On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Sol-Terrasa mkfs ext4 da' Sussex <alex.bu...@munted.org.uk> wrote: > On Thu, 2010-04-08 at 14:22 +0100, Liam Proven wrote > >> > Windows 3.1x for high resolution displays i.e. beyond 1280x1024 with 16 >> > million colours. Sadly I've had to abandon it due to lack of >> > documentation and sources for existing device drivers. >> >> One problem with such things - and a few did exist, back in the day - >> was Windows 3's resource limitations. It had a few 64K "heaps" for >> holding Windows Resources, which includes icons, window decorations >> (widgets) and internal data structures. The bigger the display, the >> more resources needed; also, the higher the colour depth, the more >> resources. > > *sigh* I'd forgotten about that 64k limitation. :(
There is a /reason/ why people dropped Windows 3 like a hot potato once they had a better alternative! To be honest, Windows 9x or NT 3 are far more interesting retro OSs to play with now, which can do vastly more. The 32-bit transition was /long/ overdue. > But there still is a > need for display drivers for WFWG users; there are a lot of new graphic > hardware out there that have no display drivers available for WFWG. It is a long-dead OS. I really don't think there is such a "need", no. The fact that there are some usable VESA drivers is enough, I think. >> Result, on 1280x1024 in 16M colours, after displaying the desktop & >> opening Program Manager, there sometimes wasn't enough memory left to >> open any apps at all. >> >> So, really, from someone who was there and had to support the damned >> thing, 17-18Y ago: you're not missing much. It looked impressive but >> it was sod-all use. > > If that was a long time ago, dare I hope you might have some sample > sources for me to look at? I still want to write graphic device drivers > for WFWG. I installed and supported many many such machines, but I was never a developer, so no, I have no "sources", I'm afraid. My sources of information, as a sysadmin, were magazines, not the Internet back then. I was online, but there was no Web yet, so really it was just email & Usenet. Usenet is still there & Google has the archives. :¬) >> If you want to get a feel for Win3-era Windows on a big desktop, use >> NT3. NT 3.51 was the last and best version & was a very good OS in its >> way. It was fast, stable, lean & efficient, it supported whacking >> great screens without issues, it ran most Win3 apps, it had a network >> stack & TCP/IP support out of the box, supported VFAT with LFNs and >> NTFS and OS/2's HPFS, and was generally a pleasure to work with. You >> could run Netscape 4 32-bit on it, too, for a pretty good Internet & >> Web experience - for 1995. > > I seem to remember there was once a port of NT 3.51 for Sun > UltraSparcs. :) An unofficial one which I think was never commercially released. Officially, NT ran on MIPS, Alpha and later (and briefly) PowerPC as well as x86-32. Now, it is x86-32, x86-64 and IA64, but soon, IA64 will be dropped and I suspect x86-32 will follow before too long. On the other hand, there are consistent rumours about an ARM port, which I find hard to believe but would be interesting... -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
