CompuServe Thread

I've gotten all of the Adesk players, both DOS and Windows versions, to run under OS/2. Note that while they "work", they really don't work as smoothly as they do under a pure DOS environment. Remember that OS/2 is preemptively multi-tasking under everything, stealing CPU cycles away from the programs. Running any type of animation can be a real CPU hog, but you can't make up CPU cycles – they are a limited resource. The result is that while I do all my own work under OS/2 (Autodesk needs to wake up that OS/2 is here now, with a growing number of users), all use of this work before an audience is done with a straight DOS machine using the DOS players since they run the best/smoothest. The Windows player is particularly bad in this regard, since it isn't really acceptable (my judgement) under straight DOS/Windows due to the tremendous amount of Windows overhead in addition to trying to get the animation on the screen. Using it under OS/2 just compounds that problem even more. I'd guess that any problems encountered with the Windows player is probably a video driver problem. Some of the larger video card makers – ATI and Diamond come to mind immediately – have had terrible problems with OS/2, aided and abetted by IBM (just when it looked like they were getting their act together, IBM released the 2.11 CSD which "broke" a lot of video drivers.) I personally use a Hercules Dynamite (uses the Tseng W32i chip and Tseng drivers) which I highly recommend as being first class drivers. I've also heard a lot of good things about the IBM S3 drivers with most S3 based cards. However, you need to be alert that there were (are?) some cards (Diamond) which did things that rendered the IBM drivers unusable. I'm flat out guessing here, but having a good feel for the mechanics of Windows programming, I'm sure that the Windows player "pushes" the envelope a bit, making it potentially more susceptible to driver bugs when working under OS/2. – – – George.