On Mon, Dec 23, 2024 at 2:58 PM Steve Nickolas via Freedos-devel < freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> You mention (in a part of the message I snipped) the plan Intel had to > remove legacy support from their AMD64 CPUs - and indeed, Intel has been > slowly pushing for the removal of legacy support more generally (as far as > I can tell, at least) from PCs. (AMD is apparently a different story, > thankfully) > Yes, the x86S initiative, but Intel has just withdrawn it, so at least theoretically, modern x86 should be able to run DOS natively, at least in theory. I guess that Intel realized that since they can't compete with ARM and RISC-V in terms of power efficiency, they'd better hold on to legacy compatibility, since that's their remaining unique selling point. By the way, AMD's legacy compatibility stuff has also started to "bitrot" a bit. An example of that was the "VME bug" that slipped into the first generation Ryzen chips, which was an issue when you wanted to virtualize Windows 9x. If I'm not mistaken, AMD fixed that in later generations of their CPUs, but I agree that the legacy/vintage compatibility in modern x86 chips will continue to diminish in new hardware, since it's being used less. But that's no reason not to try keeping FreeDOS going on such machines, as long as the efforts don't become too herculean. > A few years ago I had had an idea - but in the process of doing something > similar but less complex I decided I didn't quite have the mad skillz to > do it. Since I figured this crippling of legacy support was inevitable, > my idea was to create an OS that provided the superficialities of DOS to > the user, and if they needed to run a legacy app, to emulate legacy > hardware. > Dosemu2 might more or less be doing what you are envisioning here. But I believe that just the base goal of getting FreeDOS to boot would allow for something like this as well, if combined with emulators in the form of DOS TSRs that could emulate specific hardware where needed, such as legacy/vintage sound cards. > I think at some point we'll just have to take for granted that modern PCs > are too different from even 486 machines and emulation might be the only > way forward at that point. > Oh, absolutely. We'll eventually get to that point. Even if newer revisions of the x86 architecture end up never dropping 16/32-bit legacy compatibility, x86 will eventually be overtaken and replaced by ARM and RISC-V, even in the desktop and laptop space. It's already happening, since x86 just can't compete with ARM on power efficiency. Apple already made the switch, and even though Microsoft and Qualcomm have so far been botching Windows on ARM, eventually they'll get it right. The latest ARM-based Windows laptops have crazy long battery time compared to their x86-based counterparts. But in the meantime, why not try to take FreeDOS as far as we can take it, in terms of native compatibility? 🙂 -uso._______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >
_______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
