Operating System questions

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ktwq

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#1 ktwq

Member since 2003 • 1199 Posts

Hey all,

1) How does an operating system work? Any difference between XP and Vista, or even Windows and Mac?

2) Why is it that some games require Vista only and older DOS games can't work on the newer OSs?

Thanks

15 years ago

metalisticpain

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#2 metalisticpain

Member since 2005 • 3536 Posts

Hey all,
1) How does an operating system work? Any difference between XP and Vista, or even Windows and Mac?
2) Why is it that some games require Vista only and older DOS games can't work on the newer OSs?
Thanks
ktwq

Woo thats a question that could be answered in a 100,000 word thesis. How does one work? its site on top of the hardware layer to interpret commands and perform functions. Difference between XP and Vista are vast, 95 -98 -ME were incremental updates but vista was a complete redo from scratch. To put it in perspective an operating system is millions of lines of code... millions. older dos games failt o run on new hardware because they look in x location for something, or send x command and the OS goes... What? New games require vista because of the same reason

15 years ago

OT_Rage

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#3 OT_Rage

Member since 2009 • 228 Posts

Hey all,
1) How does an operating system work? Any difference between XP and Vista, or even Windows and Mac?
2) Why is it that some games require Vista only and older DOS games can't work on the newer OSs?
Thanks
ktwq

1) an operating system works by being loaded from the bios. XP and Vista's made differences are in the realm of security and drivers. Macintosh can only run on Mac hardware (if its not hacked) and is based upon Unix. Windows went another way, with the DOS system, and thats essentially what everything is based off of in it. An operating system controls all the programs you want to run, and allocates memory and such to everything. Think of it as a traffic cop. 2) Different drivers, different coding, different architecture (bits etc). Im almost certain you can get DOS games to work with vista, since you can still use DOS. The games that require vista require it because Vista has the newest direct x, and it was made so that it wouldnt work on XP. Its not so much that things CANT work on other operating systems, so much as it is MADE so it cant be.

15 years ago

ktwq

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#4 ktwq

Member since 2003 • 1199 Posts

Hmmm... Interesting. Thanks

15 years ago