DOS with new hardware \ VOGONS

DOS with new hardware

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First post, by Hamby

Posted on 2018-05-27, 07:30

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I know there have been efforts to get old DOS software, mainly games, to work with modern graphics cards...

But has there been any work done on interface libraries for modern graphics cards?

That is, say I'm a retro-developer (which I wannabe), and I want to write a game for DOS, but utilizing the API of a modern graphics card, is there some driver library or other interface I can program to in order to talk to a modern graphics card?

I'm not talking about getting Doom to work with an Nvidia 750Ti or something... I'm talking about writing new DOS games able to utilize the capabilities of more modern hardware. Okay, 16 or even 32 bit DOS probably can't "talk" directly to a 64 bit modern GPU... but there's a LOT of generations of video cards between Voodoo and Nvidia GT 1080 or whatever the current top graphics card is.

Reply 1 of 5, by derSammler

Posted on 2018-05-27, 08:54

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Simply put, no. Using VESA is as far as you get under DOS.

Reply 2 of 5, by lvader

Posted on 2018-05-27, 10:46

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How about opengl through Mesa3D 3.2?

Reply 3 of 5, by Jo22

Posted on 2018-05-27, 11:57

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Best I could think of would be a Voodoo graphics wrapper running on pure DOS.
- 3dfx-enabled DOS games did also use some sort of runtime, didn't they ?

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 5, by oeuvre

Posted on 2018-05-27, 12:42

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There goes my dreams of MS-DOS in 4K.

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Reply 5 of 5, by Jo22

Posted on 2018-05-29, 22:28

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^Text mode could actually work in that resolution, since DOS relies on BIOS for output.
It would be then up to the BIOS and a character generator to drive the display.

Imagine, if the normal 80x25 text mode is jkept, the ASCII (say CP437) characters could be much more detailed..
Instead beeing contructed of 8x8 pels, they could be made of 80x80 pels or higher. ^^

For blocky graphics, that likely wouldn't improve visual quality by much,
but for more curved fonts with aliasing problems it could be nice.

Also, if CTTY is used, DOS can use whatever terminal device is in use.
However, it would be up to the user application to support a specific "resolution" (lines, characters per line) and
to support the ESC sequences of that terminal device (new line, cursor movements, clear screen, etc).

Edit: Typos fixed.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

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