OK, fair enough. In hindsight I tend to think that the admittedly strong demand for flat memory, and the reduction in use of CPU protection rings, segments and

OK, fair enough. In hindsight I tend to think that the admittedly strong demand for flat memory, and the reduction in use of CPU protection rings, segments and so on, was taking a high-level view a huge mistake from which we have yet to recover. But yeah, from everything I read at the time, as PCs became serious tools able to run serious apps, programmers hated segments. Outside of that world, though, OSes like SCO Xenix and MWC Coherent made good use of the 286. It was actually very capable. Before that, in the early days of the 8088/8086, I think there was some value in the segment model for how it facilitated bringing across CP/M apps. When I got started in this industry, the 1980s DOS world was still dominated by modern versions of apps that originated on CP/M, which were in the late '80s just getting displaced by a new generation of much more powerful DOS apps designed for a PC with the full complement of 640kB of RAM and a hard disk. So, things like: * dBase II (CP/M) -> dBase III (PC and DOS) * WordStar 2/3 (CP/M) -> WordStar 3/4, 2000, etc. (PC and DOS) * SuperCalc (CP/M) -> SuperCalc 5 (PC and DOS) -- a late resurgence. ... were supplanted by tools like FoxPro or Clipper, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.