Comment by trollbridge
10 hours ago
DPMI clients don’t run in a VM, though. They’re just a normal task like any other task / process in Windows.
10 hours ago
DPMI clients don’t run in a VM, though. They’re just a normal task like any other task / process in Windows.
VM in this usage means Virtual Memory - i.e. with page tables enabled. Two "processes" can use the same memory addresses and they will point to different physical memory. In Real Address mode every program has to use different memory addresses. The VM86 mode lets you to have several Real Mode programs running, but using Virtual Memory.
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.
No, in 386 mode 3.x and 9x the System VM and other DPMI clients runs in protected mode.
Virtual 8086 mode, as its name somewhat suggests, only runs real mode code.