"J. Clarke" > wrote in message
in.local...
> In article >, dsi1@usenet-
> news.net says...
>>
>> On 4/18/2011 2:33 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
>> > In >, lid
>> > says...
>> >>
>> >> On 4/17/2011 6:22 PM, Paul M. Cook wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Probably 133. I remember spending the extra dough for the "huge" 20
>> >>> mb disk
>> >>> drive. Added like 200 bucks to the cost. And now I would need 2 and
>> >>> a half
>> >>> of those drives just to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.
>> >>>
>> >>> Paul
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> My guess is that we'll be seeing smaller, quick loading apps instead
>> >> of
>> >> big fat bloatware. Who would have guessed that the cell phone would
>> >> change the future of computing? If you ask me, the future is looking
>> >> pretty good. Finally, no more Microsoft and it's DOS-legacy OS. OTOH,
>> >> Google may be running the world. :-)
>> >
>> > Uh, there is no "DOS-legacy OS" being produced by Microsoft. If it's
>> > got any legacy it's VMS. All current Microsoft PC operating systems
>> > are
>> > derived from Windows NT, which was Microsoft's fourth generation,
>> > benefitting from lessons learned from Xenix, DOS, and OS/2, and
>> > developed from a clean slate by the former DEC employee who developed
>> > VMS for DEC. The latest 64-bit versions don't even have the DOS
>> > compatibility layer that had been provided in all earlier versions.
>> >
>> > Microsoft also has a fifth generation, variously called "Windows CE",
>> > "Windows Mobile", "Windows Phone", etc that is not derived from DOS or
>> > NT.
>> >
>> > However you have always had the choice of running a non-Microsoft
>> > OS--in
>> > the DOS days Unix was around--Xenix, which was derived from AT&T source
>> > code, ran fine on the original IBM PC, and there was full System V
>> > available for the '286. But most people go with the market.
>> >
>> > And when Photoshop and Premiere run on a cell phone get back to us.
>> >
>>
>> My guess is that there's still some code in Win7 dating back to God
>> knows when.
>
> 1989 when Windows NT development started.
>
>> OTOH, you know more about this stuff than I. OTOH, I doubt
>> that anybody really knows Win7 in total - it's just too large.
>
> Nobody knows it all, but it's still a portable OS that can be recompiled
> to run on several different architectures, which DOS never tried to be.
>
Not meaning to be a nit picker, but it is a whole lot more than just
recompiling. The top 80% would be a relatively easy port but the bottom 20%
comprises the abstraction layers which would need to be rebuilt from
scratch. Also, there are very specific components in Intel CPUs which would
need to be duplicated on whatever other architecture you choose. AMD for
example does not so much duplicate the design as it emulates the
functionality. Windows really is quite tied to its current architecture.
That was much less the case when NT was designed on top of POSIX which made
it fairly easy to port to CPUs such as the DEC Alpha. Apple got its design
right and porting it to the Intel CPUs was a fairly easy process as those
things go. But W7 would be a whole different thing to port to say a
Motorola CPU.
Paul