VOGONS


First post, by kolano

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Has anyone tried this out? Is it purely to support command-line text things?

"MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (2014/04/08) is released. MS-DOS Player is MS-DOS emulator running on Win32-x64 command prompt. 16bit MS-DOS compatible commands can be executed on Win32-x64 environment."
Japanese: http://homepage3.nifty.com/takeda-toshiya/msdos/index.html
English Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&s … os%2Findex.html

Eyecandy: Turn your computer into an expensive lava lamp.

Reply 3 of 11, by NJRoadfan

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Someone released a Linux kernel patch to allow DOSEMU access to real v86 mode while booted with a x64 kernel.

http://v86-64.sourceforge.net/

Much faster than emulating a x86 CPU like DOSBox.

Reply 5 of 11, by neozeed

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I've used it, and it's pretty cool for what it is, a command line 'dosbox' like thing. The CPU code is taken from MESS, and I've tried to contact vlinde about that as I too would like to use his 80386/80387 code, but I haven't gotten a reply.

It's starting to add XMS and maybe an A-20 so it can start to run some protected mode stuff...

Reply 6 of 11, by neozeed

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NJRoadfan wrote:

Someone released a Linux kernel patch to allow DOSEMU access to real v86 mode while booted with a x64 kernel.

http://v86-64.sourceforge.net/

Much faster than emulating a x86 CPU like DOSBox.

On OS X, Crossover can run Win16 applications.. I guess 286 protected mode can run along side x86_64 long mode...? only real/v86 is forbidden..? I wonder if you could create a pmode16 app that sat in the first 1MB of ram with no protection..... so it's basically DOS...

Reply 7 of 11, by NJRoadfan

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From what I can determine, 286 Protected Mode is available while in Long Mode. Just V86 Mode is removed. If that is the case, technically Win16 apps could be run natively on x64 versions of Windows, but Microsoft wasn't going to take the effort to rewrite WoW to remove NTVDM/V86 dependencies.

Reply 8 of 11, by neozeed

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NJRoadfan wrote:

From what I can determine, 286 Protected Mode is available while in Long Mode. Just V86 Mode is removed. If that is the case, technically Win16 apps could be run natively on x64 versions of Windows, but Microsoft wasn't going to take the effort to rewrite WoW to remove NTVDM/V86 dependencies.

Well that would make sense.. the one win16 I've tried (a terminal emulator) runs pretty fast so I don't know if there is any real performance hit.. I guess I should do some easywin benchmark or something...

So not knowing anything, I guess it's impossible to request 16bit pmode space in the first MB? If you could, and set all the segments read/write is there any fundamental difference between real mode and pmode if everythign is read/write (well outside of IOPL?)..?

Reply 9 of 11, by crazyc

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That isn't really possible. Since the lowest three bits of a selector are table select and RPL you only have 8192 selectors (16384 minus the LDT and TR entries if you include the GDT) to work with, far less then 65536 you'd need to emulate segmented real mode with a full 1MB of address space. Plus, INTs would go to the IDT rather than the IVT although that wouldn't be a very big deal.

Reply 10 of 11, by NJRoadfan

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To clarify, yes it appears that Wine runs Win16 programs natively in Long mode. A recent Linux kernel change even broke the ability to run 16-bit protected mode programs.

http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=22568

Reply 11 of 11, by neozeed

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NJRoadfan wrote:

To clarify, yes it appears that Wine runs Win16 programs natively in Long mode. A recent Linux kernel change even broke the ability to run 16-bit protected mode programs.

http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=22568

Wow very interesting... if anything I think 16bit Pmode kind of slipped by most people, and it'll get cut out of spite.

Wine will no doubt have to include some kind of soft 386 core to run win16 stuff... MultiGHZ boxes ought to be fast enough now anyways. And I guess DOSBox is the most tested GPL'd soft386 out there... Which I guess to go full trip, I kinda wish I could ask vlinde if he was ok with this i386 stuff being under GPL or anything that would allow it to be used with other programs.. He's not easy to get a hold of apparently. 🙁