Brad poll: If you have 30 seconds, please answer this yes/no question for me

Please answer the poll question honestly. Do you know what this is (before looking it up ;) )? I'm curious to get a serious poll result on this.

Thanks,

Brad!

Nice one. :D


[TalkingToMyself]
Is he trying to guess average member age ? :afrog:
[/TalkingToMyself]

I voted since Brad knows (or could look up) my age. :D

Yes I know what it is and why it was needed.

Quote:

---

Do you know what the 640k barrier is/was?

---

How could you not?... :) This Q is more for new commers...

I had no idea what it was. Although I have used an 8086 :thumb:

Damn, I thought I was old. :(

so what is a 640K barrier?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/640k_barrier

...Back then I just started learning 'computers'. Most of the time I used it to play games. I never needed more than 640KB.

640K barrier? What about the 64k barrier?

LOL - I remember when it went to 640 from 256. There was joy throughout the land! :lol:

I've had a guy locked in my basement with an XT for the last 25 years, and if you ask him, 640K is still more than enough for anyone..:)

same question what is a 640K barrier?

If that wasn't a sarcastic/rhetorical question, it was a compatibility limit.. In DOS days if you put 4MB of ram into a pc amd typed mem /c you would see your memory broken down into 640KB of conventional memory, and the rest would be initialized as extended or expanded memory that could only be accessed through apps that were actually loaded into the base 640KB of conventional memory.. How your upper ram was allocated changed the way your pc ran.. I'm sure a few ppl here remember batch files to reboot their computers to different memory layouts for top of the line games like Doom.. If you were computing in those days, and didn't do these things then you really weren't using your PC to its fullest potential..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RobDog888

Yes I know what it is and why it was needed.

---

Needed? There was no reason for it at all, Rob. OS and video could have been loaded low, leaving whatever memory there was contiguous (neglecting Intel's stupid segmented addressing), or the OS could have relocated to the top of RAM, ala CP/M, Mac OS and a lot of others.

The only "need" was Bill's, in not wasting time with any of that, because "no one will ever need more than 640k". I guess the wronger you are, the richer you get.

Segment offset may have been needed, but 640k was a boneheaded mistake....or maybe it didn't matter. People hated segment:offset, but if you had to deal with that, it really didn't matter whether it was 640k or not as long as the segments were 16bit and were thus capped at 64k. You could have a terrabyte of memory with massive numbers of segments, but it wouldn't have made one furry bit of difference, because the memory models would have been the same: Tiny would be rare, small and compact would be nice ideals...if you could get there, large would have been typical for most things, and huge would have been outrageous.

640k didn't matter, and it wasn't essential. What was critical was 16 bit registers.


Oh, and Brad, why did you hide how people voted on this, it would have been interesting?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Oh, and Brad, why did you hide how people voted on this, it would have been interesting?

---

Do you not bet the view poll linkt that shows the results?

Brad!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brad jones

Do you not bet the view poll linkt that shows the results?

---

What? :lol:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by iPrank

Most of the time I used it to play games. I never needed more than 640KB.

---

I learned of the 640KB barrier because of games. The computer was primarily my father's work computer and loaded so many drivers by default that only about 400K remained - too little for most games in the late DOS era. My first contact with programming was modifying config.sys and autoexec.bat to build complicated boot menus and all that stuff.

"Why is was needed." ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brad jones

Do you not bet the view poll linkt that shows the results?

Brad!

---

:lol: :lol: I've read this over three times, and I think (though I'm not quite certain, still) that the answer is "no".

I know what the 640kb barrier is but voted no because I didn't relate the question to my first 8086 :p. Does that count as giving away my age?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brad jones

Please answer the poll question honestly. Do you know what this is (before looking it up ;) )? I'm curious to get a serious poll result on this.

Thanks,

Brad!

---

waaaaaay before my time Brad :thumb: