Ancient machines turning on (was Re: eBay strikes again...)

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Mon Nov 2 09:16:29 1998

At 02:42 AM 11/2/98 -0500, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
>
> To be fair, when MS-DOS was written, the 8088 didn't have memory
>protection so an ill-written program would scribble all over memory.

Or with x86 in later years, it would just scrog a segment.

>The same with programs on the Amiga (which is a multitasking system on a
68000
>which, for various reasons, can't use a memory management unit [1]).

I think this is crucial for those who wish to understand why the Amiga
didn't live forever: although it was 32-bit, its architecture had a deep
reliance on wide-open shared memory, preventing it from reaching the
next level of robust behavior. Tricks like "Enforcer" certainly helped
developers write safer code once the 68020 came along, but it was too
little, too late.

> I've done very little programming under Windows myself
>(just playing around at some previous jobs) and I don't even like it that
>much. Each routine taking an average of six parameters (some as high as
>12!) and depending upon what you pass in does one of ten things [1].

If you don't know much about Windows programming, then you shouldn't
be making such strong statements. :-)

- John
Received on Mon Nov 02 1998 - 09:16:29 GMT