From: jasonf AT apk DOT net (Jason M. Felice) Subject: Win 95 Console Stuff... 3 Nov 1997 19:18:41 -0800 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Okay, I've been toying with the idea for quite some time. Now I really have a reason to do it. As we all know, Win95's console support *sucks* -- it is slow as hell. I've been thinking about ways to fix it. There are three ways that I can think of: 1) Support for DOS (16 bit, DJGPP) isn't slow at all. It's just the Win32 API that sucks. Of course, that is the only thing we have available to us. Unless, of course, we do something funky to get 32-bit dos-extended like io... :-} 2) DirectX allows direct access to the graphics hardware, including text modes. The DX5SDK, however, is about 28 meg for the downloadable-install program. This sucks. 3) We could write a VXD that would allow aware applications to write directly to screen memory. (via the VXD calls, or via a non-relocatable, mapped address (can you use those with VXDs). I'm seriously thinking about this and would like any questions, comments and suggestions. There's no reason 32-bit console programs should be so friggin sluggish on my 200 MMX. Also, any news if it's better in Win98 would be appreciated. Thanx, Eraserhead. (P.S. I'm new to this list. Congrats on the cygwin32, it makes my life easier. Bravo.) - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".