> The problem (and the competitive edge for software) is that DOS calls, > even BIOS and also ANSI sequences are excruciating slow, compared to > direct hardware access. That was a decisive factor as to why IBM > prevailed, even though contemporary machines like the Sirius 1 or TI > Professional had technological advantages (CPU was almost the same, 5MHz > 8088, but max RAM under DOS were 896KB and 768KB respectively, the
Thanks for that technical info. I think I would like to recontest this. I actually did something similar with PDPCLIB. Some people (programming on MSDOS) insisted on using open instead of fopen, on the basis that it was faster, even on xyz fantastic C compiler (library). So I oriented PDPCLIB around fread and fwrite of binary files. I have a "quickbin" flag, and so long as that is on, it basically goes directly to the equivalent of read/write. Ok - so the people doing direct screen writes - first of all, I didn't think they actually did that - they used some package, and that package ultimately did direct screen writes. What's wrong with putting that package into DOS itself? Or better - structure your ANSI writes (using the example of microemacs), so that you send a single write() to stdout and it is highly optimized to expect a sequence that will translate easily into direct hardware writes. And yes - not bios calls - direct hardware writes. Both Freedos and PDOS/86 could do that (at least as a compile time option). It's not rewriting history, which is impossible, but perhaps questioning the fundamental assumptions from history? > have already been deprecated, and that's also something where no ANSI is > going to help you, specially when all "modern" systems are GUI based... I remember someone in charge of setting direction saying something like: There will be 1 million people who will use the command prompt forever. There will be 10 million people who will use something like (Topview?) for text-based fullscreen applications. And there will be 5 billion people who will use a GUI. Which market do you want? Microsoft obviously answered the 3rd. My answer is the first or second. That's my interest and that's my niche. So you can show me the latest "Grand Theft Auto 197", but I just yawn. I'm thrilled by microemacs 3.6. Am I alone on the planet? Well, that other guy said 1 + 10 million - so - who knows? I wasn't the only person who bought a Book 8088 though. BFN. Paul.
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