NV30 to be launched at Fall 2002 Comdex

[Sabastian]

AFAIK WinME is based on the Win9x kernel which is both 16bit(DOS) and 32bit(GUI) modes. You should, although I am not familiar with the OS, be able to get the command prompt by going to run and typing "command". If not there likely is a way that you could get the OS(DOS) to run.(I just am not familiar with WinME OS at all.)

IFRC MS attempted to make the OS appear as if it was Win2000 based by playing around with the GUI appearance, but it is still based on the 16bit/32bit mode kernel found in Win98. Therefore you should be able to evolke the DOS 16bit mode. But from what I have learned at school WinME IS in fact a poor OS but I wouldn't lay Nvidias driver problems on the Win9x kernel.

 

[Sabastian]

WinME does NOT include DOS.

Prove me wrong

WinME is based on 9x kernel supporting both 16 bit mode and 32 bit modes. You are wrong.

Using MS-DOS in Windows Me:

http://support.microsoft.com/common...r=&DU=&SD=GN&LN=EN-US&CND=1&VR=&CAT=&VRL=&SG=

EDIT: BTW Mr.Giganticus what ever happened to them reference boards of the NV30 you claimed existed over a month ago. Who was it you said you worked for? Leadtek?

 

[alexsok]

x-bit labs does it again:

NV30 to be Announced at Comdex Fall. With the Boards Appearing Afterwards?
Posted 9/10/02 at 3:50 am by Anton

Well, it looks like now I can share some information about the timeframes of announcement and availability of the code-named NV30 graphics processor from NVIDIA. As far as I understood from our sources, the Santa-Clara based GPU developer will unveil its highly-anticipated chip at Comdex Fall. Keeping in mind that they plan to start selling the graphics cards by the Christmas holiday season, the actual products based on the latest VPU should start selling right after the announcement. Comdex Fall will take its place in Las Vegas from 18 to 22 November, so, it seems to be the right timeframe and place for the announcement.

Remember that NVIDIA NV30 features 8 rendering pipelines with 2 TMUs on each one, DirectX 9 support, 256-bit DDR SDRAM memory, AGP 8x and a lot more technical innovations. I would like to point out that some Pixel and Vertex Shader features NV30 can offer are even better than provided by the target DirectX 9 platform. Additionally, the next-generation VPU from NVIDIA offers some very efficient memory controller to provide even higher memory bandwidth compared to the rivals and predecessors.

Keeping in mind that DirectX 9 and NV30 schedules are aligned, we can expect the new API from Microsoft to become available by the end of November. I also want to remind you that NVIDIA plans to launch their NV18 and NV28 this Fall, I believe they will announce these GPUs later this month or in early October.

 

[Galilee]

Like I said. It's not just old DOS games that won't work; fullscreen dos prompts don't work EITHER, and that's actually something that people use, even today.

It does'nt? How strange. Maybe not in Win9x, but it works in XP.

 

[Sabastian]

Like I said. It's not just old DOS games that won't work; fullscreen dos prompts don't work EITHER, and that's actually something that people use, even today.

It does'nt? How strange. Maybe not in Win9x, but it works in XP.

XP does not support 16bit mode. Nore does it support DOS, IIRC it does have a DOS emulator though. VDM or virtual DOS machine.... argh I am trying to remmember this stuff from some time ago please correct me if I am wrong here. But there is no DOS at all in Win2000 or XP Microsoft is trying to get rid of it as much as possible. Anyhow the Win2000 kernel does not support DOS but does emulate it.

EDIT: In 16 bit mode the software effects the hardware directly.. Win2000 + XP does not allow for this. In win 2000 + XP all software that accesses hardware must be routed through the HAL(Hardware Abstraction Layer.) thus seperating drivers from drectly effecting the hardware. Since DOS runs in 16 bit mode not supported by Win2000 or XP there is no way to directly effect the hardware via drivers. Again with the exception of the DOS emulator there is no such thing as DOS on a Win2000 system or for that matter WinXP..

 

[Dio]

I'm not sure that's accurate. My very sketchy knowledge of the way the NT-class kernels handle 16-bit mode is that they allow certain types of 'direct' access and handle others through a port catcher.

In my experience DOS games all work fine on 2K, but getting the sound working is right tricky. However, I have heard reports that if you put a vintage Soundblaster into the machine and set the command line variables appropriately, everything will work fine. The problem nowadays is that most sound cards don't really offer DOS compatibility any more.

See ntvdm.cjb.net - VDMSound helps with this quite a lot... with that I was able to make my own game run fine with sound on my 2K machine. That uses plenty of direct VGA access. I also believe that the VESA2.0 interface works fine in a DOS box.

 

[Grall]

Galilee:

"It does'nt? How strange."

Monitor goes into powersave mode as soon as any DOS fullscreen program is run, either in text mode or graphics... Highly annoying.

Alexok:

"Remember that NVIDIA NV30 features 8 rendering pipelines with" (et cetera et cetera)

The specs your excerpt claimed hasn't been announced by Nvidia, has it? It's more or less what everyone assumes, right? No, I'm not going to ask you to stop spreading rumors, hehehe! Just wanted to check again, because that, "Remember that..." thingy sounded a bit weird. I mean, if it hasn't been announced, how could I remember it?

Anyway, sure sounds interesting, but we'll have to see if it's true or not. Has there been any firm date set for an announcement by the way? Someone speculated Comdex, but that WAS speculation, right?


*G*

 

[Sabastian]

I'm not sure that's accurate. My very sketchy knowledge of the way the NT-class kernels handle 16-bit mode is that they allow certain types of 'direct' access and handle others through a port catcher.

In my experience DOS games all work fine on 2K, but getting the sound working is right tricky. However, I have heard reports that if you put a vintage Soundblaster into the machine and set the command line variables appropriately, everything will work fine. The problem nowadays is that most sound cards don't really offer DOS compatibility any more.

See ntvdm.cjb.net - VDMSound helps with this quite a lot... with that I was able to make my own game run fine with sound on my 2K machine. That uses plenty of direct VGA access. I also believe that the VESA2.0 interface works fine in a DOS box.

LOL, the problem is I am not sure of the info myself. But to my understanding Win2000 kernel is different the the NT kernel to some degree. It is supposed to be the best that NT has to offer as well as 9x kernel. But...... at any rate the Win2000 OS is more compartmentalised and does keep hardware from directly accessing the hardware. I have had many problems with different software that was developed with the 9x kernel in mind working on a Win2000 kernel. AFAIK Win2000 kernel does not support 16 bit mode.... please correct me if I am wrong here. Win2000 is not supposed to allow software to directly effect hardware. This is the primary reason AFAIK that Win2000 is more "stable". IIRC VDM operates sharing memory with Win2000 where DOS runs in its own memory in 16 bit mode and is totally oblivious to 9x kernel running in 32 bit. Mayhap things have changed over the last year or so since I took my course in Win2000 network admin. Sorry if my info is incorrect or outdated.(I also reserve the right to be incorrectly remmembering the matter at hand. )

 

[Guest]

x-bit labs does it again well if you mean making false statements yep they did it again (it is mostly false or based upon rumoured specs)



Even if they will be ad comdex showing nv.xx behind closed doors showing a porn movie it won't be on shelves in european stores b4 February.


They not in the same situation as 3dfx was but they made a simulare mistake .........

 

[Donald]

AFAIK Win2k does not support true 16-bit DOS mode.

From MSDN:

Program-Specific Issues

The following functions do not work in Windows:

All MS-DOS functions except task-switching APIs (program programming interface functions) are supported.

Block mode device drivers are not supported. (Block devices are not supported, so MS-DOS IOCTL APIs that deal with block devices and SETDPB functions are not supported.)

Interrupt 10 function 1A returns 0; all other functions are passed to read-only memory (ROM).

Interrupt 13 calls that deal with prohibited disk access are not supported.

Interrupt 18 (ROM BASIC) generates a message that says ROM BASIC is not supported.

Interrupt 19 will not reboot the computer, but will cleanly terminate the current virtual DOS machine (VDM).

Interrupt 2F dealing with the DOSKEY program call outs (AX = 4800) is not supported.

Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions (MSCDEX) functions 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, E, and F are not supported.

The 16-bit Windows subsystem on an x86 computer supports enhanced mode programs; it does not, however, support 16-bit VxDs (virtual device drivers). The subsystem on a non-x86 computer emulates the Intel 40486 instruction set, which lets the computer run Enhanced-mode programs, such as Microsoft Visual Basic, on RISC computers.

This means that Windows does not support 16-bit programs that require unrestricted access to hardware. If your program requires this, it will not work in Windows NT or Windows 2000.

 

[Sabastian]

AFAIK Win2k does not support true 16-bit DOS mode.


This means that Windows does not support 16-bit programs that require unrestricted access to hardware. If your program requires this, it will not work in Windows NT or Windows 2000.

Thanks for that Donald. Much appreaciated. Started to doubt myself there.

 

[Testiculus Giganticus]

I stand corrected on the account that WinME does not support DOS. I haven`t used a Win9x based OS for about 5 years, and my ignorance is if not excusable maybe understandable. And about the beta boards what makes you so certain that absolutely no incarnation of NV30 ever existed? The fact that Anand said that it had just taped out? The fact that sites contradict themselves every day? I am going to state it again-there have been incarnations of the NV30 in the form of alpha-boards. Changes in schedule(read delays) have taken place due to various reasons and the release date has been pushed back. At this moment it is unclear wheter the part will hit market this year or not, but chances are that you will have something under the Christmas tree, maybe even if you live in Europe. Again, I apologize for the WinME stuff , but most of the other observations still stand.

 

[Guest]

"but chances are that you will have something under the Christmas tree

Sure there will be summert under that tree but that wouldn't be a nv 3x
besides that I don't want 1 it won't be availble at that time frame you give and certainly not in Europa and the boards you are talking about excist indeed...........in your imagination


While there is a 9700 Pro who beats all current cards on the market still peeps keep wanting a paper card to worship.

You peeps ever notice that there are more Forums that talk about nvidia vidcard problems then any other piece of hardware.......

 

[Galilee]

The reason why Testiculus Giganticus said WinMe didnt support DOS, is because when WinMe came MS officially dropped support MS-DOS-mode. I remember it clear as day. People were really mad at every damn forum. Then someone managed to hack the startup so that you could boot into DOS.

But seriously, does people still use Win9x? Plz get on with your lives and embrace technology.

 

[KimB]

You peeps ever notice that there are more Forums that talk about nvidia vidcard problems then any other piece of hardware.......

Considering there are currently nearly twice as many nVidia cards sold over the past two years or so as any other single manufacturer, why should that surprise anybody?

Besides, I think most of it is due to the business model of nVidia. That is, not all boards are created equal...

 

[WaltC]

You know what's worse than posting unsubstantiated rumor without advertising it as such (which I'm not even sure happened here)? Having the ability to edit your posts to make the rest of the thread meaningless.

B3D, please limit edits to 30-60 mins after posting. I'd understand mods editing posts at the request of the author if their sources got upset, but this day-to-day editing (that aleksok seems to be doing way too much of) is getting out of hand. Maybe he'd reconsider some of what he posts with such a rule in place, and we'd be spared this Mission Impossible post phenomenon ("this post will self-destruct as soon as someone contradicts it, thereby kicking the legs out of the subsequent argument unless someone managed to quote the offending post in a reply").

I don't know...I like the longer edit periods. I don't know how often I've returned to a thread days later only to see a glaring spelling or grammatical error I would dearly like to correct in a previous post. There's one very good way to render after-the-fact edits useless, you know. Always quote as fully as need be in a reply--a person may edit his own message--but he can't edit your post containing his original text... Indeed, I imagine fully quoted pertinent sections would put a chill on someone's desire to play with his earlier statements.

 

[KimB]

Edits are also good for erasing things that should not have ever been posted, but were not caught in time (such as accidentally "skirting" an NDA).

 

[Bigus Dickus]

A PM to a mod should always be able to take care of such instances in a relatively short time.

Everyone makes grammatical and spelling mistakes, so I don't see the need for editing a post 24 hours after it was made.

 

[WaltC]

Then how about some real complaining about nvidia drivers on your front page? If there are so many issues as your form indicates then why not put a wip to nvidia with regards to their poor drivers?

What would I solve by doing that? NVIDIA already knows they have driver problems.

That's obvious, isn't it? I mean, assuming a certain number of people who visit your site are potential nVidia GPU customers, if there's an issue don't you think they should be advised about it so that they could make informed purchasing decisions?