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As long as we're playing "what if," it's worth reflecting on all the hair-raising hacks and tricks Microsoft had to play to deal with the x86's quirks as they b
by SeenNotHeard 3y ago
As long as we're playing "what if," it's worth reflecting on all the hair-raising hacks and tricks Microsoft had to play to deal with the x86's quirks as they built Windows. XMS/EMS and DPMI were also incredibly painful engineering feats.
While the M68K had its own growing pains (as seen with the evolution of the Macintosh), none of them seemed nearly as onerous as what was done to squeeze a few more years out of MS-DOS compatibility.
- StillBored 3y ago? The early mac memory manager in macOS was idiosyncratic to put it lightly. By the time multifinder was integrated into macos, one might say that it was far worse than anything MS was dealing with. I mean at that point they were performing many of the functions we depend on MMU's for these days in software. I guess in a way the complexity of the PC has more to do with the wide range of platforms, software stacks, etc that were being supported more than the architecture itself.