DOS ain't dead - Compatibility woes / deprecation ubiquitous

Compatibility woes / deprecation ubiquitous (Miscellaneous)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 13.02.2009, 23:51
(edited by Rugxulo on 14.02.2009, 00:02)

Just for example:

- NetHack real-mode version: no longer supported and old versions not available on main site
- DoomRL: no DOS support any more and old version not available on main site
- Crafty: no DOS support any more and no srcs for older version easily available (at least, I couldn't find it, but I didn't look too too hard)

+ Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup developers at one time were considering dropping DOS support
+ OpenWatcom now wondering whether they should drop support for Win NT 3.51 and/or Win16 (but DOS is safe)
+ GNU Emacs had a huge list of ports they wanted to deprecate three months ago, and guess which was on top of their list? Yup, MSDOS (which in all fairness they broke since 22.3). Luckily, Eli Z. jumped back in to update it to work again, but I still get that sinking feeling they want to kill it. :-(

* (rr has mentioned) VirtualBox no longer supports Win2k (so even modern NT-based OSes aren't safe!) :angry:
* QEMU 0.8.2 runs on Win9x but later versions don't ??
* Win32s heavily underutilized by developers (and only was supported until MSVC 4.0) ... most .EXEs have relocs stripped, so it won't work to even try

? Some apps exclusively need GCC 2/3/4 just to compile! (so much for standards reliance)

P.S. I forgot to mention that DOSBox needs > 1 Ghz machine just to run at 486 speed (and seems to need 100+ MB of RAM, which is kinda surprising). So not exactly great for old machines.

EDIT: Just so you know, I don't even use Mpxplay every day, but after a few weeks of not using it (Win32 version on Vista), it suddenly didn't work anymore, crashing with reg dump. I'm not sure if that's due to some OS or driver upgrade, but I find that really really strange and annoying. So you can't even keep stuff from breaking, apparently (e.g. remember XP SP2?).

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Complete thread:

Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 13.02.2009, 23:38 (Miscellaneous)
- Compatibility woes / deprecation ubiquitous - Rugxulo, 13.02.2009, 23:51
  - Compatibility woes / deprecation ubiquitous - rr, 14.02.2009, 18:54
- Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 14.02.2009, 14:02
  - Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 14.02.2009, 14:03
  - Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 14.02.2009, 23:07
    - Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 14.02.2009, 23:08
      - Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 14.02.2009, 23:09
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 15.02.2009, 13:55
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 15.02.2009, 20:55
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 18.02.2009, 12:17
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 18.02.2009, 21:26
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - ecm, 18.02.2009, 22:21
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 19.02.2009, 01:08
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 18.02.2009, 23:08
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 19.02.2009, 02:19
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Japheth, 19.02.2009, 08:10
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 19.02.2009, 08:57
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Japheth, 23.02.2009, 10:12
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 19.02.2009, 10:47
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 20.02.2009, 00:24
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 22.02.2009, 22:11
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 23.02.2009, 02:24
        Compatibility woes / deprecation TURBO stuff - DOS386, 24.02.2009, 05:17
        FPC: 7-Zip or UPX ; TC++ pros and cons - Rugxulo, 24.02.2009, 07:06
        186 or 286 - ecm, 24.02.2009, 10:46
        186 or 286 - marcov, 24.02.2009, 11:11
        FPC: 7-Zip or UPX ; TC++ pros and cons bloated WATCOM - DOS386, 25.02.2009, 03:18
        FPC: 7-Zip or UPX ; TC++ pros and cons bloated WATCOM - Rugxulo, 25.02.2009, 09:29
        FPC: 7-Zip or UPX ; TC++ pros and cons bloated WATCOM - marcov, 25.02.2009, 12:58
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 24.02.2009, 11:32
        MS-DOS partition limits - ecm, 24.02.2009, 11:56
        MS-DOS partition limits - marcov, 24.02.2009, 18:38
        MS-DOS partition limits - Rugxulo, 24.02.2009, 19:29
        MS-DOS partition limits - ecm, 24.02.2009, 22:41
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 24.02.2009, 19:46
        Compatibility woes / deprecation of UPX - DOS386, 20.02.2009, 06:08
        Compatibility woes / deprecation of UPX - marcov, 22.02.2009, 22:12
        Compatibility woes / deprecation of UPX - DOS386, 24.02.2009, 05:07
        Compatibility woes / deprecation of UPX - marcov, 24.02.2009, 10:40
      - Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 15.02.2009, 13:01
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 15.02.2009, 20:36
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - rr, 15.02.2009, 20:47
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 16.02.2009, 12:39
    - Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 15.02.2009, 12:44
      - Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 15.02.2009, 20:26
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - rr, 15.02.2009, 20:36
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 16.02.2009, 12:37
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 16.02.2009, 12:32
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 17.02.2009, 01:29
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - ecm, 17.02.2009, 12:25
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 18.02.2009, 00:56
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 18.02.2009, 11:12
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Japheth, 18.02.2009, 12:27
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 18.02.2009, 13:12
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 18.02.2009, 21:36
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - marcov, 18.02.2009, 22:32
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 18.02.2009, 20:57
        Compatibility woes / deprecation - Matjaz, 16.02.2009, 17:12
- Compatibility woes / deprecation - mr, 14.02.2009, 14:03
- Compatibility woes / deprecation - RayeR, 16.02.2009, 13:52
- Compatibility woes / deprecation - rr, 20.02.2009, 22:06
- Compatibility woes / deprecation - Zyzzle, 21.02.2009, 02:04
  - Compatibility woes / deprecation - Rugxulo, 21.02.2009, 04:21