[rescue] A bit of Fun

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Robert Novak wrote:

> I do wonder if people really think the x86 architecture was such sh!t at
> the point of initial deployment. I'm not talking about Pentium 4-HT. I'm
> talking 8086. How much better could it have handled 640KB and a 5 megabyte
> hard drive?

Even then, people knew that memory segmenting of that fashion was a bad
idea.  A fairly long thesis paper cannot fit in a single 8086 memory
segment.  What I don't understand is why the segmenting was designed to
only add 4 bits to the address space.  They could've had hacked-together
32-bit addressing from the beginning and not had the EMS and XMS
"windows" that plagued DOS for so many years.

Augh!  The pain!  It's all coming back to me now.  Where's my OS/2
install CD when I need it?

-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Leave your lawsuits at home.  I have guns."
Elgin, TX          (                      --"Kountry" Mike Lundgren