[rescue] Blades in the dark

[Dave McGuire]

On November 23, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> course, that brings up the question: Was the original PC really that
> bad, or is it the fact that they failed to keep up that is so
> awefull?  I mean, Apple had some pretty nice CPUs in '84, but IBM

  Yes, it was that bad.  The original design was FULL of stupid
limitations that prove the designers never had any sort of growth in
mind for the platform.  Witness the A20 barrier, the ridiculous
I-can-only-boot-from-C:-or-A: stupidity, the unbelievably stupid video
subsystem design, etc.  And don't even get me started on the CGA in
particular, with its big fuzzy nowhere-near-square pixels and
video memory mapped right smack in the middle of the low address
space.  *grumble*

  It's a terrible design that should never have made it out of the
playroom of the idiots who put it together.

     -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL