SDL Now Supports DOS

119

JJayschwa about 3 hours ago 46 commentsRead Article on github.com

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Discussion (46 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

looneysquash•5 minutes ago

For a open source project like SDL is, for something like this, it's usually a matter of how invasive it is, and how likely the contributors seem to stick around and maintain it.

Different projects have different policies, and I don't know what SDLs is.

But they already have a lot of ports, so I trust they know what they're getting themselves into.

ronsor•about 2 hours ago

All that's left now is SDL for UEFI, and then all our games can run in a pre-OS environment.

BirAdam•37 minutes ago

Well… UEFI is kind of modern DOS.

chaps•about 2 hours ago

That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.

Xirdus•about 1 hour ago

I basically had this setup back in the day. I don't really know how I ended up with it, I was 7 at the time and none of it was intentional - but my bootloader had two entries: I could boot into Windows 98, or I could boot into Worms.

Dwedit•about 1 hour ago

It's a similar idea, but that's a DOS menu. At the point when the menu appears, MS-DOS 7.1 has already been loaded.

dale_glass•about 1 hour ago

Probably your parents setting it up?

As far as I know, Worms is a normal DOS game, so the only way for that to happen should be a DOS install configured to just auto-start Worms on boot. Which makes sense as a way to keep a kid away from anything that could cause trouble.

I very vaguely recall that there used to be a very few PC games that worked as boot floppies and possibly didn't use DOS at all, but it was a rarity and Worms definitely wasn't one.

queuebert•about 2 hours ago

I would guess a modern BIOS chip is as powerful as an NES, right?

snazz•about 1 hour ago

You can do substantially more in UEFI than NES-level games. (See https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.9_A/12_Protocols_Console_Suppo...)

fluoridation•about 2 hours ago

What do you mean by "BIOS chip"? Like, the flash memory that stores the motherboard's firmware? I don't think that contains any processing elements.

alnwlsn•about 2 hours ago

This is an especially funny screenshot as DosBOX itself is built on SDL.

theragra•about 1 hour ago

Hm, then we need dosbox running in dos!

aruametello•23 minutes ago

even better, windows running in dos.

oh wait...

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.0)

vunderba•about 1 hour ago

Awesome. I wonder how this would work with a 386+ targeted MS-DOS executable from FreeBASIC, which supports binding to SDL.

[1] - https://github.com/freebasic/fbc

jlokier•about 1 hour ago

Perfect! I was just doing some Turbo C development inside DOSBox-X inside Debian GNU/Linux inside VMware Fusion inside macOS this morning.

bpavuk•44 minutes ago

you may also enjoy watching Inception then :)

Dwedit•about 1 hour ago

Technically this already worked with HXDOS, which emulated DirectDraw well enough that SDL could use it.

dwedge•about 1 hour ago

I got really confused and thought this was sdf, I only read the comments and none of them made sense

shevy-java•21 minutes ago

Good - now we can play more DOS games again!

raverbashing•about 2 hours ago

Well I guess Allegra was a bit old already /s

sedatk•39 minutes ago

I loved Allegra! Saved me a lot of time when I was writing code for our musicdisk. That was 29 years ago though. :)

jan_Sate•about 2 hours ago

Uhm... excuse me? Why? Is there anyone even using DOS for anything serious these days?

mrweasel•about 1 hour ago

Perhaps not serious, but I think people gravitate towards older systems these days because they are easier to conceptualize. It's not unrealistic for a single person to have a complete grasp of e.g. the C64 and it's programming environment. DOS is similarly constraint, but also easier for you to form a more or less complete mental model around.

Some people love computers and making them do weird stuff, older computers make certain tasks feel more manageable.

sedatk•about 2 hours ago

Most computers in Turkey come with FreeDOS preinstalled because there's a law that states all computers must be sold with an operating system. FreeDOS turns out to be the cheapest and easiest.

That's why you don't let people who have never touched a computer write tech laws. You get results like this.

Dwedit•about 1 hour ago

The really weird case is where the computer isn't actually compatible with DOS, so they put in a locked-down Linux distro that emulates FreeDOS.

ronsor•about 1 hour ago

Wasn't it Dell or HP that did this? IIRC it was FreeDOS-on-QEMU-on-X11-on-Linux.

unleaded•about 1 hour ago

Those types of laws aren't all that bad.. they got us this: https://segaretro.org/Dottori_Kun

wk_end•about 1 hour ago

Is there a reason they don't go with Ubuntu or something like that instead?

prmoustache•about 1 hour ago

I guess they don't want to get support's call. DOS looks like firmware for non techies.

jordand•12 minutes ago

There's a lot of interesting projects and even innovation going on making new games for old PCs/consoles. James Lambert and Kaze are doing fantastic work in the N64 space as one example (watch their videos on Youtube)

kjs3•21 minutes ago

Because it's fun, at least for certain folks? Crazy, right?

wk_end•about 2 hours ago

Who said anything about "serious"?

(FWIW: I suspect there are more than a few old industrial control systems and such out there that are still running DOS, just because of an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude)

kjs3•16 minutes ago

My brother is in manufacturing. DOS is everywhere. Older things too (PDP-11? DG Nova? Seen both, semi-recently). Not just because "ain't broke, don't fix", but because when you have a cloth dying machine or brick forming machine you spent >US$5M for, that is often a bespoke install for your plant, you don't replace it because some guy who prolly slings Javascript all day sez "DOS is oooold, boomer".

gbin•about 2 hours ago

The real question is "why not?" :)

spijdar•about 1 hour ago

I think this PR is awesome, and I can totally see myself playing around with this at some point. Being able to create DOS executables of SDL projects is just ... cool!

But I do wonder about the practicality. This would, I presume (never done DOS development, never touched a memory extender) only run on 386+ CPUs, and maybe more importantly, probably require a newer CPU than that to run anything non-trivial at acceptable performance. So I wonder how many "real DOS machines" this can practically target.

Still, it is massively cool.

mikepurvis•about 2 hours ago

Hacker News

queuebert•about 2 hours ago

There used to be stock exchanges running happily on DOS. Maybe there still are.

chaps•about 2 hours ago

Worked at an exchange in 2007/2008 and... we had systems still running from the 80s. Mostly tape audit stuff.

BirAdam•33 minutes ago

Most use Linux now, and specifically RHEL. I did see some IBM z, but that was specifically for one old DB that handled oil pipeline stuff.

benatkin•27 minutes ago

SDL is written in C. So it can support it without too much trouble. And some people are compiling stuff to run on DOS. So it makes sense. And your objection doesn't hold any water.

reaperducer•10 minutes ago

Uhm... excuse me? Why? Is there anyone even using DOS for anything serious these days?

Translation: "Stop liking things I don't like!"

alnwlsn•about 2 hours ago

because you can