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From: bmarsh@cod.NOSC.MIL (William C. Marsh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: DOS Extenders
Message-ID: <1943@cod.NOSC.MIL>
Date: 7 Jun 90 19:19:18 GMT
References: <3761@optilink.UUCP>
Reply-To: bmarsh@cod.nosc.mil.UUCP (William C. Marsh)
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 29
X-Local-Date: 7 Jun 90 12:19:18 PDT

In article <3761@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>Has anyone ported an application to any of the DOS extenders?  Any
>gotchas to watch for?  I suspect that this is a subject of general
>interest.  What do you do for customers with 8086/8088 processors?
>Tell them they need to upgrade?

I have used the Phar Lap extender for the 386, and about the only changes
I had to make (other than satisfying the High-C compiler) was to change
any direct call to DOS via intdos() and their like.  I have no complaints
about the extender, as all the functions I have used have worked exactly
as documented.  It's kinda tough to debug, as I miss CodeView, and their
debugger has a tendancy to single step into interrupt service routines
that get called between two of your instructions... (And always right
before I get to the broken part! ;-)  One limitation is that 'protected'
mode programs can not spawn other programs...

As for the users, you have to consider the program/package you are writing.
If you are writing a package that will have reasonable performance on
an 8088/8086, then I would expect a version that works on one.  But if
the program is a 3-D cadd program, I wouldn't expect any kind of 'reasonable'
performance on an 8088, so I wouldn't think requiring a 286 or 386 would
be that much of a handicap.

Bill
-- 
Bill Marsh, Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA
{arpa,mil}net: bmarsh@cod.nosc.mil
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"If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane."