Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!gitpyr!is813cs
From: is813cs@pyr.gatech.EDU (Cris Simpson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: An advertisement I'd like to see
Message-ID: <6440@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Date: 23 Sep 88 16:15:44 GMT
References: <144@imspw6.UUCP> <45900152@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: is813cs@pyr.UUCP (Cris Simpson)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 40

In article <45900152@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>[stuff del]  Anyway, one guy was wearing a suit (but no tie). He
>informed me that OS/2 fully supported the native 32-bit protected
>mode of the 80386, and indeed that OS/2 was really INTENDED to 
>be for the 386 and only supported the 286 "as an extra bonus".
>I asked him if there were any compilers that would generate 32bit
>code, both 32 bit integers and 32bit linear address pointers.
>He showed me a book and pointed to IBM's C/2 compiler, and said 
>it was just what I needed. 
>OK, knowledgeable folks out there on the net, am I correct that
>there is something terribly wrong with his description of OS/2?
>Doug McDonald



While I certainly wouldn't have the comeuppance to contradict someone
from IBM...

If MS and IBM had skipped the 286 and written OS/3 instead, we 
would have had it long, long ago.  The reason that it is so difficult
is the slightly brain-damaged 286, which requires all sorts of tricks to 
be useful in this kind of app. For example, to switch from prot to real
mode requires resetting the the processor.  It was only designed to go 
from real to prot.  You can't really blame Intel, the 286 hit the market
about the time the PC and MS-DOS really got popular.    Most of these
problems are fixed in the 386.   

MS seems to be hinting that OS/2.386 will be out 1Q89.   We'll see. 
That should greatly improve the performance of the penalty box, since
the 386 has a real live working virtual 86 mode. ( see Windows386)

IBMers wearing jeans???? Must have been Apple guys playing a joke.

cris

-- 
||...despair! Despair I can handle, it's the hope...    J.Cleese,Clockwise ||
Cris Simpson
                  is813cs@pyr.gatech.edu               GA Tech      Atlanta,GA
            ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!is813cs