8086 memory space was: The Soul of Barb's New Machine 1166

Ahh, the 8080 and 8086 were never intended as general purpose computer systems. They were originally marketed to EEs to replace boards full of random logic. Don't blame Intel or Microsoft because someone realized they made great low end minicomputers. The 8080 and 8086 systems were a bottom-up market, driven by people who were spending their own money.

Cost was everything, so don't dismiss it so readily. $100 was a major expenditure for a starving college student. No, there was no elegant multi-user timeshare friendly design, because no one was willing to spend $20K for a home computer, otherwise we'd all be running 64 bit extended PDP-11s and Novas. I paid $429 for the IMSAI box, with a CPU. Over the years I added to it, a bit at a time. Come payday and I had saved enough for another 8KB ram kit I ran down to the computer store so I'd have more space to work in that night. No way that could happen with commercial equipment, the entry cost to get it running was just too high, and the incremental cost to upgrade was prohibitive. Same for CP-M and Microsoft. What did RSX cost, how much was a Basic-Plus license? MS Basic was dirt cheap, and it worked. CP-M didn't have a lot of features, but I could write my own drivers and add in support for whatever I could afford. But the one critical difference was dollars. PCs exist today, and the likes of DEC, SEL, and DG don't, because those cheap x86 boxes broke the pricing-marketing model for the minicomputer manufacturers.

I knew the tradeoffs when I built my first 8-bit IMSAI home machine, and when I added a 16-bit 8086 S-100 box . They didn't compare to RSX, VMS or even CDC SCOPE (which wasn't much more advanced than CP-M from the user point of view). But they were mine, no timeshare, I could program any time day or night. Sure the machine crashed a lot, but I didn't care.

For that matter, I still don't. I pay less for a 64-bit machine now than I did for an 8-bit machine 30 years ago. It's a tool. If I find some sequence that makes it crash, then I don't follow that particular procedure again. Is it right? Hard to say, I certainly get my money's worth, based on historical perspective. It would be nice it Windows were more reliable, but I can live with what I have now. I rarely get a BSOD, but I don't push Windows to it's limits either. Jack Peachicken