a test we got an IP address conflict message on all computers 😉
"Was that me?"

Ah, SkyOS...!
I never got the time to give it a spin but it was very, very promising at the time. It's a pitty it didn't take off.
I'm pretty sure I have that beta somewhere around and will hopefully test it eventually...

Disruptor wrote on 2023-05-03, 15:16:

Austria, not Australia. It basically was a one man project by Robert Szeleny. However, for a time C. Resl, a good friend of Robe […]
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lolo799 wrote on 2019-06-02, 21:24:

Today, we will reach the sky with SkyOS, a one man project from Australia started in the late 90s as free, the system became commercial after a point, but the author decided to release the latest beta version publicly after stopping its development.

Austria, not Australia.
It basically was a one man project by Robert Szeleny.
However, for a time C. Resl, a good friend of Robert and class mate of me, worked on a network stack or driver and tested it in our school network. He got our attraction because at a test we got an IP address conflict message on all computers 😉
"Was that me?"

Damn, how did I make that mistake...sorry for the typo, and thank you for noticing it.

I don't know if it has been posted somewhere but I noticed this change in the recent FreeBSD 13.2 release, at the end of https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.2R/relnotes/

Default CPUTYPE Change […]
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Default CPUTYPE Change

Starting with FreeBSD-13.0, the default CPUTYPE for the i386 architecture will change from 486 to 686.

This means that, by default, binaries produced will require a 686-class CPU, including but not limited to binaries provided by the FreeBSD Release Engineering team. FreeBSD 13.x will continue to support older CPUs, however users needing this functionality will need to build their own releases for official support.

As the primary use for i486 and i586 CPUs is generally in the embedded market, the general end-user impact is expected to be minimal, as new hardware with these CPU types has long faded, and much of the deployed base of such systems is nearing retirement age, statistically.

There were several factors taken into account for this change. For example, i486 does not have 64-bit atomics, and while they can be emulated in the kernel, they cannot be emulated in the userland. Additionally, the 32-bit amd64 libraries have been i686 since their inception.

As the majority of 32-bit testing is done by developers using the lib32 libraries on 64-bit hardware with the COMPAT_FREEBSD32 option in the kernel, this change ensures better coverage and user experience. This also aligns with what the majority of Linux® distributions have been doing for quite some time.

This is expected to be the final bump of the default CPUTYPE in i386.

For my P1 MMX 233 build, I find Tiny Core Linux the best option for a Linux distro.

It requires minimum 64MB of RAM, otherwise it does not boot up, but it runs well on such old hardware, with only the tty.

Moreover, it has the most up-to-date packages compared to other retro tiny Linux distros.

In fact, I'm able to surf the web (in TLS!)

Chat on a IRC

And I was able to play music from YouTube through streaming: https://youtu.be/KE9AbiUxFmM

Unfortunately, setting the OS was a pain in the ass 🥲

I had to manually install the OS on the HDD (by default, the filesystem loads in RAM), setup alsa, network with the relative kernel modules...

But it was worth it 🙂

Demetrio wrote on 2023-06-02, 16:54:

For my P1 MMX 233 build, I find Tiny Core Linux the best option for a Linux distro. […]
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For my P1 MMX 233 build, I find Tiny Core Linux the best option for a Linux distro.

It requires minimum 64MB of RAM, otherwise it does not boot up, but it runs well on such old hardware, with only the tty.

Moreover, it has the most up-to-date packages compared to other retro tiny Linux distros.

In fact, I'm able to surf the web (in TLS!)

IMG_20230602_175159.jpg

Chat on a IRC

IMG_20230602_175857.jpg

And I was able to play music from YouTube through streaming: https://youtu.be/KE9AbiUxFmM

Unfortunately, setting the OS was a pain in the ass 🥲

I had to manually install the OS on the HDD (by default, the filesystem loads in RAM), setup alsa, network with the relative kernel modules...

But it was worth it 🙂

I had a lot of trouble getting the tinycore image to boot on my socket 7 platforms, now that I have seen someone actually manage to do that it's a project on my list..

Which release did you use?