| HX DOS Extender Japeth's HX DOS Extender DPMI |
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A DPMI, or DOS Protected Mode Interface, is a Application Interface that allows programs to run in DOS, in Protected Mode (the mode used by Windows in case you did not know), on a 286 or later processor (386 or later for most). Using Protected mode allows for use of Expanded and Extended Memory, and allows for larger programs to be run than usual. A lot of late era DOS games used one (DOS4GW), and a lot of current day projects use an array of DPMIs to work in DOS.
HX is a DPMI that offers 32-bit WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment) support. This means that (in theory at least), many Win32 console applications can run in DOS with this loaded, as well as limited support for DirectDraw (DirectX), GDI, and Open GL Applications (HXGUI). What this means, is we may be on the verge of no longer needing Windows to run legacy Windows applications - we will be able to run them one at a time, in DOS. This quite an exciting thing, and this is my page of experimentation with HX. It was originally developed by a guy named Japeth who sadly it seems, passed away. It seems there was a lot of focus on this for using DOS as a development environment for Windows Applications as there's a list of development utilities on the main site I just linked to discussing what works and what does not. Here's a rundown of the modules...
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