Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1

by userbinator • 4 months ago

72 19 4 months ago

gignico• 4 months ago

Running Windows 3.1 in True Color Full HD

People from the time would be astonished by the hardware we have now yet bloated software globs up every ounce of performance. What a waste! </granny mode=off>

hsbauauvhabzb• 4 months ago

I’m sure my privacy conscious setup would STILL on average transmit > 56kbps of telemetry, despite my best efforts

canpan• 4 months ago

Things are slow, aren't they? I feel there was a lot of less lag in old operating systems and software.

I use two editors now. VS Code as full IDE when I want to code heavily. And a homemade FLTK based editor with just basic syntax coloring for writing notes and doing quick things.

wkjagt• 4 months ago

I use a 27 year old Pentium 2 laptop with Windows 98 for a hobby project. And I keep asking myself: why does this thing feel so fast? And it could be even faster if I replaced the HDD with a CF card.

userbinator3• 4 months ago

I believe Win9x (and the rest of the DOS-based Windows) has lower input latency than the NT-based ones, largely due to a simpler architecture with shorter codepaths.

Here's a related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001407

HeckFeck• 4 months ago

I've a Compag Armada E500, and it runs Windows 98 fairly swiftly with its PIII processor and 256MB RAM. I've also a 2009 MacBook and it runs Snow Leopard like a dream, yet with "only" 2GB of RAM. And either of these machines could do nearly anything I ask of a PC today - programming, web browsing, comms, gfx edits, even some gaming, while feeling snapper, with less shite flying in my eyes ("notifications" and their wretched noises) as I work.

Someone will explain to me the business and economic reasons, but that just flies over my caveman brain that asks "why does bashing rock feel slower?"

jeroenhd2• 4 months ago

The problem with these comparisons is often that the old OS doesn't actually do the same thing modern software does. Smoothly rendering a GIF/mp4/webm in a chat channel will bring that Windows 98 machine to its knees. Even complex software like web browsers on these older machines do a lot less work. They were also often a lot slower, as load times for modern SSDs are closer to old RAM than to the hard drives at the time.

I can imagine that your particular workload doesn't require all those bells and whistles, and I think it's probably true that only running the bare minimum software like you would back in the day is horrifically inefficient on modern operating systems. But, at the same time, kernels don't crash as often, disks encryption is actually a thing now, file downloads are no longer expressed in kilobits per second and the much prettier screens render much smoother media for a fraction of the performance impact.

Of course there are inefficiencies that could be fixed (like how chat apps are skins around browsers now) but a lot of efficient software from back in the day cost an arm and a leg to build. In the end, the software industry found out that customers are happier to pay when you deliver new features faster than when you deliver new features later (which still run on the old hardware, though the customer may have already replaced said hardware at the time you release your feature).

With current prices for RAM and other system components, I hope companies will once again feel the pressure to build for limited hardware. Then again, when I look at the hardware developers are lugging around, I highly doubt things will change quick enough.

antod• 4 months ago

Can you install Office 4.3 from floppies faster than installing the latest Windows updates? Not being a recent Windows users, I'm actually kinda curious. I'm sure the CD version would install faster.

userbinator3• 4 months ago

Incidentally this is the same driver that someone else used with an RTX 5060 Ti: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/enthusiast-ins...

It's good to see that the latest GPUs can still be used in "dumb framebuffer" mode, are mostly VGA-compatible, and have VESA VBE support. I suspect AMD / NVIDIA might still have some sort of DOS-based factory tooling when bringing up new GPUs for the first time. In sadder news, I've read that the latest Intel integrated GPUs no longer have a VBIOS and are UEFI-only; although it might only be a matter of time before someone vibe-codes (vibe-ports?) one based on those from an older model.

rwmj2• 4 months ago

BIOS support has indeed been dropped from modern video cards. I was hoping something like https://github.com/CSMWrap/CSMWrap might work, but the README says that MS-DOS games don't work under that.

userbinator3• 4 months ago

That has a very generic VBIOS which would probably work on an original IBM VGA, but the problem is that each GPU needs a specific VBIOS to switch it between VGA and hi-res modes by writing vendor-specific registers. VBIOS is effectively a driver, so given the necessary documentation or existing OSS driver source it should be possible to write a suitable one even for GPUs that are UEFI-only.

pavlov3• 4 months ago

Now I’m wondering if someone could write a 3dfx Glide driver for hardware acceleration of late-period DOS games on RTX 5060 Ti.

rasz• 4 months ago

you can already play all Glide games accelerated in emulators.

rwmj2• 4 months ago

The NVIDIA GeForce 1050 GTX has some issues with windowed DOS prompts, and presumably newer NVIDIA hardware has the same problem. The issues include potential freezes when using the mode command to change the size of the prompt, and font corruption when switching to full screen (which also affects blue screens).

Someone with connections to NVIDIA support should really file a bug about this!

Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1

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