Re: direct hardware access

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- flash  wrote:

> environment for them in which they _think_ they are
> getting direct
> hardware access but aren't really.

That's what I was getting at about emulation
environments, which is essentially what we're talking
about here. SVISTA (like the former Connectix product
and VMWARE) sets up a pseudo guest OS that makes the
apps for that OS which you want to run THINK they are
getting the resources they need and are accustomed to
getting from said OS, but in fact they aren't. If the
"wall" set up around this environment is sufficiently
solid, it should contain all disasters, and keep them
from reaching the outside world. I'm sure there could
always be gaps in the armor somewhere, but the demos
I've seen were quite impressive.

> I'm not sure that direct access to hardware was why
> Xy was blazingly
> fast; in Win9x days, lots of programs had direct
> hardware access and
> weren't blazingly fast. I thought it was because Xy
> was efficiently
> written, used memory efficiently, and made no
> concessions to the
> buzzers-&-bells GUI mentality of MS-Oriface. Maybe
> I'm wrong about that.

No, I think you are correct.


Jordan