Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!parc!biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!library.ucla.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gumby!yale!news2.near.net!noc.near.net!usenet.elf.com!rpi!psinntp!megatest!albrecht From: albrecht@megatest.com (Dave Albrecht) Subject: Re: Stupid Question Message-ID: Organization: Megatest Corporation References: <2rj0l6$r4o@insosf1.infonet.net> Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 23:34:08 GMT Lines: 46 From article <2rj0l6$r4o@insosf1.infonet.net>, by markl@ins.infonet.net: > Hello I am new to this cd-rom stuff and I was just wondering why alot of the > software (Myst etc.) is for windows wouldnt it run better in dos? Is there > something I am missing? Are there cd-rom games etc. that run in dos? I dont > get out much, thanks for any information. sorry if this is in a FAQ somewhere. > Mark... Well yes, it would run better in DOS. But, the minute you start running under DOS you proceed to have to deal with a great many device interface problems that Windows will do for you. For instance, video cards. Assume that I want to use a 640x480 256 color display. Directly interfacing to the hardware means I must know about umpty frantz different video cards and potentially have the game break when a new one comes out that isn't supported. The alternative is to use the VESA interface to the card, but like Windows this interface is slow. Most of these new games have considerable memory requirements. The days that state of the art applications can fit in 640K memory are long gone. Either the application must use a DOS extender or again Windows provides the facility to get at large amounts of memory. Myst uses a canned animation engine (Quicktime for Windows). I'm no expert in this marketplace, but my perception is that most of the commercial animation engines seem to be windows not DOS products. Sound gives the same problems as Video but more so. The only standard for sound is Soundblaster and Roland MPU. The soundblaster clone implementations are often iffy and what port the mpu is at varies. Again using windows the vagaries of the sound cards is smoothed over by the Windows device drivers. Otherwise the game writer again has to be able to not only support various sound cards they also have to be able to configure to support various port IRQ etc. locations for those cards. Virtually every DOS based game I have seen has varying limitations on soundcard configuration and requires a large amount of low memory to run or it gets pissy about TSRs that are running in my standard setup. Your average user just wants to pop the game in and have it run. They don't want to have to worry about ports, IRQs, video cards, low dos mem, and TSRs. Windows allieviates the user from all this pain. There is a price to be paid for going through Windows, but Microsoft I believe has relatively recently provided a high bandwidth interface to Windows to support exactly this kind of application. Further, as CPUs and video cards continue to get faster and DSP soundcards continue to offload more of the load from the CPU the overhead associated with going through Windows keeps getting less and less interesting. Applications that must have the fastest smoothest access to the display and sound hardware will probably still go for DOS. Those with less demanding requirements and Myst falls in this category can and probably should go with Windows. David Albrecht