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Article View: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Article #132

Re: Win95 and games: good news...

#132
From: swil... Stephen Wilhelm
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 00:00
50 lines
3521 bytes
Baphometae Organus (jjf...@hamp.hampshire.edu) wrote:
> . Specially where backk-ward compatibility is concerned. I always 
> : hate arguing with Os/2 users because they are so biased, it just seems 
> : pointless to argue with them.

> : I will happily flying in windows 95 while those other losers are 
> : sloughing in their so called os/2
> :  systems.

If the beta is anything to go by, OS/2 beats Win95 in speed by a long
shot.  Not just in multitasking either.  Win95 still has some of the
problems of Windows, and Win95 loads Windows apps slower than OS/2
does, which is about as fast as under Windows (must use fastload and
fool with some settings).  And DOS games run much faster under OS/2
than under DOS, especially video (Doom is smooth on my 486 under OS/2
and choppy under DOS).

> I have heard that Windows 95 is not backward compatible with w3.1 
> programs.  Is this true?  Or is this a scaly lie from the warp types?  I 
> would hate to lose the use of some of my great old windows games...

Win95 is backwards compatable.  What you heard is probably that Win95
still does cooperative multitasking with Windows apps.  Which means
that they multitask about as well as under Windows.  In my experience,
Win95 does a semi-decent job of multitasking (not as good as OS/2),
until you throw a 16bit Windows app into the picture, then the system
slows to a crawl.  

Technobabble:  Win95 still has a 64K heap space (limiting number of
apps that can be run at a time to about 8), FAT filesystem (sucks,
sucks, sucks...), multiple directory entries for long filenames
(causes some serious problems with older software, especially disk
utilities like disk defragmentors), 640K barrier (cleverly disguised,
but it is possible to run out of conventional memory), the kernel is
basically unchanged from DOS 6.22 (recompiled 32-bit, but system calls
are the same, as are BIOS calls), and Win95 will let you use 16-bit
device drivers (sucks, sucks, sucks....).  In addition, OS/2 won't let
you directly access the hardware, while Win95 lets programs do
whatever they want to (viruses really only affect DOS/Windows
computers, they never appear in OS/2 and NT computers).  Granted,
there are some nice things in Win95, and it isn't very cut and dry as
to which is better (some may like one interface over the other), but
the underlying technology is better in OS/2, while Win95 is tweaked
DOS and Windows code that works together as if it was one operating
system.  
-- 
\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\
Stephen Wilhelm  	Majors:  Computer Science	|  MC Computer	
Mississippi College		 Engineering Physics	|  Support Team
swil...@mc.edu		Minor:   Mathematics		|  sup...@mc.edu
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From: swil...@csc.mc.edu (Stephen Wilhelm)
Subject: Re: Win95 and games: good news...
Date: 1995/04/22
Message-ID: <3na499$38b@csc.mc.edu>
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