Hi! > I understand that "drivers" are operating system-specific; but I was > wondering if somebody could develop an operating system that could act as > an "adaptor" to allow Windows drivers to emulate computer services for > DOS, such as, for example running a Sigmatel High Definition Audio > on-board laptop sound card to be recognized as an SB-16 sound card.
This cannot work because actually DOS does not have SB16 drivers either. Your DOS games access hardware directly, assuming that it will act as if it was a SB16 soundcard. However, drivers can be made which simulate SB16 hardware and forward the game's sound to some actual driver for your actual soundcard. Still using Windows drivers (or Linux drivers or whatever) would make things very complex, so it is better to invent a way to make DOS drivers based on the source code of Linux drivers, for example. At one time, Linux did use Windows drivers (for WLAN) but that was very complex. > Other services I have been looking forward for were, emulating dial-up > modems with an ethernet internet connection. I would not know why you would want to do that... You mean you want to communicate through a COM port while the actual data flow is through LAN. Well that can be done if you have: 1. DOS lowlevel network driver (packet driver) 2. probably a server which wants to behave like talking to a dial-up modem and 3. a driver which hooks the BIOS COM port access stuff, so when DOS or your app tries to talk to COM, then it talks to your driver which forwards things through your network. > Another idea I had was to remake Windows NT as DOS NT. > Part of this proposal was to allow Windows programs to > run from the command line, so we can have a "retro" look > whilst allowing modern programs to run. It seems that Windows Server 2008 can run without graphics, but what you want is probably either HXRT to run Windows command line apps in DOS or REACTOS to run Windows apps on a free operating system. Or maybe Wine, to run Windows apps on Linux, of course. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
