RayeR wrote on 2026-05-31, 13:40:

. But multicore systems running DOS usually have enough power even on single core so there was not special need to do this. Simply the effort for programming and the output wouldn't worth otherwise someone already programmed it...

That's really the nub of it, by the time you get a couple hundred mhz in your box DOS task switching is fine, if you wanted to use your dual core PPro you were on NT, by the time consumers were buying dual cores DOS was forgotten.

It might have come about if the Mhz race had stalled out for technical reasons in late 1998, maybe coppermine wasn't tried, or failed, but DOS as a gaming platform was about over by then. So if the pause button was hit, when the only way to get near a ghz was dual PII or celeron, then it might have happened.

Also could have been a path if Win98 and direct X gaming really dropped the ball badly, didn't work, crashed every time, that sort of thing and games went BACK to DOS around that period, leaving it important to develop for DOS on DOS. Then programmers might have opened up one core as a compile core on the dual boards, and things developed a bit from there.

But all in all probably a chicken and egg situation, customers weren't interested in dual core because no killer-app took real advantage, so no duals were sold, and because no duals were sold, no dual core stuff was written. Look how long gaming took to get away from single core performance on windows, when everyone had been getting dual cores for a number of years.

edit: that's a relative "no duals were sold" not a literal, meaning not enough were in installed user base of mass market consumers.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.