3 ms·

It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit

by shawnz 8y ago

It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit support so that timeline would fit. There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows and I don't think it's fair to imply that they lost their focus on backwards compatibility just because of that one regression.

userbinator 8y ago
There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows That's the official answer. The more nuanced and correct answer is that DOS (16-bit realmode) apps won't work due to the hardware lacking the functionality --- blame AMD, not Microsoft, for that --- but there's no such limitation for Win16 (16-bit protected mode) apps. Thus, WINE on a 64-bit Linux will handle 64, 32, and 16-bit Windows apps, and there's no emulation unlike with DOSbox and such: https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 (Coincidentally, I recently made a comment on another article about the nuanced nature of the word "supported": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 )
- coldacid 8y ago
  To add even more nuance, even protected mode 16-bit Windows ran Windows apps in v86 mode. Essentially protected mode was a hypervisor you could launch from DOS and your actual Windows session would run on top of that. Before the VT-x extensions to x86-64, there was no more access to virtual-86 if you were running the processor in 64-bit long mode. Considering that, it's no surprise that 16-bit Windows apps would no longer run on 64-bit Windows, especially since NTVDM was necessary to run them on 32-bit NT based versions of Windows anyway.

3 ms·

It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit

by shawnz 8y ago

userbinator 8y ago
There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows That's the official answer. The more nuanced and correct answer is that DOS (16-bit realmode) apps won't work due to the hardware lacking the functionality --- blame AMD, not Microsoft, for that --- but there's no such limitation for Win16 (16-bit protected mode) apps. Thus, WINE on a 64-bit Linux will handle 64, 32, and 16-bit Windows apps, and there's no emulation unlike with DOSbox and such: https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 (Coincidentally, I recently made a comment on another article about the nuanced nature of the word "supported": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 )
- coldacid 8y ago
  To add even more nuance, even protected mode 16-bit Windows ran Windows apps in v86 mode. Essentially protected mode was a hypervisor you could launch from DOS and your actual Windows session would run on top of that. Before the VT-x extensions to x86-64, there was no more access to virtual-86 if you were running the processor in 64-bit long mode. Considering that, it's no surprise that 16-bit Windows apps would no longer run on 64-bit Windows, especially since NTVDM was necessary to run them on 32-bit NT based versions of Windows anyway.