4 ms·

In the MS-DOS days, I used to play games on the PC, and arguably, these were all unikernels. Typically, the game had its own set of drivers and was basically ru

by js8 6y ago

In the MS-DOS days, I used to play games on the PC, and arguably, these were all unikernels. Typically, the game had its own set of drivers and was basically running in ring 0, and immediately after start it bypassed MSDOS and did most of the HW stuff itself. This was usually good for the game because it allowed it to squeeze every last bit of performance from the machine, being completely in control. So that's definitely a possible use case.

twic 6y ago
What is a late '80s kid with a box of 5¼" floppies if not an app orchestration platform?
codesnik 6y ago
some games from 80ies didn't even try to retain MSDOS in memory. The only way to "exit" the game was to reboot.
- karmakaze 6y ago
  Atari 8-bit games loaded from the boot sector so 'DOS' never even got loaded to begin with. There was still 'bios' ROM support for basic I/O (read sector, etc).
incrudible 6y ago
It's similar for for console games up until the sixth generation, also many earlier systems didn't even have a BIOS. Unfortunately, today most graphics hardware relies on drivers for specific versions of specific operating systems.
- Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
  > It's similar for for console games up until the sixth generation, also many earlier systems didn't even have a BIOS. Mmm? Earlier and every console system generation have a BIOS even a Atari 2600 have it. Unless I am misunderstanding your comment?
theamk 6y ago
Are you sure it was MSDOS and not BIOS, or to be even more specific, BIOS video services? MS-DOS is about files -- and AFAIK most games did not re-implement that part, nor they re-implement BIOS drive handling which was sometimes machine-specific. I certainly remember playing games from Novell Netware shared drive, which would be impossible if they re-implemented filesystem support. And none of the games I know was taking over the boot process as unikernels do. It was always: start DOS, configure system with MSDOS's CONFIG.SYS / AUTOEXEC.BAT, and only then start the game. Not very unikernel-y at all. Now BIOS video services were very common. BIOS "int 10" was great at setting video mode, but it sucked for everything else -- even in the text mode, we often read/wrote to framebuffer directly. Not sure about keyboard -- the hardware is fairly simple, so it would be easy to reprogram... but also BIOS did a satisfactory job handling it, so it was OK as long as you keep interrupts enabled. And as for mouse and sound card, those did not have any DOS drivers to begin with.

by js8 6y ago

twic 6y ago

What is a late '80s kid with a box of 5¼" floppies if not an app orchestration platform?

codesnik 6y ago

some games from 80ies didn't even try to retain MSDOS in memory. The only way to "exit" the game was to reboot.

karmakaze 6y ago
Atari 8-bit games loaded from the boot sector so 'DOS' never even got loaded to begin with. There was still 'bios' ROM support for basic I/O (read sector, etc).

incrudible 6y ago

It's similar for for console games up until the sixth generation, also many earlier systems didn't even have a BIOS. Unfortunately, today most graphics hardware relies on drivers for specific versions of specific operating systems.

Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
> It's similar for for console games up until the sixth generation, also many earlier systems didn't even have a BIOS. Mmm? Earlier and every console system generation have a BIOS even a Atari 2600 have it. Unless I am misunderstanding your comment?

theamk 6y ago

Are you sure it was MSDOS and not BIOS, or to be even more specific, BIOS video services? MS-DOS is about files -- and AFAIK most games did not re-implement that part, nor they re-implement BIOS drive handling which was sometimes machine-specific. I certainly remember playing games from Novell Netware shared drive, which would be impossible if they re-implemented filesystem support. And none of the games I know was taking over the boot process as unikernels do. It was always: start DOS, configure system with MSDOS's CONFIG.SYS / AUTOEXEC.BAT, and only then start the game. Not very unikernel-y at all. Now BIOS video services were very common. BIOS "int 10" was great at setting video mode, but it sucked for everything else -- even in the text mode, we often read/wrote to framebuffer directly. Not sure about keyboard -- the hardware is fairly simple, so it would be easy to reprogram... but also BIOS did a satisfactory job handling it, so it was OK as long as you keep interrupts enabled. And as for mouse and sound card, those did not have any DOS drivers to begin with.