Bypass the OS, is it possible?

i asked someone a question once
Q: do gfx card drivers talk direct to the hardware under xp
A: no all hardware is abstracted
Q: even the cpu ?
A: yes

is that right ?

 

yes. here's some reading on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_abstraction_layer

 

For those who are impatient.........

http://www.splashtop.com/index.php

 

Or you could just get Vista and use sleep mode....

 

Never got it how people could miss this feature in either Vista or Windows XP. I have used that feature in Windows XP since 4 years ago!

 

Could be they don't want to waste power without a good reason. In sleep mode your machine will take quite a bit more power than when turned off.

 

Even years later after the introduction of sleep mode, I find that programs and hardware still doesn't play nice with it always.

 

I don't know about XP but i've certainly never had an issue with Vista.

That said, I usually shut programmes down before going into sleep mode apart from the occasional web browser.

 

I'm a big fan of the hibernate function; it takes slightly longer than standby, but uses no power and isn't susceptible to power failures

 

Vista has improved by making it hybrid. Not that it matters much on my desktop. Sleep is awesome though! A great way to save some energy without a loss in time. Nowadays I never leave my computer running by itself.

 

sure it's possible. though the game will have to manage ALL the things that an OS does. the hardware doesn't communicate, coordinate, operate on its own independantly.

buy an operating systems book (UNIX you'd probably understand easiest). THEN you will see it...it's like MAGIC how this shit happens....fucking A.

 

Bypassing the OS requires you to write your own OS. As said, using Linux instead is much simpler.

Btw, half the time I use sleep on Vista, it tells me "an unexpected system shutdown has occured..." And sometimes it refuses to boot, and insists on repairing the "damage", which takes as long as I'm patient (before I hold down the power button). Seems to be a very common problem.

 

Doesn't EFI support a feature like this?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/01/22/efi_extensible_firmware_interface_preview/1

My bold.

 

Agreed. I dont even shut down my Oracle XE database. I just let it run, and then I hit Hibernate and when the machine comes back up it proceeds to load the state of the database back to memory from the disk. I do not know if that is good for my laptop hard drive in the long run but it sure is convenient!