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Alt-Enter doesn’t Window DOS graphics in XP, but worked in NT and Win2000 (2006) (narkive.com)
51 points by userbinator on Dec 8, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 37 comments


Why did I just read a 17-yo post about XP & DOS incompatibility; on a newsgroup archive that seems curated to alt-right viewership?

https://reactos.org/ implements Windows roughly akin to 2003; dunno if that would be able to re-create this issue, but might be worth trying?


It just seems like a normal newsgroup archive. Any alt-right content is... because that's what gets posted on most of the newsgroups now? Ask yourself, "who is really still using newsgroups?"


FYI. Don't call them "alt-right" that term was invented by Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer to normalize Nazi ideology in civilized discourse

Call them what they are, fucking fascists


For what it's worth, if that is truly who invented it, use it all the more, because that's not how it worked out. Alt-right doesn't sound normalized to any civilized person I know, including those on the right.


The Alt-Enter key combination has has persisted over the years in some video games in order to switch between fullscreen and windowed mode. Someone out there still remembers this and includes it in their games.


That's actually default behaviour of DXGI.


Dosbox has it, so I think it will never die.


Ok, but overall Windows is great in terms of backward compatibility compared to Apple/Linux/Android. You can still run DOS and Windows 3.x apps on 32 bit Windows 10 and lack of 64 bit support is just Intel hardware limitation. There is Hyper V if you do need such support. Inability to window DOS graphics is peanuts compared to impossibility of say running Power PC MacOSX apps with hardware graphics acceleration.


and lack of 64 bit support is just Intel hardware limitation.

Common misconception, maybe even MS-originated FUD. WINE on 64-bit Linux supports 16-bit Windows apps perfectly well.

...and NTVDMx64 --- based on MS' own leaked Windows code! --- is probably the best evidence that it has nothing to do with hardware limitations and everything to do with where MS wants to force users to go.


Seems like the truth is somewhere in between. NTVDMx64’s readme says “NTVDM on Win32 uses V86 mode of the CPU for fast code execution which isn't available in x64 long mode.” So there is a real hardware limitation.

On the other hand, emulating the CPU entirely is feasible, and MS has the code, as the leak shows. And apparently newer Intel CPUs enabled V86 again.


> Common misconception, maybe even MS-originated FUD. WINE on 64-bit Linux supports 16-bit Windows apps perfectly well.

Huh ? Wine on 64 bit linux supports only 64 bits apps. Same on 32 bits linux, but here supports also 16 bits apps. For 32 bits support on 64 linux you need 32 bits linux libraries.


You need the 32 bit libraries, but it all runs under a 64-bit kernel alongside 64-bit processes on the same system, right?

EDIT: More details at https://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/Diag/BrokenLDT16 . I suppose if you run 16-bit programs inside 32-bit WINE on 64-bit Linux, you wouldn't be able to get real interop (eg drag-and-drop) with a 64-bit windows program separately running under 64-bit WINE?


People who absolutely need to run 16-bit DOS apps on x64 Windows can use NTVDMx64: https://github.com/leecher1337/ntvdmx64


I hate to admit it but VMWare is better for playing games in a VM. USB pass through. 3D graphics etc.


Virtualbox is nearly unusable for windows 9x nowadays. The system boots kinda sometimes, but applications or windows explorer usually crash with some memory protection or illegal instruction fault within a minute or so. This has been the case for years, so I guess nobody wants to track down and fix the bug.


That sounds like this bug, of which someone created a patch for (look at the end of the comments):

https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2015/08/win9x-tlb-invalidation-b...

Turning off nested paging seems to work around it.


Sure, there are add on emulation/virtualization software, but even built in backward compatibility is impressive. That's important for casual users with limited computer skills, system administrators who don't have to manage another level of abstraction, those on a budget who don't have to pay for an extra license just to run software they already own...


I've had better luck with Linux than Windows, especially when running 32-bit software on 64-bit hardware.


This reads like you didn't check the date of the post


Isn't even more impressive how much old stuff still runs almost 2 decades later?


Yeah and I love windows for that. I've tried thrice to get old software to run on Linux and mac, mac turned out impossible, the Linux bit I ran the Windows build in wine.


" > 4) Is there any way to get Microsoft's attention about this issue?

** No. They would be very happy if everyone just forgot about DOS and all its wonderful programs & utilities so that all would use their monopolistic system. "

Some stories never change.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DriveSpace

There was a patent lawsuit in the 90s about drive compression software in DOS 6.2. It was yanked in .21, and re-added in .22 with some changes.


I remember that key combination from the Windows 95 days. It felt like magic!

It was amazing that VGA games (for the most part) worked, and fun to have multiple DOS text programs running and switching between them.


I thought the Alt-Tab application switcher working in full screen DOS mode was pretty cool too.

For those that didn’t experience it: Alt-Tab also worked in full screen text mode. No icons or window thumbnails, just window titles with the “focus rectangle” represented by a line of reversed background/foreground colours, but you could switch to another app or cancel out of the application switcher without ever leaving text mode.


OK, I'll bite: Which part of this thread is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting"?

The fact that DOSBox is at least 17 years old?

The fact that the "just run Linux, it'll work there if you figure out the right command line syntax that I'm not going to tell you" pattern is that old? (Richard Bonner, 4th comment from the end)

XP unified the Win9x and Windows NT codebases, and both had to compromise a bit. The VxD driver model officially went away; more bits were added to the WDM model to enable better multimedia support than W2K and previous had.

This whole thread is an instance of the XKCD Workflow: https://xkcd.com/1172/

Making graphical DOS apps windowed never worked in NT (the very first post admits that this caused the graphics to freeze) but this user decided to push on stretching the bug to capture screenshots for reports (something that was never an option in DOS either) and was surprised when this edge case that very clearly was never supported stopped working between major versions.


> OK, I'll bite: Which part of this thread is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting"?

I hesitate to qualify myself as a good hacker, but for me personally I enjoy reading about the history of computing - especially in the contexts of what people found important at any given time.


> OK, I'll bite: Which part of this thread is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting"?

The fact that it does not autoupdate itself every 2 weeks with breaking changes ? The fact that the "UI" hasn't changed ?

>The fact that DOSBox is at least 17 years old?

This is a sign of quality. Firefox is 2 weeks old and already wants to update /s


Making graphical DOS apps windowed never worked in NT

One could argue that it was supposed to, because otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to write the code to do it (and knowing what that code has to do, it wasn't a trivial thing either.)

XP unified the Win9x and Windows NT codebases

If anything, that should've enhanced the functionality since 9x's DOS windows are significantly more performant, and the "graphical DOS box" has been around in one form or another since Windows/386:

https://gekk.info/articles/dosapps.html

Here's a demonstration of that, running Windows 2.03 (in CGA mode) inside Windows 3.1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwkAVlUBu30


I find it a good capture of the the ‘M$’ vibes of the early 2000s. Someone is angry that emails are no longer formatted to 78 monospace characters.


For what it's worth, Windows-1252 pretending to be ISO 8859-1 still makes my life difficult every now and then. Windows' smart quotes not being encoded using the proper unicode characters can cause tons of issues when editors try to use smart quotes (encoding quotes as 0x93 instead of \u201C).

It's especially silly considering Microsoft had already switched to UCS-2 in the OS long before XP came out and UCS-2 also has the standard quotes in its set.

Complaining that programs aren't inserting unnecessary line feeds anymore is just silly, though. DOS needed those characters because of technical limitations and if people aren't working around your computer's arbitrary limitations anymore, that's really your problem more than anyone else's.

Their website (http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/) is still up and is actively being maintained. I wonder if the author still uses DOS every day...


> 78 monospace characters

I recall 72 being more common. This left room for a few nested quotes (indented each level by >[space]) before needing to reflow the text to fit in 78, the 78 coming from back in the days of text terminals 80 characters wide (leaving two for a border or for formatting marks or for other decoration/indicators).

Maybe that was a more localised thing (I'm remembering it from guidelines for mailing lists and/or Usenet groups) and a flat 78 character guideline was more usual around the wider internet?


> Which part of this thread

What there was such a problem back in the days. THere are people there who are full fledged adults yet don't know how that was hecause they are born after W2K GA.

What Bonner's site URLs still work and the content is at the same addresses.

What some people responding with 'just use Linux' even if nobody asked them was an issue even then.


Thanks for writing one of the few replies that actually explains the problem somewhat. Shame about the first three paragraphs though.


how much karma do i need to downvote posts on hacker news?


Nobody can downvote submissions, but 500 karma lets you flag them. You have that.


There is a MS13-xxx bulletin that had a bug where full screen DOS was completely broken when /NOEXECUTE=OPTOUT was set in boot.ini




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