Re: from elsewhere, an assembler

On Apr 10, 6:37 pm, "Jim Carlock" <anonym...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Vista supposedly drops 16-bit support altogether.


Only 64 bit Vista drops 16 bit support. As did 64 bit XP. I think MS
is going to find that a sticking point with more than a few users in
the corporate world.


When XP came out, while it's not API's per se for the applications,
the APIs(?) for the device drivers changed. I've got some devices
that work on Windows 3.1, W9x, NT3.5, and NT4 BUT fail on
W-XP (perhaps they are 8/16-bit drivers or perhaps they employed
a different device driver API?). Two of the devices are external disk
drives that hook up through a parallel port.


Not that there aren't a few incompatibilities floating around, but
Vista implements essentially the same driver model (with extensions,
of course) as XP/2K/NT, but the major incompatibility is that Vista in
general refuses to allow you to load an unsigned driver. In 32 bit
Vista an admin can bypass that, but not in 64 bit. And there are
situations where a driver must be signed (anything that loads into the
DRM data path, some of the boot time stuff, for example).

And of course you can't get a driver "really" signed without going
through MS's certification program. In case you're wondering, a
developer can sign their own driver, but you have to configure the
target system to trust your private certificate source.

And just as a reminder, 64 bit Vista cannot load *any* 32 bit drivers
(same as 64 bit XP, of course).

.

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