You're right - 640K ! That was the limit. It was built into DOS somewhere and as memory needs grew, so a workaround had to be adopted. There were two types of memory allocation as I recall, the extended bit (beyond 640K) had to be separately addressed and was a real limitation. I'm sure it still applied in Windows 3.1 and possibly even 95.
Trapped Rat was a good description - devised no doubt by educationalists in the world of Acorn where no such limitation applied. See you all tonight. Brian -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Malcolm Hunter Sent: 25 November 2008 10:59 To: Peterborough LUG - No commercial posts Subject: [Peterboro] OS histories and tonight's meeting (was Re: Getting rsync output into a file (DOS)) > I'm looking forward to learning the world of Linux. I hadn't realised that > Linux predated DOS. Did I understand that correctly? As I recall, when IBM > brought out the first PC they needed an operating system and found this > young geek called Bill Gates, who promised them a solution and then > quickly > cobbled together an OS from something he borrowed. It was referred to as > QDOS (for quick and dirty operating system) but I'm not sure if that was > Bill Gates' efforts or the name of the product he > begged/borred/bought/stole. I'm sure Martin meant UNIX, which Linux is derived from and which DOS attempted to aspire to. UNIX has been around longer than DOS. Windows was conceived in 1985. Linux came a bit later in 1991. > DOS was also known as the "Trapped Rat" - a reference to the 1K (am I > right) > of memory that it was trapped inside, a legacy that was still hampering > Microsoft well into Windows 95, I seem to recall. I think it's 1MB, though I've never heard of the "trapped rat" expression. Certainly it was a struggle to get past 640K in those days, though whoever could possibly need more than that anyway? lol > BTW - when is next meeting? Tonight? Yes - probably see you there. I'm assuming it's at the school? Malc -- Sensationsangebot nur bis 30.11: GMX FreeDSL - Telefonanschluss + DSL für nur 16,37 Euro/mtl.!* http://dsl.gmx.de/?ac=OM.AD.PD003K11308T4569a _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.9.10/1810 - Release Date: 24/11/2008 14:36 _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
