18 Sep
1998
18 Sep
'98
3:54 a.m.
On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Allison J Parent wrote:
It would take the PC getting to the 386 before it had
the
performance perceived to be needed to attract attention.
The 386 was important, but not because of performance. Virtual memory,
flat 32-bit address space, and V86 mode were all essential to the success
of Windows 3.
Have you ever tried GEOS? It is a very acceptable GUI with nice
performance even on an 8088 box. But it is a royal pain to write apps
for. The flat address space of the 386 was a real boon to application
developers. V86 mode made multiple DOS boxes possible. And virtual
memory meant that Microsoft could write huge bloated applications and
people could still run them even without the 64MB RAM they required for
good performance.
-- Doug