Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (Wm. E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Buying a 386 clone -- want advice
Message-ID: <13423@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 24 Mar 89 18:05:43 GMT
References: <3177@imagen.UUCP> <1309@bucket.UUCP> <7956@chinet.chi.il.us> <3511@ima.ima.isc.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 21

In article <3511@ima.ima.isc.com> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes:

| History buffs will recall that this is the same situation that originally
| applied with MS-DOS.  There were lots of non-BIOS DOS machines such as the
| Tandy 2000.  When IBM became a dominant vendor, everybody went to BIOS
| compatibility.  Who knows if the same thing will happen for OS/2.

  I think history buffs will realize that you are completely wrong. The
Tandy 2000 *has* BIOS compatibility, but no hardware compatibility. We
have run a lot of software on these beasts, and they work fine for
anything which doesn't bypass the BIOS. Notably the video is completely
different if you go to the hardware. 

  Many vendors thought that limiting the system to 640k was stupid,
since MS-DOS will use the whole MB, and the 2000 runs 768k of DOS just
fine.

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me