CompuServe Messages

Now THIS is NEWS!! Looks like "r5" will be the REAL "r4" we've been waiting for!! OS/2 Peer (peer networking successor to OS/2 Warp due any day now) and OS/2 SMP will be able to run Win32 apps. OS/2 Warp can currently run Win32s apps (yes, Virginia, you can play FREECELL under OS/2!). So unless Autodesk goes out of their way to make it incompatible, 3DSr"5" should run under the newer OS/2 versions! AND, OS/2 can run 3DSr3 and r3.5 (so-called r"4") NOW!! NT can't! Also, OS/2 is a more mature operating system than WinNT. Windows NT may SAY "Version 3.5" but that's because the version after 1.0 was named "3.1" for cheesy marketing reasons (to correspond with ordinary Windows 3.1 which had come out a few months previously) and should have been 1.1, and the current "3.5" should really be 1.5. OS/2 Warp on the other hand truly deserves the version number 3.0! Actually, if I'm right about WHY Johnny NT can't 3DS, then there should be a fix that Phar Lap could easily do if they're willing to. Windows (all versions from 3.1 through NT "3.5" [1.5]) implement DPMI Version 0.9 services, while OS/2 2.0 and up implement DPMI 1.0. Phar Lap requires DPMI 1.0 to run under a multitasking and/or 32-bit operating system. Actually, it requires the "-REALBREAK" DPMI call which is not available in DPMI 0.9 but is in DPMI 1.0. The reason we can run 3DSr3 and r3.5 (r"4") under Windows 3.1 and W4WG 3.11 is because Phar Lap provided a VxD called "PHARLAP.386" that loads under 16-bit Windows in 386-Enhanced Mode and adds the REALBREAK function call to Windows's DPMI 0.9. It still isn't DPMI 1.0, but it is enough to "run" (read: "crawl") 3DSr3 and up. But you have to copy PHARLAP.386 (provided on the 3DSr3 and up disks) to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory, and add "device=pharlap.386" to the "[386enh]" section of your SYSTEM.INI file. Problem is, VxDs designed for Win16 won't run under Win32 operating systems such as Windows NT or Windows95. So what's needed is for Phar Lap to make a version of "PHARLAP.386" for NT, and voila! Problem solved!