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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

I programmed a lot of real mode x86 assembly under DOS in the late 80s. I didn't have a ton of money, was a kid, and wasn't located close to any tech business (rural western Ohio). The bits and pieces I saw about Windows development on BBSs and in magazines were arcane and strange. I wondered how it all worked but, frustratingly, couldn't get my hands on the documentation or development tools.

Reading articles like this are fun glimpses into a world I dreamt about in my youth. It's a ton of fun, even if I'm probably never going to write any code related to it.

There was a lot of cleverness in the DOS-based Windows family, especially in dealing with constrained resources. I'm not sad it died out (because it lacked the overarching "real operating system" design), but I'm pleased to see it getting brought out into the open.

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Windows development (especially on 16-bit Windows) was weird and strange, but the VxD layer comprising the enhanced mode 386 components were even more arcane, originally written in assembly-only and virtually undocumented. While Windows 3.0 (and especially 3.1 and 95) had their VxD layers heavily documented by both Microsoft and third parties, the 386 components of Windows/386 are virtually undocumented outside of (ignoring modern research like my own work) sporadic references in DDKs for later versions of Windows (i.e. the Windows 3.0 Virtual Device Adaptation Guide that I mentioned) and the now-lost Windows/386 OEM binary adaptation kit.

Programming directly under the DOS environment certainly is a lot of fun, and there absolutely was a lot of cleverness in the DOS-based Windows family. People rag on it for being unstable and whatnot, but the truth is that it simply was the best compromise OS at the time. It was not as stable as NT, but it ran a lot faster on much slower hardware. It made compromises, but it made the right compromises for most people. By the time Windows XP came out, the market had changed such that the compromises were no longer necessary.

Ha! Funnily enough the VxD layer was the part I was most interested in. I didn't "get" protected mode until I was older, so that didn't help my efforts.

I definitely enjoy and appreciate the work you're doing.

Absolutely, the VxD layer has also been of particular interest to me. Unfortunately, much of that VxD layer is poorly-documented. Much of what comprises the Win32 subsystem in Windows 95 (i.e. VWIN32) is not well documented, nor is the equivalent VxD in Win32s. VFLATD, originally a part of Video for Windows, was to my knowledge not documented until Windows 95.

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