[OT] End-user uses for x86-64 (was: Why are still not at 64 bits)

Tom Buskey tom at buskey.name
Sun Feb 18 12:04:30 EST 2007


On 2/17/07, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/17/07, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/17/07, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:




> business pixie dust, we'd all be using Amiga's.
> > >>   Sure, the i386 brought a number of other advantages to the table,
> > >> chief among them a real MMU, but the address word size mattered, too,
> > >> I think.
> > > Only in the fact that it was faster ...
> >   Um.  Perhaps you never worked with "Windows/286".
>
>   It was a moot point by the time the 386 came out.  I also worked
> with Minix.  In all fairness, I believe what caused the 386 to trounce
> the 286 was the advent of VGA graphics, and people upgrading their
> machines for it.



I had VGA on my '286.  And Minix and Windows 3.0.

There was the memory thing too.  The 286 in DOS couldn't do much beyond
1MB(16MB?) w/o EMS or XMS.  EMS was originally a hardware spec to address
more memory.  XMS was a software hack that didn't work on the 8088.

The 386 could do EMS (& XMS) in software and Lotus 123 and Windows could
then use more RAM.  This gave Windows 3.x a big boost.  Bear in mind that
Windows 3.0 could run in real mode on an 8088 (I ran it on a '286 for 1
app).

I don't think Windows 95 would run on a '286 but I also think the DOS market
was pretty much done at that point.

Task switching and multitasking on Windows 3.1 with multiple DOS windows
could not be done on a 286.  Remember having to quit a program completely
before running another one?   There were more then a few wordprocessor
addons for Lotus then.

There were some Unix variants that could run on a '286 (minix, Coherent,
Xenix 286) but real unix that could run the GNU tools really needed a 386.

As time went on, the market chased speed.  The OSes could upgrade because
the near future average computer could do more.
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