Except 16bit 286 code is dead as a doornail. The platform he's talking about (16 bit DOS) really did die on schedule. You'll have trouble running anything fro

Except 16bit 286 code is dead as a doornail. The platform he's talking about (16 bit DOS) really did die on schedule. You'll have trouble running anything from that era on modern Windows. And if it ran, it wouldn't integrate with anything else (networking, printing, character encoding, etc.) The jump from highmem to win98 was very disruptive and had many winners and losers (e.g. Wordperfect). The next jump to 64bit was less painful, but still disruptive. x86 is a marketing term used to paper over 1-2 extinction events and create an illusion of historical continuity despite users having had to throw out their software twice (at least), and developers having had to rewrite their software several times.