Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 07:33:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: randir <goehrigd AT gort DOT canisius DOT edu>
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: 32 bit dos
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.970516071909.28754D-100000@gort.canisius.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Precedence: bulk


Now as most people have known, Dos makes extensive use of software
interrupts to do practically everything.  The OS is so heavily ISR
driven [with many duplicate features which return different values]
that it is a real pain to get 16 bit applications working in a
flat 32bit address space. [such as a 32 bit virtual paged memory model]

The main reasons for a 32 bit dos are:

	1.) faster memory transfers.
	2.) more memory available to programs.

Ofcourse if you have to prefrom conversions translating the old seg:off
to a flat 32, you incure a lot of overhead.  Ofcourse native programs
would take full advantage, however, you'd have overhead in that you would
still have thunk code.

	Now this sounds like the ultimate in brian dead ideas,
	but what if someone were to build a lite 32 bit dos..
	with a 16 bit DOS BOX?

Sort of like the Rhapsody needs a MacOS box.. [never mind Rhapsody is
also comming out for the Pentium chip in a native format, and that
it's programs will also run under Windows95 & NT under a Rhapsody box
but that is niether here nor there]