First post, by DosFreak
- Rank
- l33t++
HX DOS-Extender is a free DOS extender with built-in Win32 PE file format support. Usually the purpose of a DOS extender is to m […]
HX DOS-Extender is a free DOS extender with built-in Win32 PE file format support. Usually the purpose of a DOS extender is to make protected-mode features available for DOS applications. HX fully supports this goal, but goes some steps further. A Win32 API emulation layer is part of HX which allows many Win32 console applications to run in DOS. This emulation goes far beyond similiar approaches in other extenders (Borland's PowerPack, WDOSX or Phar Lab TNT). Furthermore HX implements - limited - support for windows, DirectDraw, GDI and even OpenGL graphics. This allows to run "simple" Win32 GUI apps in DOS as well.
Many development environments which support creating Win32 console applications are compatible with HX, among them are:* Open Watcom C++
* Digital Mars C++
* MinGW (uses GCC)
* CygWin (uses GCC)
* MS Visual C++, including the free version of MS Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
* Borland C++, including the free version of C++ Builder Command Line Tools
* LADSoft CC386
* Pelles C
* LCC-Win32 (C compiler)
* Borland Delphi
* Free Pascal (Win32)
* Pascal Pro
* Virtual Pascal (Win32)
* FreeBasic (Win32)
* PowerBasic
* MicroFocus Object Cobol
* XDS Modula II
* MASM, TASM, POASM, WASM, FASM, LZASM, NASM, GOASM, ...Since HX's built-in Win32 emulation is pretty mature, most of these compilers/assemblers will run with HX in plain DOS as well.
Attached is a pic of DosBox 1-19-2008 CVS running in DosBox 1-19-2008 CVS using HX.
Also a pic of Jonof's Shadow Warrior port.
SW.CFG
[Screen Setup]
ScreenMode = 0
ScreenWidth = 640
ScreenHeight = 480
ScreenBPP = 8
MaxRefreshFreq = 60
GLTextureMode = 1
GLAnisotropy = 0
GLUseTextureCompr = 0
640x480 is very slow on this T7500 C2D (2.2ghz).
320x240 is very playable.
That's running Jonof's SWP in DosBox, on a real PC I'm betting the performance should be really good. heh. Running a Shadow Warrior Windows port in MS-DOS using HX and the High Resolution Texture Pack. Awesome.