[vintagedave]

> Microsoft has only kept the documentation for the DX8 version of EnumDevices left online

This saddens me. Who knows how much valuable info has been lost. I recall back in the days of MSDN, we had docs back to early Windows, and it was a wonderful historical record. Today's Docs site seems to keep info only for a few versions.

[bitwize]

Anybody who still has MSDN Library CDs from the 90s, archive them at archive.org NOW!

[seritools]

AFAIK they are all backed up. For the blogpost I used the DX5 SDK docs, DX7 SDK docs, and the MSDN Library from VS2005 (last version to include 9x information).

The VS2008 version purged all API information regarding pre-Windows 2000.

[netsharc]

Oh geez, I have them, probably from the 00's. I tried to get into Windows programming, but it was all over my head.

Incredible that a few decades after thinking "All the world's knowledge will be online", we probably have to return to physical libraries to find the knowledge that ended up not being online anymore.

[falcor84]

Another good reason to support independent internet archives

[stonemetal12]

Also of note Valve's Proton only goes back to DX8. Versions prior to that were considered not worth it.

[Krutonium]

That's only kind of true; Wine itself supports older versions of DirectX with the target API being OpenGL instead of Vulkan. It's just not quite super performant and kinda buggy. That said, there's other wrappers you can use to convert older DirectX versions into new ones, and if you can get to DirectX 8 or 9, now you've got DXVK.

[bayindirh]

Why share something which you can sell for exorbitant prices? /s

[Narishma]

They are not selling it either.

[bayindirh]

Then, where are the docs if they are not publicly available?