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From: acm@grendal.Sun.COM (Andrew MacRae)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 640K limit
Message-ID: <729@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM>
Date: 16 Jan 90 20:03:09 GMT
References: <4668.25aed7f2@uwovax.uwo.ca> <1468@blackbird.afit.af.mil> <28808@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Sender: news@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM
Reply-To: acm@sun.UUCP (Andrew MacRae)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 13

In article <28808@amdcad.AMD.COM> phil@pepsi.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai) writes:
>Don't be ridiculous. The 8088 can't ADDRESS more than 1 mega. Just where
>did you expect IBM to put the IO stuff?
>
>The problem is all the lazy software houses who haven't bothered to move
>to OS/2 and take advantage of the 16 meg protected mode even though the
>286 can handle it just fine.

Simple.  IBM/MicroSoft *should* have used soft pointers to the I/O memory
areas.  They made the same mistake that was made with CP/M, hardcoding
areas of memory for specific uses.  For those who don't remember, CP/M
was hardcoded so that the kernal *had* to reside in the top 4kb of a 64kb
address space, forever limiting its applications to 60kb in size.