'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 8:36pm, Brenda A. Bell wrote:
>>   The 640 KB limit arose from the original IBM-PC design, circa 1980.  
>> Since the 8086 didn't even have a memory manager, hardware needed to be
>> mapped directly into physical memory space, and IBM thought 640/384 was a
>> good place to draw the line between software and "reserved" memory.
> 
> Somewhere on the Internet there's an anthology of hilarious quotes... I
> believe it was someone from IBM who said "why would anyone ever need
> more than 640K RAM in a personal computer".

  "640K should be enough for anybody" is widely attributed to Bill Gates.  
Since Bill actually had nothing to do with the 640/384 boundary, I suspect
the remark is either (1) apocryphal (2) made off-hand.  To put this in
perspective, at the time the IBM-PC was introduced, 64 kilobytes was seen as
a fairly good sized main memory for a home microcomputer.  Ten times that
might well inspire a "should be enough" remark.

> As much as I hate to give them credit for anything, I believe Redmond is
> greatly responsible for the kind of PC hardware we have today... Windows
> 3.1 was a hog, but people wanted it and the hardware vendors did what they
> needed to to keep up.

  I think it is more correctly described as a positive feedback loop.  
Bigger software demands beefier hardware; more powerful hardware means
software can grow larger.  The process reinforces itself.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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