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

[Ken Ambrose]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> In Redmond's favor, any GUI is going to be somewhat of a memory hog.

My first Amiga, the A-1000, a truly GUI/multitasking box, came stock with
256K RAM, and ran fine.  I got the add'l 256K so I could have a RAM disk.
;-)  In other words, a GUI doesn't necessarily require memory hoggishness,
though it certainly does seem par for the course.

As for IBM and the 68K -- one of the initial PC specs was backward CP/M
compatibility.  The 8088 seemed a logical choice to fulfill this
unfulfilled "feature:" everything the 8080 was, and faster, to boot.
While I imagine that there were probably a few CP/M emulators for 68K
boxen, they a) probably didn't work that well, and b) the 68K itself, in
'81, probably cost a small fortune.

-Ken