Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!orca.WV.Tek.com!paulsc From: paulsc@orca.WV.Tek.com (Paul Scherf) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Architectural quirks Message-ID: <8322@orca.wv.tek.com> Date: 23 Aug 90 15:52:11 GMT Sender: nobody@orca.wv.tek.com Organization: Tektronix, Inc. Wilsonville, OR Lines: 24 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> <1990Aug22.220851.7933@nlm.nih.gov> In article <1990Aug22.220851.7933@nlm.nih.gov> usenet@nlm.nih.gov (usenet news poster) writes: > 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 suspect there were once pre-released versions of Lotus123 and MS flight simulator that may have pretty much stuck to the rules. When they saw the performance wasn't as good as they wanted, they looked for ways to speed it up. That is likely to be when the oddities mentioned before may have been added. Another possibility is that the writers of Lotus123 and MS flight simulator didn't realize those things were against "the rules", but I'd like to think of Kapor and Gates as being good enough software design engineers and software project managers, to know when they are breaking "the rules". Paul Scherf, Tektronix, Box 1000, MS 60-850, Wilsonville, OR, USA 97070 paulsc@orca.WV.Tek.com 503-685-2734 ...!tektronix!orca!paulsc