*BSD News Article 16481


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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!foxhound.dsto.gov.au!fang.dsto.gov.au!myall.awadi.com.au!myall!blymn
From: blymn@awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: DOS/Windows under 386bsd (is there such?)
Date: 26 May 93 17:05:10
Organization: /usr/blymn/.organization
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <BLYMN.93May26170510@siren.awadi.com.au>
References: <1tgme7$n0q@urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
	<1993May20.234750.5815@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
	<1993May21.135304.21185@cm.cf.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: siren.awadi.com.au
In-reply-to: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk's message of Fri, 21 May 1993 13:53:02 +0000

[stuff about linux dosemu deleted]

>When we had the ref mailing lists I remember someone was looking at
>porting the mach DOS emulator which apparently COULD run windows. Maybe
>this person could comment. Of course perhaps I read it wrong, it was a
>while ago.

Because of the way DOS-under-unix is implemented the only way you can
run windows is in "real" mode (I think this is the right term...I
really do hate these silly intel chips), that is, as if you were
running things on an 8086.  In fact this is what you are doing, by
exploiting the virtual 8086 mode of the [34]86 chips you can run DOS
as a unix process (with some supporting jiggery-pokery).

I was working on porting the Mach DOS emulator to 386bsd but I have
hit a brick wall when it comes to providing all the kernel level
services that Mach has built in, especially the multi-threading stuff.
The Mach DOS emulator has some nasty habits anyway, like grabbing hold
(in a real physical sense) of the VGA hardware.  I am looking at
porting the Linux DOSEMU which seems far more promising.

--
Brett Lymn