CompuServe Messages

I think the real point was that the 1990 pc or mac wouldn't run todays software, this for a pc is true, I know people with 8086 and 80286 and they can't run win95. I can multitask on a 68000 (which although it is a crime to do so can be compared to a 286). Bying a pentium motherboard is the same as buying a new computer, all you have is the power supply and the case. You would probably have to buy new simms as your 1990 pc probably used 1mb simms or soldered/dips etc. Your new motherboard would also need a new monitor as your 1990 pc could well have had ega, or maybe vga. But who would use a pentium with a decent video chip but only a vga monitor? Then of course as you are now going to install windows 95 or windows nt you will need much larger and faster hard disk storage. Build 490 of windows 95 is just about useable on a 486-66 with 16mb of memory. On a pentium its pretty nippy. On a 386 it is a dog ( I was using it earlier today on a 386 ). The pc's architecture is bodged, if intel had thought about the future instead of money it would have been a much nicer processor. As it is, each time they produced a major advance you needed to learn another processor. 8086, 80286 and 80386 are all programmed differently, if they had implemented a flat memory model in the first place ( like motorola did ) then windows 95 would run on an 8086, it would be slow, but it WOULD run. I know how pc's work as I have to do a bit of low level assembly programming, personally I would never buy a pc, I don't need what it offers. The amiga does what I need to do. If commodore had a clue about marketing then maybe everyone would be using amiga clones now. Phill