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OTVDM is great, but it's just using Wine. Windows really ripped out the whole 16-bit compatibility layer, which is a little sad.
by TillE 3y ago
OTVDM is great, but it's just using Wine. Windows really ripped out the whole 16-bit compatibility layer, which is a little sad.
- deaddodo 3y agoThey were kind of forced to. WoW (classic, not WoW64) relied on the CPU being able to switch to a 16-bit context, in much the way modern WoW uses amd64's compatibility mode. OTVDM's project page directly mentions this as a core component: > CPU Emulator > 64-bit Windows cannot modify LDT(NtSetInformationProcess(,ProcessLdtInformation,,) always returns error) They would have had to replace/extend WoW with an architecture emulator. Raising the development/support complexity quite a bit for little gain (few people that use Windows 11 are running DOS or Win16 applications today, beyond retro gamers who use DOSBox anyways).
- MarkSweep 3y agoIt’s not that Microsoft chose to rip it out. NTVDM relied on Virtual 8086 mode. X86 processors cannot transition to this mode from 64-bit mode. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode Intel is proposing to remove 16-but support entirely: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/envisioning-future-simplified-architecture.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...