zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-08, 21:55:I can run vista drivers on 7
It's not that every Windows version needs completely new drivers. There is compatibility across versions, subject to various factors.
In theory, even Windows 2000 and XP drivers (not graphics drivers though) "should" work on Windows 10, as long as the platform (x86, x64) matches.
Azarien wrote on 2021-07-18, 18:56:It's not that every Windows version needs completely new drivers. There is compatibility across versions, subject to various factors.
In theory, even Windows 2000 and XP drivers (not graphics drivers though) "should" work on Windows 10, as long as the platform (x86, x64) matches.
In theory maybe, but not in practice. One of the big causes of issues with Vista was its new driver model. This caused a bunch of old hardware to outright not work, or caused crashes. I'm not sure about ATI (I think that was before the AMD purchase), but Nvidia had major stability issues for a while.
Three years later when Win 7 came out, drivers were more polished, and people were getting rid of really old hardware for new stuff. Shockingly most of the driver issues mysteriously vanished.
XP had XPDM, Vista had WDDM 1.0, Seven had WDDM 1.1.
XPDM still supported VGA graphics for NTVDM and video overlays/direct draw, unlike WDDM.
WDDM 1.0 supported Aero Glass.
WDDM 1.1 (re-) introduced support for multiple monitors controlled via different graphics drivers and GDI acceleration.
If Windows 7 uses Vista drivers, it has the same limitations as Vista had (in terms of graphics).
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Azarien wrote on 2021-07-18, 18:56:zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-08, 21:55:I can run vista drivers on 7
It's not that every Windows version needs completely new drivers. There is compatibility across versions, subject to various factors.
In theory, even Windows 2000 and XP drivers (not graphics drivers though) "should" work on Windows 10, as long as the platform (x86, x64) matches.
I have a SCSI card that runs on 2000 but won't run on XP unless I mod the win2000 driver. 🤣
Will try to run some xp suff on win10 stuff soon
Considering the new GetShellFolderPathEx-esque sabotage in new Visual C Core runtimes exclusively made for Windows 10 since late 2020, this is already happening for 7 and even 8.1. It's pretty bad since it'll blindly hit visual studio-adjacent developers and there's much "7 broke? oh well its EOL who cares!!" apathy when brought up.
Msvcrt ftw heh
To me, Vista is not retro yet since it still can be tuned and tweaked to function as a modern O/S. I put it in that "future classics" category. XP Just barely qualifies to me because it's different enough, and it will become more "Classic" with each year. Once you get to Windows 2000 PRo and XP things get a little funky because they can indeed do some modern things and be usable - kind of like how a 30 year old vehicle can still drive on all of the current roads. Slightly inhibited experience, but still usable.
Windows 7 to me is still modern. It just has some safety issues because of lack of updates, and they are a bit more than just mere boogeymen feigning risks, but even then it's still usable as a modern O/S at full capacity.
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XP is totally retro now. Vista is nearly there.
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leileilol wrote on 2021-07-22, 18:59:Considering the new GetShellFolderPathEx-esque sabotage in new Visual C Core runtimes exclusively made for Windows 10 since late 2020, this is already happening for 7 and even 8.1. It's pretty bad since it'll blindly hit visual studio-adjacent developers and there's much "7 broke? oh well its EOL who cares!!" apathy when brought up.
This is something that can be easily solved by changing a couple of Visual Studio settings. Some developers will be too lazy to bother, yes. However, 7 still has more chance than Vista, simply because of the user base.
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Just installed XP on Core 2 Quad as the most powerful officially supported XP gaming machine. I did notice something:
1) Developers got lazy and started to make even retro emulators apps for .NET framework 4.5. This one was never, even unofficially avail in XP. Therefore if you want to run something like Mesen (.NET 4.5), you need at least Vista.
2) If you want to use sound card with gameport and play emulator using these joysticks and gamepads, you need to use XP. Or the hacked driver and support. Vista hacked driver supports the original Game controller panel. Win 7 32-bit does not support, it needs to install gameport driver + joystick driver manually (I guess there is no calibration because of lack of control panel). 64-bit Windows (tried on Win 10) will not work with gameport at all.
NOTE: PCI sound cards do not work with two joysticks using gameport cable split - I'm using that together with Roland SC-55 on Win98 and ISA soundcard. For current Win XP system I had to put two PCI sound cards just to support two joysticks for retro gaming.
Therefore it starts to be conflicting mainly because of arrogant developers, such as Launchbox, and their frameworks. Interesting is that Mesen on Linux is using SDL2 and Mono. I don't understand why they could not use SDL2 on Windows, instead of DirectX 11 and .NET 4.5. You can get DX11 for XP. Problem is .NET 4.5 is Vista and up. So I'm thinking about Vista 32-bit right now to get a wider span of software support. Or I will keep XP and dual boot to Win 10 x64 (needs SSD drive and 8GB RAM)
