LoadLin or equivalent
Jason Clinton
clintonj at umkc.edu
Sun Nov 3 21:40:53 CST 2002
Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Jason Clinton [mailto:clintonj at umkc.edu]
>
>
>>Win 9x is just a new graphical core over the top of MS-DOS
>>6/7.
>
>
> Um, no, not right at all. 3x was a GUI over an OS like XWindows over Linux,
> but W9x provides an additional layer of program functions, not just API's
> for the GUI. There is a DOS compatibility mode available, but true 9x
> programs will not run without the full 9x system loaded. Microsoft refers
> to the 9x extensions as "32 bit mode", which is not an accurate distinction
> but provides a clue about what's happening.
32bit protected mode (A.K.A. EMM386) with is basically a graphical
kernel with a ton of direct memmory mapped calls that run through the
MS-DOS core to the hardware and back again. Up until Win98 first-edition
you could shutdown the graphical side and return to DOS without
rebooting. Win98 SE changed that (but not many people had Second Edition
-- it was OEM only).
So, if you're in one of those systems, like I said before, just click
shutdown and "Restart in MS-DOS Mode" and the computer will dump the
Win9x kernel and return to DOS w/o rebooting. If, however, you have
entries in your msdos.cfg file in C:WindowsSystem, the system will
reboot to load the contents of that file in the MS-DOS environment.
(Things like MSCDEX and your ATAPI Cd-ROM driver).
>
> Last time I looked, the Linux Loader for W9x forced a reboot to DOS mode -
> clearly not necessary if what you say were true - but it may have advanced
> since then.
>
Forcing a reboot to MS-DOS mode was the safest way since Microsoft could
never guarentee in anyway that the Win9x kernel would shutdown properly
and return control to the MS-DOS prompt.
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