Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!lll-winken!ames!amdahl!pccuts!tat
From: tat@pccuts.pcc.amdahl.com (Tom Thackrey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 640K limit
Message-ID: <864@pccuts.pcc.amdahl.com>
Date: 15 Jan 90 18:08:47 GMT
References: <4668.25aed7f2@uwovax.uwo.ca> <1468@blackbird.afit.af.mil>
Reply-To: tat@pccuts.pcc.amdahl.com (Tom Thackrey)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale  CA
Lines: 15

In article <1468@blackbird.afit.af.mil> ewilliam@galaxy-43.UUCP (Edward M. Williams) writes:
 >IBM really messed things up when they designed the original PC (hindsight
 >is wonderful!) - they didn't think that anyone would ever need more than
 >640k of memory.  The original PC came with 64k!  They thought it would be 
 >safe to put all the video screen memory mappings, ROMs, and all that 
 >stuff up above the 640k line.
Actually the original PC came with as little as 16K with a max of 64K on
the mother board and I think you could only go to 256K total.  Remember,
when the PC came out a BIG pc had 64K.  Even huge mainframes of 1982 were
in the 16MB range.  Also, I think a 64K memory card for the original PC
cost something like $500.
-- 
Tom Thackrey sun!amdahl!tat00

[ The opinions expressed herin are mine alone. ]