1
Programming / Re: DosDevIOCtl disabling keyboard in VIO mode
« on: March 07, 2024, 12:23:01 am »But I also do not understand why you would be dogmatic about using 32-bit only.Firstly from a technical cleanliness perspective. I thought that OS/2 2.0 was about upgrading to 32-bit. 30 years later and I'm still required to deal with 16-bit? Not what I want to do. Especially not for one problematic function (DosDevIOCtl) that would force me into 16-bit. I'd rather be forced into fullscreen.
Secondly, the pure 32-bit allows me to write a mini-clone of OS/2 either as an app that runs under another OS (e.g. UC386L that runs under Linux) or as a standalone OS (PDOS/386). Both available from http://pdos.org - new version that implements DosDevIOCtl uploaded a couple of minutes ago.
Note that "mini clone" means that it runs *certain* OS/2 executables - basically just the ones that were built with PDPCLIB (see makefile.wat). So anything that is C90-compliant, or uses ANSI x3.64 "extensions" and has been built with PDPCLIB or equivalent (I doubt that there is anything equivalent currently, but there is no barrier to that).QuoteOS/2 has a strong 16-bit heritage, that's just the way it is.And it doesn't need to be. With proper funding, OS/2 could be stripped internally of any 16-bit vestiges that affect a pure 32-bit application. As well as being a commercial competitor to Windows (note that I am similarly able to convert OS/2 into a mini Win32 clone with the use of win32os2 at pdos.org using the same technique). And yes, I know that Odin for OS/2 and Linux WINE are nominally superior (but neither are what I want).
So anyway, I want to be able to build a 32-bit OS/2 binary today, that runs on all those environments. And even if I lose the source code, the binary remains pure as better OS/2 clones come online.
Having worked on OS/2 for 25 years and more then 10 years on eComStation project I have somewhat experience in this. The issue is that it seems the funding that would be needed never arrived. It seemed nobody was interested in this approach. Could it be done, I guess so. OS/2 also had ODIN on it, so in the other direction that might work. However it seems that in most cases it was cheaper and faster to create a VM. Take Virtual PC with OS/2, Svista done by Serenity Systems. I seem to under years ago a France OS/2 customer wanted to move froim OS/2 to Linux. The problem was they had lost the sources of the OS/2 app. I seem to understand IBM tried to create an API layer on Linux. The project was never finished.
Anyway I am not saying it can not be done. I have no clue how much such a project would cost. But I am skeptical at this moment if it will ever come off the ground.
Roderick