Subj : Re: OT: horrible 8086 segmentation To : The Natural Philosopher From : Charlie Gibbs Date : Thu Nov 28 2024 19:42:18 On 2024-11-27, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > On 26/11/2024 17:37, Josef Möllers wrote: > >> On 25.11.24 18:33, mm0fmf wrote: >> >>> My eyes! My eyes! That was COMPACT model code, so 64k of code and 1MB >>> of data, code addresses were 16bit offsets to the CS reg and data was >>> far so 32 bits of segment and offset of DS or ES. And of course you >>> had to be extra careful of any pointer arithmetic as a far pointer >>> wrapped after 64k. You had to use slower HUGE pointers to get >>> automatic normalisation. God it was shit. >> >> And to consider that, at that time, processors like MC68000 or NS32016 >> were readily available. > > Backwards compatibility. > DOS came from 8080 based CP/M , to run on an 8086, to where 8 bit code > could be easily ported. > > And so we were stick with that architecture. Intel put the "backward" in "backward compatible". -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of \ / | growth is the ideology X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell. / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3) .