8 Jun
2005
8 Jun
'05
12:15 p.m.
John Allain wrote:
#2 Are there No books on the bugginess of the PC
architecture?
I don't subscribe to that opinion. I think that you could make a strong case
that the design left a lot to be desired (16-bit 8088 segmented memory
organization being the worst offender; lack of registers being the second) but
I don't think it was "buggy". "Buggy" suggests that doing the
same operation
twice would not consistently return the same result, and on solidly-built IBM
PCs and *solid* clones (like compaq, AT&T/Olivetti), in my experience, that has
never been the case. I have seen cheap third-world clones that DID do this,
but it was because they were poorly implemented (bad memory, incomplete BIOS
implementation), not because the core design itself was bad.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
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