Comment by skrebbel
6 hours ago
Random drive-by nitpick:
> From the beginning of the development, id had requested from djgpp engineers that their DPMI client would be able to run on djgpp's DPMI server but also Windows 95 DPMI server.
I'm pretty sure that "DJGPP engineers" is just one guy, DJ Delorie. DJGPP was always open source so I bet he got some contributors, but if the rest of this sentence is true that "id has requested from djgpp engineers", it just means they asked the maker of an open source tool they used to please add a feature. I wonder whether they paid him for it or whether DJ just hacked it all in at id's request for kicks. His "about me" page suggests he does contracting so might be the latter.
DJGPP was spectacularly good back in the day. I didn't appreciate at the time what a monumental effort it must have been to port the entire GCC toolchain and runtime to DOS/Windows. Hats off to DJ Delorie!
Back then, DJGPP was a much bigger group, and most of the Quake kudos go to Charles Sandmann, author of cwsdpmi, who worked directly with Id to help them optimize their code for our environment.
Amen to that!
I think I remember there was some communication between ID and Charles Sandmann about CWSDPMI, so even though it's worded a bit strange for an open source project there's probably some thruth in it?
Also a bit strange how the author is surprised about Quake running in a 'VM', apparently they don't really know about VM86 mode in x86 processors...
It's a bit surprising because this is the author of the DooM Black Book and they know the underpinnings pretty well.
However, the difference between a DOS VM under Windows 9x and a Windows command prompt and a w32 program started from DOS is all very esoteric and complicated (even Raymond Chen has been confused about implementation details at times).
DPMI clients don’t run in a VM, though. They’re just a normal task like any other task / process in Windows.
So... Win32 runs in virtual mode. In 2025, we don't think of that as a Virtual Machine, but it totally is. Hardware access is trapped by the CPU and processed by the OS/DPMI server.
I think if you're relatively young is hard to know computing history. Its oddly older than one thinks, even concepts that are seen as new. Its sometimes interesting to see people learn about BBS's which flourished 40 years ago.
Would love to see some interviews etc with DJ if he's up for it
Same. I only have experience from M.U.G.E.N fighting engine with respect to DJGPP.
I remember back in the day using DJGPP (DJ Delorie) with the Allegro library (Shawn Hargreaves), building little games that compiled and ran on Windows and other OSes, and being part of the community.
You can still play the little game I made in under 10K for the Allegro SizeHack competition in 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20250118231553/https://www.oocit...
Back then I was also writing a bunch of articles on game development: https://www.flipcode.com/archives/Theory_Practice-Issue_00_I...
Anyone on HN was active around that time? :) Fun time to be hacking!
Completely off topic;
So I just took a look at DJ’s website and he has a college transcript there. Something looked interesting.
Apparently he passed a marksmanship PE course at the first year. Is that a thing in US? I don’t know, maybe its common and I have no idea. I’d love to have a marksmanship course while studying computer science though.
My college required its graduates to pass a minimal swimming test. Just enough swimming ability to give a potential rescuer some extra time to effect the rescue, rather than have us go straight to the bottom of the sea. We all took a test in the first week or so. Those who failed had to take a course and retake the test.
US colleges have a very open curriculum, where you have wide leeway in what classes you actually take, especially in the early years of study. If you're coming from more European-style universities, this is vastly different to the relatively rigid course set you'd take (with a few electives here and there).
MIT offers a Pirate Certificate: https://physicaleducationandwellness.mit.edu/about/pirate-ce...
It's definitely not common. My US university required 2 physical education classes, but only if you were under 30 and hadn't served in the military. They may have offered marksmanship, but I just took running and soccer (aka football). The classes were graded pass-fail and didn't even count for academic credit.
I took an 8-week, 1-credit badminton course to fulfill my PE requirements. I wouldn't be surprised to find a marksmanship course.
We have myriad available "electives" that contribute towards our degrees. I have college credit for "bowling and billiards" and "canoeing and kayaking".
US colleges last one year longer, and the first year is more academically similar to the last year of high school in Europe.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's a pretty normal thing in a few countries or regions in the world. Marksmanship and archery are also olympic sports.
It would be an easy “A” for a lot of people in the US!
It was great indeed. DJGPP is how I learned to to program.