8 Dec
2005
8 Dec
'05
1:45 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 8:26 PM
Subject: Re: Legacy apps in Windows/OS X was Re: Old MS-DOS & Win Software
On 12/7/2005 at 6:32 PM Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't see the point of having so much legacy
support in newer OS
versions
(it is more complicated and has more code to
create bugs). If there is a
need for such things then some company will develop a means of using your
older software via an emulator. Besides what is so hard about keeping a
legacy system in the house if you really need to run a 10 year old app on
occasion? OS developers should concentrate on making their OS stable and
reliable plus having good APIs, not in programming emulators and other
add-ons.
...and that's the point of Vista not having 16-bit support, I suppose.
NT/2K/XP doesn't emulate 16 bit at the instruction level, it switches the
processor to protected 16-bit operation and deals with interrupt vector
mapping and other nonsense. Heck, 16 bit doesn't run as fast as 32-bit or
64-bit mode on the X86 CPUs anyway--I've wondered for a long time why PCs
still boot up in it.
In an ironic sense of justice, MS has had to support most of the design
mistakes it made in Windows 3.0 and MS-DOS by providing support for old
applications. Intel has had to live with the instruction set of the 8080
all these years, only being allowed to extend it, but keeping things like
the DAA instruction intact and supporting a bunch of do-nothing
instructions like MOV DL,DL.
Cheers,
Chuck
I think Win2k server is the last MS OS that supports sharing directories
with old Mac AppleTalk networks. For my smallish network that OS will last
me a long time. So instead of complaining the latest and greatest doesn't
support my setup I just keep using what works.
Both Intel and MS didn't have to support their older designs, they did it
because the product worked and sold reasonable well, and any major change in
product that is incompatible with the older things you sold allows people to
chose what product they want to buy all over again (if you need new apps you
might as well consider a different OS/chip while changing). I think having a
major commercial success is what stops innovation at those companies, if you
have 5% market share you can pretty much try anything new since it will not
matter as much.