Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!acorn!moncam!emmo
From: emmo@moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 640K limit
Summary: Clarification
Message-ID: <371@marvin.moncam.co.uk>
Date: 18 Jan 90 16:16:20 GMT
References: <4668.25aed7f2@uwovax.uwo.ca> <1468@blackbird.afit.af.mil> <4308@brazos.Rice.edu>
Organization: Monotype ADG, Cambridge, UK
Lines: 24

In article <4308@brazos.Rice.edu>, solomon@rice.edu (Richard L. Solomon) writes:
> In article <729@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> acm@sun.UUCP (Andrew MacRae) writes:
> >In article <28808@amdcad.AMD.COM> phil@pepsi.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai) writes:
[deleted]
> 	NO....they SHOULD have mapped the I/O in the I/O ADDRESS SPACE where
> it belongs......there are 64kB of I/O addresses, anyone use that much?
> (Excluding VidRAM and EMS which obviously could legitimately be in the
> memory address space.)  
> 
Umm, actually they did. It's the IO BIOS's which are causing the problems,
not the IO port addressing. The port allocations are only occasionally a
problem, and usually a soluble one on all but the cheapest boards. 
That aside, the mess caused by the allocated BIOS ROM area *could* have
been solved (and still can be) if the right people got their heads
together. It's really only a matter of being able to load and run software
in a linear space beginning just ABOVE the bios area, and donating the
entire area below the bios's to DOS as system memory. That should have
happened with the 80126. 
I doubt it will ever happen now, we're expected to go for OS2 when we
get really cheesed off with MeSsyDOS.
At least UN*X isn't running out of steam yet, and I can remember a
box which had a huge 1K RAM being around when the PC was conceived...

Dave E.