Timeline for Were any DOS games (or software) known to use VBE/AF?
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7 events
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| Nov 15, 2019 at 14:29 | comment | added | Thomas | as the question is asking about ms-dos, it's limited to the initial implementations of the bios extensions, there was very little dos time under vbe2. although the bus of the same name wasn't tied to the driver, it also disappeared at about the same time. so if we want to be pedantic about it, we can say that these are different events and the death of the vesa bus had nothing to do with the change from vbe1 to veb2, etc yes, this is correct; it just happened at the same pace, at the same time. | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 14:21 | comment | added | Thomas | If you look at the first software implementation, they were called VESA drivers, it's even called like that in the BIOS of the TsengLab cards. When the manufacturers got onboard, that's the naming that stuck. The move to Pentium / VBE2 / Win95 happened in that order, so there was only a short time with the original drivers (VBE '1' if you can call it like that) were used with Pentiums. The nomenclatures are not related, but the changes still happened that once Pentiums started to become mainstream, the vesa bus was dropped, the vbe2 came out and then eventually ms-dos was phased out. | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 6:41 | comment | added | user722 | No, nothing ties VBE to the '486 or VLB.. The first version of VBE was published in 1989, while VLB was created in 1992. VBE is software, an extension of the IBM PC BIOS video interfaces, and can be implemented as part of the firmware of any VGA compatible card, regardless of the bus used. VLB is hardware, a bus based on the '486 memory interface. Also VESA is the name of an industry organization that defined many different standards, it's not actually the name of a standard. | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 6:11 | comment | added | Stephen Kitt | The question is about the AF subset of VBE, and that puts it firmly in the Pentium era (which also explains why AF never mattered, it happened too late). | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 3:01 | comment | added | Thomas | It was tied originally. The VESA bus was tied to the 486, and this is the time where the first VESA drivers came along too. When the Pentium came, the VESA bus didn't make sense anymore, but the original VESA driver didn't either. The Pentium and the VESA extensions came at about the same time. This is the time we were transitioning out of MS-DOS as well. So the question covers the early VESA standard, which was 486/MS-DOS and a little bit (maybe 1 year) of transition between the first extensions and Win95. I don't remember the exact gap but it was quite short. | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 2:08 | comment | added | user722 | I think you're confusing VESA Local Bus (VLB), which was tied, more or less, to the '486 and VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE) which were not. The base VBE standard (ie. not including VBE/AF) is still supported by video cards today. | |
| Nov 14, 2019 at 23:58 | history | answered | Thomas | CC BY-SA 4.0 |