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A comment on Writing a simple operating system from scratch (2010) [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Writing a simple operating system from scratch (2010) [pdf] by chungy on Friday March 25, 2022 @01:30PM (#30804962)
Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me all did exactly the thing described as "more trouble than it is worth"; they are 32-bit protected mode operating systems[0] that makes frequent context switches to 16-bit mode and utilize BIOS functions.

[0] Yes, I know, Windows 3.1 applications were almost always 16-bit unless you installed Win32S. It's somewhat complicated.

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Re:Writing a simple operating system from scratch (2010) [pdf] by smhenderson on Friday March 25, 2022 @04:42PM (#30806845)
I guess in their case they had so much already written code to work with BIOS calls it was worth adding the shim layer. But if you were to start tomorrow with no legacy code then it would be more trouble than it's worth.
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Re:Writing a simple operating system from scratch (2010) [pdf] by chungy on Friday March 25, 2022 @05:32PM (#30807254)
That is the story of Windows NT after all :)
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