Re: [Linux-aus] Hardware resellers of the world, rejoice!

[Con Zymaris <conz@cyber.com.au>]

On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 10:57:09AM +1000, Ian Wienand wrote:
> On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 11:52:31AM +1000, Les Bell wrote:
> > In 1986 or '87 (from memory), Bill Gates was keynote speaker at the annual
> > ACS PC Conference. In his speech, he stated - and this is pretty much
> > word-for-word, as it shocked me at the time and stuck in my memory - "We
> > had three goals in mind when we introduced Windows: 1. Multitasking. 2:
> > Graphical user interface. 3. To stimulate consumer demand for more
> > sophisticated hardware". (Point 3 is *definitely* his precise phrase).
> > 
> > I interpreted this to mean that Microsoft sees itself in the business of
> > selling hardware for its business partners.
> 
> Well maybe he didn't mean that at all.  I don't know much about the
> historical context, being in probably kindergarden at the time, but
> going from google it looks like the 386 was introduced right around
> that time.  I'm assuming most people still had 8086 chips.
> 
> Seeing as his first point was multitasking, my first assumption is
> that his third point was referring to the fact that the 386 was the
> first chip with real support for protected mode, which is essential to
> "multitasking".  AFAIK in the following 20 years there hasn't been any
> fundamental improvements to consumer CPUs like protected mode.


Geos (from Geoworks) had 'real' multitasking, at about the same time as
Windows 2.0 come out. 

Windows did not acquire multitasking until 1994, when Windows 95 came out.
Geos could do this on an 8086. No i386 CPU virtualisation (the 'easy' way
out for multi-tasking) was needed. Nor was i286 CPU protected mode.

Deskview could do the same on these same CPUs. 

-- 
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