Yeah the catalogue of 'mistakes' with the design decisions of the PC is so
huge that if any company other than IBM had made it - it would have died
immediately.
But regarding the demented segmented addressing - it was an Intel design
which on paper looked a great idea but which was so badly implemented that
it was a joke. When Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft got their heads together to
decide on memory models - an engineer (who wrote the excellent A86 free
assembler) walked out - he could not believe the proposals being aired! It
really is amzing that Motorola (with it's straightforward flat memory model)
didn't clean up in the 16-bit processor market. To give Intel some credit
where it's due, with the i386 Intel did make amends - but MS kept the silly
segmented scheme going well past it's 'best by' date. If we contrast the 68k
family with Intel's x86 family, we see that the 16-bit 68k s smacked of
anticipated 32-bits (we'd label them 32-bit ready!) whereas the x86 s always
kept looking back at the 8 bit 8088/Z80A past - and was extremely reluctant
to move forward. The 'PC' has been dragged (screaming in protest) into the
21st Century - despite it's roots in a 1970's processor. But to be fair to
MS, it's only MS's adherence to, and development of, 'standards' that kept
the PC alive and kicking. The history of the PC is a fascinating nd often
repeated story - which I won't rehash here lol But I will say it wasn't much
fun for programmers writing software for the PC though - who had to live
with the design decisions taken by others (I was tempted to write morons
rather than others).
Allan
PS No trees were harmed in the sending of this message and a very large
number of electrons were asked their permission to be terribly
inconvenienced. (And threw a party for them afterwards for being really cool
about it).
Disrupting the unnatural balance that you, as a conscious human being and a
confused mass of energy, have created.
-Disturb the mind -
>From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
>To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [OM] Re: What would you do? Now: Horse racing and dog. Well sort
>of . . .
>Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:52:56 -0500
>
>But it's hard to develop a flat memory model for a machine with an
>(ugh!) segmented architecture. And the segmented architecture (8088)
>was chosen over the competition (68000) because the engineers were in
>control. They chose to stick with known reliable Intel 8 bit support
>chips rather than unknown reliability 16 bit Motorola or Intel support
>chips. Which is also why the PC used an 8088 rather than an 8086.
>
>No system software guy would ever make the same decision.
>
>Chuck Norcutt
>
>
>Allan Mee wrote:
>
> > Oddly enough I used to be a programmer writing for CP/M in the early
>80's -
> > it was a good OS (given it was designed for 8 bit processors with 64Kb
>or
> > less of RAM). Had IBM gone for CPM86 or the even better MPM and maybe
>DR's
> > GEM - it is possible that today's PCs would be considerably better (as
>it's
> > likely that a 'flat' memory model would have been developed and used
>much
> > earlier etc.
> > Allan
>
>
>
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