CompuServe Messages

3DSr3 DOES work under Windows so long as DEVICE=PHARLAP.386 is added to the [386enh] section of the SYSTEM.INI file (and, of course, that said PHARLAP.386 file is copied to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory). I believe that corrects the "real breaks" problem. A remaining problem is that unless a DOS program is Windows-aware and uses some little-known tricks (which another user has detailed for us on this Forum a few weeks back — thanks!), a DOS program cannot know when it has the full screen or not, and if it's a graphics program and either the card or the video mode is not one of the standard ones Windows knows about (CGA, EGA, VGA, 8514/A, maybe XGA, and that's about it), Windows cannot properly save and restore the screen modes, so the DOS program would have to do so itself, and it cannot know _when_ to do so without having to be Windows-aware. Text mode programs don't have this problem, since Windows already knows how to handle the standard text modes, including VGA's 80×50, the one I'm proposing that this driver utilize. No need for it to be "Windows-aware" in this case. And, it will multitask while running within a window, which no graphics DOS program can do, period, even if it's "Windows-aware." This means, for instance, you can have 3DS with this text driver running in Slave mode, in a window that is using one of the small pseudotext fonts, and size the window such that you can see only the "Frame ## of ###" and "Last render time" fields of the status dialog box. Set the Background Priority somewhat low so that 3DSr3 doesn't slow other tasks down too much, and then you can use Windows (say, to edit maps for another project) while at the same time your Windows machine is helping out a tad with the network rendering farm. Of course, all of this is moot with OS/2 2.1, which CAN multitask DOS graphics programs, and does so MUCH more effectively than Windows, and to whom Phar Lap isn't even an annoyance. Under OS/2, you can actually run multiple copies of 3DS at once: say, one as a Network Rendering slave chugging away in the background with little degradation, and another in UI mode accessing the hardware key, with its Background Execution property (OS/2's Workplace Shell is a fully object-oriented system) set to OFF so that it doesn't use any cycles when you're not actively using it. So you can be working on one project while rendering another! Whenever you take a break, just shove the UI instance of 3DS into the background, and it is suspended, allowing the Rendering instance to run at nearly full DOS speed! Not bad for a < $50 operating system! 🙂