On 1/2/2015 2:28 PM, Mercury Thirteen wrote: > It wouldn't be only the speed increase, but the fact that we'd be > modernizing FreeDOS as a whole. > > I think of it this way: What would Microsoft have done had they not > gone exclusively to Windows? I am doubtless they would've migrated > MS-DOS to a 32-bit platform years ago. If we were to do such a move, > we would not only make the OS as fast as possible, but also open up > roads to modern development tools and allow the running of apps made > by a whole host of compilers - because not that many (in comparison) > support a 16-bit target. We would make FreeDOS more attractive to > programmers because their compiler would already have the means of > generating appropriate code, they would have no 640 KB (or 1 MB or 1.5 > MB...) RAM ceiling to contend with and they wouldn't have to worry > about switching back and forth between protected mode and real mode to > run their programs. Sorry but I think you need to get real here. 32bit over 16bit brings pretty much no speed advantage at all for a DOS program. Today's CPUs are a factor of 60 faster then even the fastest 486 CPU at the end of the "DOS era". And have more cache RAM than a system back then had even as total RAM. And that is magnitudes faster today then it was back then. A real 16 bit DOS program is screamingly fast these days, you will not gain any serious advantage by running in 32bit. The amount of memory available is a slight improvement, but then most likely just resulting in the improvement of software bloat as well... > > The speed advantages which pure 32-bit would have over 16-bit + DPMI > would not only be from eliminating the delays from entering and > exiting protected mode and the associated memory copies, but also the > more subtle details like variable limit checking and the elimination > of the overhead incurred from having to work with the clumsy > segment:offset addressing method. Do you even remotely have an idea on how many function calls (INT21h) within DOS this is required/expected? Not to mention things like video both for INT10h or direct write access? > > I have no tasks which I do right now which demand more speed, but my > line of thought is that - if we're trying to take DOS where Microsoft > didn't - then going the 32-bit route would be the way to go. Sorry, but that way is just a "road to nowhere". As you would loose the "100% application compatibility" in a heartbeat...
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