On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:10:59 -0500 "Ben Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That's not really true. 16-bit machines are *very* limited. There > is not a whole lot you can do in 64 kilobytes of RAM (all you can > directly address with a 16-bit address word). Anything running on an > 8086 (i.e., MS-DOS and all its software) has to play all sorts of > games just to address the full megabyte the IBM-PC architecture allows > for in Real Mode. There is always the next plateau. The early pcs (generic), Apple II, Commodore 64, Trash 80, and the first IBM PCs were all 8-bit (although the PC had an 8-bit version of a 16-bit chip). Then we got the 16-bit chips (such as the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga) and the PC clones that were truly 16 bit, and the Mac. There was a relatively big transition from 16-bits to 32-bits. And, still there remained a lot of 16-bit Windows code. But, back then, home computers were not so ubiquitous as they are today, and the transition can be somewhat painful. I remember that we had a number of partners on the Alpha that refused to spend the effort to port their applications to 64-bit, and we came up with a way they could build a 32-bit application without having to supply a full set of 32-bit libraries. In the x86-64 bit world, you have a chip that fully supports the x86 32-bit environment and instruction set. You can run a 32-bit OS and it does not any better. You can have a 64-bit OS, and with some support, 32-bit applications built on 32-bit systems will run natively. But, you need 32-bit and 64-bit libraries. -- Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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