future of purebasic on new microsoft OS

localmotion34 · Post by **localmotion34** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:22 pm

ok i got a question about when a new OS comes out from microsoft. the nature of my PHD research and the tequniques i use usually lets me have and use the latest technology hardware and software. my lab is planning on getting an axiocam digital microscope camera to image flurescent antibodies and infrared spectrums. this will be run from a dual processor PC motherboard with 2 pentium 3+ Ghz. Now by the time we get it, i am sure the OS will be the new one microsoft puts out. what i am wondering is how will PB handle the probably different OS structure. With the current LIBS now, they make calls to certain functions in current OS DLL to do what you want. what if the new OS structures the DLL a different way. i mean i have spent 3 months coding a huge program to keep track of tons of my data. if i cant access this data from our new PC while i image tissue and analyze, i have just wasted ALOT of time. i need to be able to hook into the OS of the PC i am on, grab the data from the camera, interface with the DLL, or even read from processes while i record electrical changes across cell membranes. this is how i obtain my data now. my prog runs while i image or record, and it snaps the data and imports it into my program. this has put me light years ahead of my labmates who manually record data and analyze tediously for hours. Me however, clicks a few buttons, hits save, and am done. so what if the new OS prevents me from doing this?

Karbon · Post by **Karbon** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:28 pm

Every time M$ releases a new OS there are problems of backwards compatibility, this next OS is sure to be the worst of them all. What will happen? I'd say Fred will bust his ass to bring support to that platform as soon as possible - in the mean time I just wouldn't switch to the new OS if I were you!

While it's good to plan for the future, I wouldn't let this keep you up at night just yet

From what I've heard Fred say, PureBasic is here to stay!

Post by **Berikco** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 10:10 pm

By the time the next OS comes out, there wile be no more P4 3 Ghz CPU
Btw, i never saw a P4 dual processor board, only XEON is capable of multiprocessor i believe.
I work (play

) a lot with Dual XEON machines @ my job, PureBasic runs just fine on a Dual XEON with Windows 2003 Server or Windows XP Pro.

scurrier · Post by **scurrier** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 1:33 am

Are you talking about the new Windows64 and the new 64bit processor
that is coming from Intem and AMD?

localmotion34 · Post by **localmotion34** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 2:25 am

actually, you can have a motherboard with 2 processors, either using AMD or intel p4. check out www.compusa.com. my wife hopefully is gonna get me the dual AMD board for christmas. and i know i saw a dual p4 board on there before too. i think xenon is the only one that you can have 4 or more of. anyway, i didnt know they were gonna go 64 bit. i guess PB wont even begin to work on that. what will the OS language be for that. since PBs compiler renders to 32 bit. how would fred rewrite PB for 64 bit being that he probably wont know any of the operatng system code to make a compiler for. i thought C and the rest only work for 32 bit?

Door · Post by **Door** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 2:38 am

scurrier wrote:Are you talking about the new Windows64 and the new 64bit processor
that is coming from Intem and AMD?

I think they are talking about:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn

Karbon · Post by **Karbon** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 1:52 pm

i thought C and the rest only work for 32 bit?

Nope, it's all in how you use it.

waffle · Post by **waffle** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 10:23 am

deja vu'

reminds me of the discussion when windows went from 16bit to 32bit.
Most likely most stuff will still work, but will still have issues until fully patched. Example: you can still run win16 software on winxp..... its not pretty but you can do it. Also, I still can run some old dos2.0 stuff. Again, there are issues, but it can be done.

When MS went to 32bit the only problems (really) was converting existing code to use 32bit pointers instead of 16. Although this sounds simple, the real problem comes from DLL from third parties. There are was to fix others DLL without recoding them, but it can get messy. And lets not forget tracking down all the new C headers. The code will be the same. Just the headers, pointers and dll libs will be different. Remembering which ones to change and which ones not to will be the hard part.