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From: rdippold@maui.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: Suitability of Windows platform
Message-ID: <1991Mar8.014410.22510@qualcomm.com>
Date: 8 Mar 91 01:44:10 GMT
References: <27331@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Sender: news@qualcomm.com
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Lines: 48

In article <27331@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> jdb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian K. W. Hook) writes:
>1.  Does Windows support joystick (at all) and mouse and joystick
>simultaneously?

No built in joystick support.  No problem with you accessing the joystick,
though.

>2.  Can I write a 8+ bit ONLY application under Windows, or will it dither
>to lower (4-bit) resolution?

If your video driver/card can handle 8 bits it will do the true 8 bits, other-
wise it will dither.

>3.  I understand that I can write a lot of my functions using far calls and
>store them in a separate file/library, much like a shared lib under UNIX or
>VMS (I believe they are called DLLs).  Please tell me about these.

It's a Dynamic Link Library.  All you do is tell the compiler to link some
of your modules together into one of these.  When you compile your program
you tell it about the DLL, and whenever it needs one of the functions it will
load it from there.

>4.  Does Windows supply me with information on determining the current
>hardware (type of processor, video adapter, etc.)?  Most of the tricks I
>have heard of determining clock speed and chip type won't work under
>enhanced mode windows.

No idea.  It will tell you colors, resolution of the current video driver.

>5.  What is the maximum color resolution of Windows?  Will it do 16 or
>24-bit color?

It will do 24-bit color.

>6.  How good is Windows in doing frame animation?
It sucks.  Horribly.  You can't do page flipping or any other reasonable
way of animation.

>7.  How good is Windows in doing high speed (19,200bps) asynch
>communications over COM1 and COM2 to another Windows machine?
 
It's even worse.  You will need something like the Hayes ESP card to get
reliable transfers at that rate.

>8.  Does Windows automatically take advantage of a math coprocessor?

It doesn't need to, it doesn't do any floating point math.  Your program can
use it with no problem, however.