Subject: Re: OS/2 port of REND386

From: [email-masked] (Sting)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 93 15:28:43 EST

Porting to OS/2 sounds like a cool idea, for the reasons mentioned. 
Plus it would be nice for rend386 to be supportted on multiple architectures.
One point though,  would using a dos extender give us the flat memory model
and 32-bit optmized code that we want.  I realize this does not include threading
or multitasking but it would be a step closer.

	Actually while I am on the subject.  Would 32-bit code significantly
increase our speed?  I would guess yes, but I am not very knowledge-able in this
area.  Having a flat memory would certainly make the memmory management much
easier.  With this all being said, I have never worked with a dos-extender and
anyone more knowledge-able in this area, we would greatly appreciate your 
expertise.

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Williams)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 15:59:05 -0500 (EST)

> increase our speed?  I would guess yes, but I am not very knowledge-able in this

Actually, in some cases it can decrease your speed since you are
dealing with 32 bit addresses instead of 16 (depending on memory
model, etc.).  With memory moves, etc., it can increase speed a lot
however, I think.

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From: Bob Mason <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 21:23:33 -0500

I can't wait for DOS 7.0, when we will have flat-memory...
(it's about time!)

But I agree that a porting of Rend onto multiple platforms would give
it a big boost, esp. imagine for an X-based system! 

But wait! There's already a public-domain X VR toolkit, called
multiverse...

-bob
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 93 12:12:53 -0700

About DOS-extenders, I've had bad experiences with them.  Mainly
Pharlap.  (It wiped out my SuperStor partition - twice in the same
week!  I removed SuperStor, and the computer still crashed angd lost chains, etc.!)

Linux isn't exactly the choice for what I view as the general user. 
For example, the general user needs DOS, Win3.1 and OS/2 applications
available at the same time with a 48633 w/4MB Ram and a 120M HD. 
(Okay, so I'm using myself as a general user...  So sue me!)  A DOS
extender can't even RUN under Windows without about 8MB of Ram, and
Linux doesn't do Windows (correct me if I'm wrong).

I may not have OS/2 yet, but I'm planning on getting it in the near future.

Well, once I can free up at least 45M on my 120M HD!

[email-masked]