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nuclear war (Miscellaneous)

posted by kerravon E-mail, Sydney, Free World South, 10.11.2022, 01:16

> Hello kerravon,
>
> > The problem is that POSIX exists for a reason, but
> > there is no equivalent for small systems, like we
> > had in the 1980s, and we may have again.
>
> Have you ever coded before for an Intel 8O8O-based system, or some other
> system with quite literally less than 64 KiB of RAM? I have.
I started programming in assembly with the
Commodore 64 in 1984. Not a proper assembler -
the equivalent of MSDOS "debug".

> With all due respect, methinks you know not whereof you speak.
Sorry, I have somehow failed to be clear.

Although post-nuclear war it is possible that only
8-bit computers can be manufactured, I'm not asking
about an API for them. That's something I'll think
about later.

What I'm interested in is what to do if/when technology
reaches a 16:16 stage.

And not necessarily a 4-bit segment shift. It could be
a 5-bit segment shift which would give access to 2 MB
memory which is more practical for PDOS/86.

Note that the 80286, while it doesn't give a 5-bit
segment shift, can effectively allow programs to use
2 MB or more memory and not be aware that they are
not running on an 8086.

I should also point out that creating an API for small
(16:16) systems is not technically impossible. I have
already made an opening offer here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/src/pos.c

Basically, if ISO had got together in the 1980s, and
had that already written, and realized that that they
should support more than the 8086, such as the 68000,
still with no virtual memory so Unix is not an option,
what would ISO come up with?

Also assuming that ISO had standardized C90 in 1980
instead of waiting for it to become popular.

And ISO could have standardized a replacement for pos.c
in 1980 as well. There was no reason they needed to wait
for an actual OS for the 8086. Or even an actual 8086.
The concept of 16:16 and flat 32 exists independently of
Intel and Motorola.

BFN. Paul.

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