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Date: Sun, 6 May 2012 10:49:27 +0100
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From: Andy Talbot <andy.g4jnt@gmail.com>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Subject: Re: LF: Open Sauce
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I was going to say this too.    However, there is a fair bit of hidden
DOS emulation built into Windows.  I can only speak for XP and
earlier,  Not Vista or 7,but quite a lot of the old pure DOS commands
still work from a command prompt.  Try things like redirection,
sorting and the like.   You may be surprised to find then still
functioning.

What is even more amazing, is that some of the old BIOS Interrupt
calls that you had to do when programming (true) DOS machines still,
sort of, vaguely, work.     I wrote a lot of software pre-windows that
uses the mouse by directly settign 96x86 registers and calling the
appropriate BIOS interrupts.  SOme of this software, on some PCs still
works.  Its got no right to, but means the Windows OS developers have
tried to make things backwards compatible.

Mind you, on one Dell desktop machine my old software does cause a
catastropic crash that needs a power off to stop the lockup.  Even
ctl-alt-del doesn't work   Yet on others it works fine or just ignores
the mouse.but still responds to cursor keys.   Definitely a hardware
thing, video driver no doubt.

And my old favourite programming language (for non graphics based
stuff, at least) , 16 bit PowerBasic runs absolutely perfectly in a
Command Window.  That prog most definitely is DOS based, so the
Windows emulator is doing an excellent job there.   PowerBasic doesn't
call on the mouse at all.

So blaming Windows for all ills isn't all that fair.  Individual PC
manufacturers are also to blame by keeping costs down with odd and non
standard add-ons.

Andy   G4JNT


> You must be a Linux fan.... =A0 :-) =A0 Knowing almost nothing about Wind=
ows....
>
> The last version of Windows that was Dos based was Windows 95-98
> Starting from Win NT,XP, etc. there is no more an underlying Dos layer...
>
> And Windows 7 is even better. I have on my PC a triple boot, Win XP Pro,
> 64-bit Windows 7, and a special version of Debian Linux (Sidux).
> Each time I boot Linux I can observe, on the very same hardware, how much
> sluggish is its responsivness in the GUI, with respect to Win 7....
>