scruffyherder (u/scruffyherder)

scruffyherder commented on Q2DOS – Quake 2 backported to MS-DOS dk.toastednet.org/Q2DOS/... · Posted by u/jsheard

lightedman · 10 months ago

This wants something like a fast P3 or P4 to get any usable speed, sadly. Good luck getting this operating on a Cyrix.

when testing native builds I was using a Xeon E5v2.

why bother with anything slow as a p3?

scruffyherder commented on Q2DOS – Quake 2 backported to MS-DOS dk.toastednet.org/Q2DOS/... · Posted by u/jsheard

stevefan1999 · 10 months ago

Given that Quake 2 already runs on Windows 95 back in the days, and how Windows 95 is already somewhat of an "exokernel" to DOS, I wonder how hard it is to port to DOS, actually? Well, given that you can have almost full control to the hardware and framebuffer, and memory allocation and how you can directly issue BIOS calls...I guess the performance should be prettier right?

scruffyherder · 10 months ago

DLL's were the most involved part of the port.

scruffyherder commented on Compiling MS-DOS 4.0 from DOS 4.0, on a PS/2 virtuallyfun.com/2024/04/... · Posted by u/tiernano

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

I've no idea why so many people struggle with this.

scruffyherder commented on Preview edition of Microsoft OS/2 2.0 sold on eBay theregister.com/2024/02/2... · Posted by u/kal100

CodeCompost · 2 years ago

I wonder if the floppies still work.

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

I have to admit, that I was surprised when they all came back good! We already had the SDK on 3 1/2" disks, so we could compare the contents. Oddly enough all the executables, libraries and headders are a match but the helpfiles have a different CRC, despite being the same timestamp, and size.

I've installed it on 86box, and then converted the boot disk from 5 1/2" to 3 1/2" inch so I could install it on VMware and my IBM PS/2 model 80. That's another surprise I thought for sure the PS/2 drivers would be missing from the 5 1/4" disk version, but they were there!

On VMware the AT version of the PS/2 mouse driver locks the system up, but I copied the one from 6.123 and it works fine. Although there is no MS-DOS sessions working.

Also as a follow up on my 'dont waste money on a math co-processor' if you have the 'passthrough math' on 86box the dos sessions misbehave big time. Using the softfloat option for more accuate floats results in working MS-DOS. - Turns out OS/2 betas really did rely on a FPU!

scruffyherder commented on Preview edition of Microsoft OS/2 2.0 sold on eBay theregister.com/2024/02/2... · Posted by u/kal100

charcircuit · 2 years ago

No, they bought an SDK for it.

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

It's the full OS + SDK and the networking bits & kernel debugger as well!

scruffyherder commented on EmuWoW Beta 1 (AXP Preview1) virtuallyfun.com/2024/02/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

It’s really cool to run dec alpha binaries on x86!

scruffyherder commented on How DOS was able to use most of the 1 MB address space of the 8086 blogsystem5.substack.com/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

ok123456 · 2 years ago

DOS/4GW was memorable because it advertised itself while loading games made with it, usually late 386/486 era 32-bit games from before gaming on Windows had its act together.

Phar Lap was more ubiquitous throughout the 286 and 386 DOS days. Microsoft distributed a light version of it with their compiler for a while.

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

Pharlap 386 is mentioned on Links386, although its flies on by, and special->about

scruffyherder commented on How DOS was able to use most of the 1 MB address space of the 8086 blogsystem5.substack.com/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

mrlonglong · 2 years ago

I suggest you take a look at DOS extenders at some point. They were brilliant and the best was DOS/4GW.

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

Pharlap's TNT was way more exciting to be honest.

I'm still trying to find the first early extenders though from 1987/88 no leads though.

scruffyherder commented on 86-DOS Version 0.11 Found virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/... · Posted by u/xeeeeeeeeeeenu

ksaj · 2 years ago

What got me into assembly programming was my peecee getting infected with the STONED virus at the end of the 80's. DOS came with a small very thick binder user manual, and the DEBUG.EXE section was very extensive. It seemed to me that I could use it to repair my disks. It took a while, but I succeeded.

I managed to carve out the boot sector, learn assembly, and rewrite the virus code to more human readable format, and then the cherry on top: read the original boot sector off the disk (which I learned about through the virus code itself) and write it on top of the virus code. All this just from the user manual pages for DEBUG. The code for both reading and writing the virus code and the original boot sector, which was offset to a different sector, was right there in the virus. So it was an unusual self-documenting solution.

That was so much fun, I went head first into learning how to program in Assembler using TASM (Borland Turbo Assembler), which is in every way a more friendly way to write assembler. I still have the TASM programming book I bought way back then on my severely nerdy book shelf.

Those sure were the days.

Unsurprisingly, I kept up on viruses and antivirus, then hacking, then firewalls, then pentesting, in that order, as they were invented. The STONED virus and the DOS manual literally gave me a career path.

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

Wow that's pretty cool! I first found out I had some virus when I was hex editing my boot/root floppy disks for Linux back in 92? I'd just compiled a kernel and forgot to set the root to the hard disk, swapped disks around and found some bootsector thing that I can't remember at the time. It was initially mystifying how it read okay in DOS, as the virus could hide, but on Linux is where it was laid bare.

Pretty cool how you made such a massive leap! Talk about making lemonade!

scruffyherder commented on 86-DOS Version 0.11 Found virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/... · Posted by u/xeeeeeeeeeeenu

ksaj · 2 years ago

One of my favourite DOS things was the DEBUG.EXE command. As far as I know, it was the only debugger that allows for the creation of debug files where you could do things like debug.exe < script.dbg to do low level things like replacing a disk partition table.

It was a very handy method of passing around binaries in text-oriented chat systems.

scruffyherder · 2 years ago

I'd only zapped the partition table...

https://virtuallyfun.com/2009/12/03/partitioning-with-debug/