Re: Subject: Re: success on 386 (was: Re: Does anybody try to

[Manfred Spraul]

Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> > I agree that the issue is mostly size, not speed.  What makes X large isn't
> > primarily the video drivers, it is the whole framework (server, xlib, toolkit,
> > wm).  The core of Windows 3.1/9x is most if not all hand-written assembler
> > that is very tight.  X is just much larger.
> 
> Im told the core of win9x is mostly C++ .
> 

I don't know about the new features in Win98 [usb, wdm, directX], but
Windows 95 contains large parts in either asm or 16-bit code.

* ring0 kernel: big parts asm. It's possible that the filesystem code is
written in C/C++. It's based on the Windows 3.1 VXD kernel, and that one
was 100% asm. [Macro assember, e.g. there is a 300 lines function
prologue macro,...]
* ring3 kernel: 32-bit code, I assume C or C++.
* window subsystem [user, gdi]: still in 16-bit code: IIRC I read in an
article about windows 95 that Microsoft thought about rewriting that in
32-bit code, but that would have increased the memory requirements by
nearly 1 MB, so they decided that this code remained 16-bit.

Most user space stuff should be 32-bit C++ [explorer, task manager,
internet explorer,...]

--
	Manfred