Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!haven!ncifcrf!lhc!usenet From: usenet@nlm.nih.gov (usenet news poster) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Architectural quirks Message-ID: <1990Aug22.220851.7933@nlm.nih.gov> Date: 22 Aug 90 22:08:51 GMT References: <12459@encore.Encore.COM> <3300161@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1990Aug17.155925.1588@mozart.amd.com> <1990Aug21.163009.26625@mozart.amd.com> <1296.26d2c053@waikato.ac.nz> Reply-To: states@tech.NLM.NIH.GOV (David States) Organization: National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md. Lines: 18 Dave Christie says: > "I don't think major developers are prone to counting on quirks." and Lawrence D'Oliveiro replies: > Ahh, if only things were as simple in the PC world as they appear > to be in the mini/workstation world... Sometimes the reliance on quirks seems almost intentional, as for example, the IBM PC ROM-BIOS. The early, slick, products (Lotus123, MS flight sim.) didn't stick to the rules because the code that ran according to the rules was slow. By using undocumented interrupts and system calls the software got speed but the user got stuck for the copyrighted IBM-BIOS. Was someone in marketing smart enough to actually lay this deviousness out ahead of time, or did it just sort of happen? I don't know, but IBM sold alot of PCs while the cloner makers tried to come up with a ROM-BIOS that would support all the undocumented "features". David States