From: Jim Van Nuland Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.4dos,comp.os.msdos.apps,comp.os.msdos.desqview,comp.os.msdos.djgpp,comp.os.msdos.mail-news Subject: Re: regarding dos 640kb barrier Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 07:14:32 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Silicon Valley Public Access Link Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: svpal-pn.svpal.org X-Trace: borg.svpal.org 1060154072 79034 192.168.147.66 (6 Aug 2003 07:14:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet AT borg DOT svpal DOT org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 07:14:32 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.5.1-20000103 ("Sumerland") (UNIX) (SunOS/4.1.4 (sun4m)) To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com In comp.os.msdos.desqview yogesh wrote: > hi all!! > i have one question whose convincing answer i couldn' find in any > book. > everybody knows that dos has 640kb barrier..and hence this makes dos > inefficient... > my question is if dos is such a weak operating system..then why > somebody like microsoft(creater of ms dos)didn't redesigned dos so The 640k limit was invented by IBM; Microsoft adapted an earlier operating system to IBM's hardware. At that time (1980) the Apple II was coin of the home computer realm, and a Really Big one had 64 kilobytes of memory. So IBM's people multiplied that by 10, and (at the time) it was Amazingly Big. Little did anyone know. BTW, 4 years later the first Mac had (drum roll) 64 kb of memory! -- Jim Van Nuland, San Jose (California) Astronomical Association