[Eagle of Fire]

But that does not stop you to assume that DOS in Win98 was just stripped down version of original DOS, even if everything else tells different.

Did you actually read the link you've posted on your first post? It's one of the few things I agree with the article, I also been saying that since my first post in this thread. Where exactly did you read different?

I have heard, read and said so myself so often over the years and I think it's now pretty much taken for granted in the gaming community...

And just for your info, boot disks were nothing different then other DOS configuration. Remember what DOS abbreviation is for??

Which abreviation? .Exe for executable, .bat for batch files, .com for command file and the likes?

Of course I do.

Also, the reason why I am saying that a boot disk is a whole new OS altogether is because it will bypass any other OS which is installed on the current system. The way computers are made, they will read external drives first before booting to see if there is a boot disk to boot from. When you do boot from a boot disk, you are using the OS from the boot disk itself. Not the OS installed on the computer.

And Microsoft didn't kill the DOS, but gaming companies which moved to windows and something called directX, which made their life much easier.

Just imagine writing the code that does not care what's your soundcard or video card?!

It is Microsoft who initiated everything. They knew very well what they were doing. It was very obvious at the time, like I said.

The DirectX project was commendable, but I don't think your argument follow the road. A lot of oldschool programmer told me at least once that the only reason why there is so many bugs and the files are so large now is because the new generation of programmers are so used to have it easy that they don't bother. They do not have the dedication old programmers had back in the days, which led slowly to the generation of flashy graphics games. It's way easier to work on flashy graphics than to actually create something with good gameplay and content, and there is also way more people who prefer to work as a graphic engineer or whatever it's called than there is good programmers. The industry simply followed.

Frankly, just look at most of the old games on this site. Some of them could hold on a floppy disk, yet they have just as much if not more content than modern games which need 5 gig of HD space. There is a point at which producers think it's not worthwhile to continue to optimize and shrink the game size, and at which point they simply ship everything together in a bundle.

The real reason they are getting games out faster nowaday is not really because of the ease of use or programation, it's more because they have so much money to spend on it than they used back in the days. This mean that the amount of people working on the same project is also exponentially increased. However, all big oldschool classics were created by small gaming companies, and they all took a big chunk of time to create too. Great games are just like anything else, they need to grow out of work and love to be good. Otherwise, it's just another random game.

All this to say that having a standard doesn't really change much in the content of a game or program. DirectX rule the day now? SoundBlaster pretty much ruled the day back then too as far as sound is concerned. If you wanted a sound card with which you were certain to run most to all games you wanted to with it, then you could not go wrong with SoundBlaster.

There is not much difference to me...