[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

Mon Jun 4 17:51:23 CDT 2007

Lionel Peterson wrote:

> Before the IBM PC, MS supported 6502, 8080, Z80, and numerous other CPUs, 
> when the IBM PC took over the market, MS dropped the other chips.

What else did they do outside of Zilog/Intel?

I was a 6502 and Motorola guy, and I saw almost nothing from Microsoft, but
tons of Microsoft tools for Zilog and Intel machines.

About all I remember for the other CPUs was versions of Microsoft BASIC.

What else did they produce for non Intel and Zilog systems?  I collect old
software and would like to snag it for my collection.

Someone told me they made a 6502 C compiler, but I've never been able to find
anything like that.

> MS does not design or build PCs, quite the contrary, most PC builders design 
> their PCs to work with MS operating systems... 

PC builders have to do that because MS will not change the HAL in Windows,
even though originally that was one of their bragging points.

The PC has not needed any of the legacy hardware support for ten years now,
and Microsoft is the only reason it is still there.

> Can I blame/thank MS for the dwindling number of PCI sockets on today's PCs
> too?

Funny you should mention that.

For years (I assume it is fixed now) Windows violated the PCI specification by
requiring card numbers and slot numbers to be the same.  PCI was created
specifically to avoid that need, but Microsoft screwed up, either by
incompetence or deliberately.

That caused card makers and BIOS writers to have to violate the PCI spec so
that cards would work with Windows, which in turn caused problems for fully
compliant platforms and software.

-- 
shannon           | There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not
                  | philosophers.