[rescue] Re: SPARC memory query

[Dave McGuire]

On Thursday, November 28, 2002, at 10:34 PM, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> I don't know.  I just seems to me that the real standard is that one 
> can
> count on VGA, or the subset of MCA, CGA, and EGA that VGA supports, and
> one can count on the BIOS, and that really all of these things might be
> flakey since they arent exactly real standards.

   The "PC compatibility" requirements also require some low-level 
stuff...the way interrupts and DMA work, A20 madness, etc.  For how 
many years did the "640K barrier" severely hamper PC hardware and 
software development?  Quite a few...spawning such horrid abortions as 
LIM Expanded Memory (an ancient and slow windowed bank-switching 
scheme) and crap like that.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                 "You don't have Vaseline in Canada?"
St. Petersburg, FL                     -Bill Bradford