Why is DOS so slow in Windows XP?

[Bible John]

Is it because DOS is emulated in XP, where in Windows 3.11 or prior its
NATIVE. Even in Windows 98 DOS is native.

Technically Xp may not be using DOS, but its using a command line that
can run some old DOS apps, but not many.

Can anyone tell me why is it so slow?

In Mac OSX Tiger (just an example) I have something called Classic,
which in a way emulates, or more technically threads the old Mac
operating system, which is not Unix Based. OSX seems to use Unix at its
core, and is very stable.

I can run most Classic apps, and the majority of them are not slower.
Well the exception is video game emulators which ran much faster on a
native machine.

Can anyone tell me why this is? I thought that Windows XP is doing the
same thing with DOS as Mac OSX Tiger is doing with Classic?


Maybe I am mistaken.


John
--
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
CERM-Church Education Resource Ministries
http://www.cerm.info

 

[JS]

DOS has direct access to the PC's hardware (DOS is the Operating System),
current versions of Windows is the OS (like XP, which is based on Windows NT
technology) and prevent programs from having direct control over the
hardware. Apps must now communicate thru Windows which creates a certain
amount of overhead and adds stability.

JS

 

[Bible John]

DOS has direct access to the PC's hardware (DOS is the Operating System),
current versions of Windows is the OS (like XP, which is based on Windows NT
technology) and prevent programs from having direct control over the
hardware. Apps must now communicate thru Windows which creates a certain
amount of overhead and adds stability.

JS

I see that explains why its so slow. Why is Apple's Classic so much
faster (with the exception of Emulators). For example NESEM runs far
slower in classic than it did on my Performa 6360 I had 2 years ago.

--
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
CERM-Church Education Resource Ministries
http://www.cerm.info

 

[JS]

Not an Apple user, can't help you on this one.

JS

 

[CreateWindow]

Hi BJ,

If you are so inclined, you could download Virtual PC 2007 from Microsoft
(its FREE btw) and set up your own DOS 6.22 PC.
DOS runs very fast in the virtual environment. I have no idea why you would
do that. I do it for nostalgia reasons (Anyone remember GWBasic? or F-15
Strike Eagle? ;-)

CreateWindow
http://mymessagetaker.com

 

[JS]

Yep, Gee Wiz Basic.
Have an old bench mark I created using GW, QB and other early versions of
Basic, Fortran, Pascal and later moved to Visual Basic.

JS

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

I see that explains why its so slow. Why is Apple's Classic so much
faster

This is a Windows newsgroup. We don't care about Apple software.

 

[NoConsequence]

Is it because DOS is emulated in XP, where in Windows 3.11 or prior its
NATIVE. Even in Windows 98 DOS is native.

Technically Xp may not be using DOS, but its using a command line that
can run some old DOS apps, but not many.

Can anyone tell me why is it so slow?

In Mac OSX Tiger (just an example) I have something called Classic,
which in a way emulates, or more technically threads the old Mac
operating system, which is not Unix Based. OSX seems to use Unix at its
core, and is very stable.

I can run most Classic apps, and the majority of them are not slower.
Well the exception is video game emulators which ran much faster on a
native machine.

Can anyone tell me why this is? I thought that Windows XP is doing the
same thing with DOS as Mac OSX Tiger is doing with Classic?


Maybe I am mistaken.


John

DOS is not slow in XP. DOS does not even EXIST in XP.

 

[Bible John]

Dod runs dog slow in the Windows XP environment. Try running the same app in
98 and then in XP. You will see.

 

[Dennis McCunney]

Is it because DOS is emulated in XP, where in Windows 3.11 or prior its
NATIVE. Even in Windows 98 DOS is native.

Technically Xp may not be using DOS, but its using a command line that
can run some old DOS apps, but not many.

Can anyone tell me why is it so slow?

I need examples of what you think is "slow". I haven't seen that here,
but I don't run the same things that you do.

Can anyone tell me why this is? I thought that Windows XP is doing the
same thing with DOS as Mac OSX Tiger is doing with Classic?

Maybe I am mistaken.

In 2K and XP, Windows has a process called NTVDM, which creates a
virtual DOS machine on your PC. It's not DOS -- it's a sophisticated
DOS emulator. Sophisticated enough, in fact, that I haven't found much
that *won't* run under it.

The big problem children are DOS games. Early DOS PCs were slow and
limited. (The *original* IBM PC had an 8088 CPU running at 4.77 mhz.
My old PC clone running DOS used a NEC V20 CPU running at a whopping 10
mhz. That's *megahertz*, not *gigahertz*.)

To get acceptable performance for games and the like, programmers would
bypass DOS and access the hardware directly. That was fine in DOS,
which was a single-tasking system doing one thing at a time. It was
*not* fine when Windows came along, with the ability to run moe than one
program at a time. A program could not assume it owned the machine, but
needed to cooperate with other programs and take it's turn at getting
resources.

Microsoft created Direct X as a response to the needs of game designers
accustomed to writing directly to the hardware, and provided an API
they could use in their games to get the access to the hardware without
causing problems for everything *else* running.

My old DOS programs run at least as fast in an XP NTVDM as they did on
my old machine, but I'm mostly using character mode apps. I'm not
trying to play DOS games, with the exception of a few oldies like the
DOS ports of VMS Empire, or Unix Larn.

What do you see as slow?

John

______
Dennis

 

[Bible John]

I cant get into much detail with you, but if you contact the experts on the
alt.msdos newsgroup they will tell you. But try running a DOS app in XP and
then try ain 98 and you will see what I mean.

 

[Dennis McCunney]

I cant get into much detail with you, but if you contact the experts on the
alt.msdos newsgroup they will tell you. But try running a DOS app in XP and
then try ain 98 and you will see what I mean.

If you can't get into details about what you see as slow, I can't help
you. But I have run DOS programs under Win 3.11, Win95, Win98SE, Win2k
Pro SP4, and now WinXP SP2. I do *not* see the problems you do. It may
be specific to the DOS applications you are trying to run. What are they?
______
Dennis