general amiga info
14-Dec-87 18:31:03
Sb: #98237-general amiga info
Fm: greg goss 73177,3065
To: John Draper 76703,4322
Larry: IBM managed to keep the compatability by crippling the AT. Even though
the AT hardware is capable of addressing 16M, the DOS is only willing to look
at 640K. Then you get the ludicrous kludge of a paging memory system (EEMS) to
allow your application to fit into 640K on a system capable of 16M.
No-one but IBM could have brought out a machine as incompatible as the AT. At
the time the AT came out, the Olivetti machines were taking quite a bit of
flack for minor incompatibilities in their 16 bit machines. Then Big Blue
brought out a new semi-compatible, and within weeks, everything had been
converted. The compatibility situation is a combination of domination of the
market by a few large software companies and deliberate restricting of the
capabilities of the AT and 386 machines.
../greg