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From: dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Amiga's Future
Message-ID: <59@ryptyde.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jun 91 12:49:14 GMT
References: <#g1H3+$o@cs.psu.edu> <12901@uwm.edu> <22308@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991Jun11.134256.9465@cs.mcgill.ca> <1134@stewart.UUCP>
Reply-To: dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy)
Organization: Ryptyde Timesharing (ryptyde.cts.com)
Lines: 14

Responding to the following:

"It is true that it is theoretically possible to develop a 386-based OS that
runs in the 386 equivalent of the 286's "large memory model".  This OS would
manage multiple 4GB code and data segments for each process.  My question is,
who needs this?  Also, you'd have to start worrying about near and far pointers
again!  A near pointer would be a 32-bit offset, and a far pointer would be a
48-bit segment/offset pair.  Virtual memory space would be 64 terabytes.  Wow."
 
This is really interesting. I thought the 80x86 line had 4 segment registers,
and would thus have a segmented address space of 64GB, not TB? Also, someone
else posted that the 68020 and up could handle 64GB and that it had a 
segmented memory mode as well? I had never heard this before. VERY
interesting!