Subj : X86S
To   : fusion
From : Nightfox
Date : Thu Apr 18 2024 16:54:59

  Re: X86S
  By: fusion to All on Thu Apr 18 2024 07:09 pm

 fu> There was a thread about this on the os2world forum as well if anyone
 fu> wants to check that out (don't have the url offhand..)

 fu> Essentially, all legacy 16-bit support would be removed from the hardware
 fu> itself, as well as some of the 32-bit support (no Windows 7 or 10 32-bit,
 fu> OS/2 nor ArcaOS). VirtualBox & others would no longer virtualize any of
 fu> these either (i.e. No VBox Win7 BBS with DOS support, proxmox Windows
 fu> guest, etc)

 fu> Seemingly the available options would be Windows 64-bit with the NTVDMx64
 fu> (which DM mentioned breaks stuff now) or DOSBox/PCEm/etc type emulators.

That would be a bummer about not being able to natively run operating systems like OS/2 or ArcaOS etc. anymore, but maybe at least a 64-bit version of ArcaOS could be made.

I'm currently using dosemu2 in Linux to run DOS doors, so hopefully that and similar mechanisms would continue to work.

I suppose this was bound to happen at some point.  In some ways, I think we users of x86 architecture have been lucky that at least some amount of backwards compatibility has continued this long.  There are some computer platforms (such as Mac) that have swapped their hardware architecture more than once, with official backwards compatibility (via emulation) only lasting a limited time. 

Nightfox
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