From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Win 2000 & DJGPP
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 12:26:50 +0200
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On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Damian Yerrick wrote:

> >Is it known for sure that the current betas of Windows 2K are based
> >on NT?  From what I hear, including the LFN support in the DOS box,
> >it's possible that it is based on Windows 9X.
> 
> Win2k Personal is based on the 9x kernel.
> 
> The boot screen for Win2k Pro beta:
> Microsoft
>  W i n d o w s   2 0 0 0
>   Built on NT Technology

This doesn't really prove anything.  Windows 9X displays "Starting
Windows 9X..." when in fact what boots is DOS.

It is better to probe some or all of the known NT-related problems we
know about (section 3.3 of the FAQ has some of them; the next version
of the FAQ expands the list of known problems quite a lot ;-).  Does
Windows 2K still lose DPMI selectors like NT4 did?  Do DJGPP programs
crash when profiled, or when the catch SIGFPE?  Can you access SVGA
ports and have VESA modes in Allegro?  Does MODETEST work?  Do
nearptr's work?  What does go32-v2 report?

These are questions that IMHO tell a more convincing story about
Windows 2K internals than any hype from Redmond.

> They might have reused the 9x LFN source in Win2k.

I find this hard to believe.  It was very easy for them to have LFN in
Windows 9X, because Windows 9X itself issues Int 21h in protected mode
to access files, and it of course uses all those LFN-aware functions.
In other words, the LFN API in Windows 9X is an integral part of
Windows' own support for long file names.  All they needed to do is to
export a real-mode entry into those functions.

In contrast, NT doesn't use Int 21h at all (AFAIK).  So if 2K is based
on NT, somebody would have to sit down and write some interface DLL
which catches Int 21h and thunks it to the NT's file I/O layer.