Mail Archives: djgpp/1996/07/29/05:45:29
newhallw AT escmail DOT orl DOT mmc DOT com wrote:
>The unfortunate aspect of DirectX is that it probably will be
>the *only* way to access hardware when the new Windows NT is
>released. Isn't it true that the protection in NT prevents
>access to I/O ports, mapping of linear frame buffer memory,
>redirecting interrupt vectors, and such? Bye, Bye, Mr. DPMI!
Actually no. There was an article in Dr Dobb's that explained how you can
gain direct access to I/O ports under NT, so that is not a problem. You can
also easily write a driver to map in a piece of physical memory, so
accessing the framebuffer is also not a problem.
The only remaining problem is that you can't communicate with the real mode
BIOS, since the code in the BIOS cannot be run in protected mode. However
that may be solved soon because VESA is looking at a protected mode
interface for the VBE/Core 2.1 specification ;-)
Of course the problem's to be solved are complicated, but they are
solveable.
Regards,
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