From:	brian DOT hawley AT bigfoot DOT com (Brian Hawley)
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: DPMI 0.9 vs 1.0
Date:	Tue, 13 Oct 1998 22:08:39 GMT
Organization:	MegsInet, Inc. - Low Cost, High Performance Internet Services
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References:	<Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 981013183936 DOT 4278h-100000 AT is>
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com

In article <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 981013183936 DOT 4278h-100000 AT is>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com wrote:
>
>On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, ajschrotenboer wrote:
>
>> I was wondering why, if there is a 1.0 standard, why do most DPMI
>> servers (I think this includes CWSDPMI, I may be wrong) only support
>> 0.9??
>
>Because Microsoft, who have created DPMI, shortly afterwards decided
>it wanted DOS to go away.  So they don't want to support any API that
>will make the life easier for DOS programs.

Actually, 1.0 came out before 0.9. The original spec (1.0) generated
a lot of outcry from the other DOS-extender vendors (remember those?)
that MS was trying to kill their market, so MS came up with a broken
version of the spec (0.9) which they are required to use. Quarterdeck
released a buggy version of the 0.9 DPMI in their extender, and most
of the other vendors released 1.0 DPMI servers.

This is an excellent example of the legal system making our lives
better by protecting us from innovation :(

As I recall, the main difference between them that got the other guys
nervous was the ability of 1.0 to coexist with VCPI programs. By the
time Win95 was released, most of these programs had switched to DPMI
compliant memory access so this had become somewhat of a moot point,
as had the competing DOS-extender vendors.

This is an excellent example of MS getting its way despite the legal
system and lack of innovation :(

>The bugs in the DPMI server built into NT (which are more numerous and
>nasty than those in Windows 9X) clearly show the trend.  Fortunately,
>they cannot live with too buggy DPMI in Windows 9X because a major
>part of Windows itself loads as a DPMI client inside a DOS box.

As for NT, there are certain (supposed) features of the NT kernel
that make working DPMI very difficult to implement. I believe this
has to do with DOD security ratings or something like that. MS has
good reason to want to rid itself of DOS, but I'm not sure I like
what they're trying to saddle us with instead.

brian DOT hawley AT bigfoot DOT com

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