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I am working on a legacy DOS app that I hope to modernize into a Windows app, but it will be in a series of stages. In this stage, I need to write a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) COM application to monitor some of the activity going on in the app.
I wrote similar TSR DOS apps in the mid-80's, but it has been a very long time. It took some special effort to get a DOS .COM app to compile at all with VS 2019 - no MASM (done under C++), and the Linker doesn't get some of the options that used to be available...
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I figured the need had to be some type of legacy application or hardware. Good luck with the effort!
BTW, a friend's organization has some specialized hardware that runs only on a 286. They have had the same PC in production since ~1990. I have no idea what they will do when the PC finally fails.
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That's the exact same problem the users of this application have - their old hardware (for DOS) is failing. That includes printers that handle straight ASCII output.
If your friend is interested, I might be able to provide some guidance or assistance on this...
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Andreas Mertens wrote: If your friend is interested, I might be able to provide some guidance or assistance on this...
Thanks for the offer, but my friend is not responsible for the situation nor directly involved. The responsible folks are utilizing the time-old method "lots of praying" in lieu of replacing the hardware. When it eventually fails they will be forced to buy a new solution.
I suspect they are ignoring that corollary to Murphy's Law that states, "hardware failure will occur at exactly the worst possible moment".
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Wow, is this a paid gig? Who is still using 8086 chipsets?
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Essentially, all of us. It's still the common denominator if you don't want to make any assumptions on which platform your code is going to run.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I think it's reasonable to assume there will be at least a Pentium-compatible processor these days since it's more than twenty-five years old now.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I never was a fan of Intel, but are there not compatible microcontrollers?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I am not sure. The main ones Intel had/have were not compatible like the 8048 and 8051. I have not followed microcontrollers for a while now.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Tern still makes embedded controllers running 186 to 486 compatible chips. so there's still manufactures building with those chips. I worked with one of their 286 boards a couple years back, it was a lot of fun writing SPI and 2-wire code to communicate with the various other chips on the board.
Haven't touched assembly in years, for now c, is good enough in what i'm doing.
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Yes, but 8086 is specifically 16 bit.
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the 80186 is pretty much the same as the 8086, just meant for embedded applications, and ran the same instruction set.
The x286 chip is also only 16bit, but getting into x386 things changed up allowing 32bit code to run, but the original x86 -16bit would still run fine.
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The virtual DOS support in the 386 was, inadvertently, one of the worst things to ever happen. Because of that, Microsoft bailed out of OS/2, and went back to making money on DOS and started Windows 1.0 on top of DOS, and the rest is history.
Without that, OS/2 would have likely stuck and we'd have a vastly more sane environment to work in today. OS/2 threw out the Win32 API and created a completely new one that was consistent, and actually designed, not excrementally grown.
Explorans limites defectum
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That's not exactly what happened. Windows 1.0 was quite a while before OS/2. A dispute over Windows 3.1 was what led to discontinuing joint development on OS/2. Microsoft took that API and developed NT with it and the end result was still very, very similar to OS/2 . In fact, the older documentation of the Win32 API would note compatibility with OS/2 for the various functions.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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They were about 2 years apart, but that's initial release, not when planning and work started on them. Anyhoo, the bottom line is that once it became possible to 'multi-task' DOS applications, OS/2 was pretty much doomed because Microsoft could continue to milk that cow instead of forcing the adoption of a new standard. Obviously forcing a new standard is hard, but we'd have all been far better off for it.
As to the compatibility there isn't much that I can see. The OS/2 API was extremely consistent in terms of naming and parameters and such. The Win32 API was basically a hacked up version of the previous Windows APIs. Win32 is a mess in comparison to the OS/2 interfaces.
IBM took OS/2 on to the 32 bit form and it was nice, though of course back then it took like 25 floppy disks to install or some such.
Explorans limites defectum
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Do you really have to go back that far? I got by with a Pentium instruction manual about twenty years ago.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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i still got the intel x386 processor book on my shelf, real handy when working with the x86 embedded stuff.
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I used to have all my "old" development references, but after a divorce and moving to US for a few years, a lot of things got lost in the process...
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Is a Pole Vault an Eastern European bank?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Would be funny if it were 
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Seems like a safe bet. Euro aware that there used to be zloty them?
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Is that your two groszy?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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would it be a safe place to keep my sticks?
Message Signature
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No, but that's a common error. For some reason they put huge amounts of ice in there and keep it from melting. I have heard that when the Poles' ice melts, we all are going to drown.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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