20 years of the P. C. : Has software been held back by hardware limitations, or have hardware developments been held back by shortcomings in software??”

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Peter Patterson Co314

21/11/2000

“20 years of the P. C. : Has software been held back by hardware limitations, or have hardware developments been held back by shortcomings in software??”

        Within twenty years the Personal Computer has developed at an astonishing rate. Both hardware and software have progressed beyond the expectation from twenty years ago. The two classes are so dependent on each other, as one can not function without the other, that developments in one have affected and forced developments in the other. Though if two classes are so dependent on each other then for one to improve in design, development and function then the other must follow. This unfortunately means that if one is going slower in development then it will hold the other one back as a consequence.

        From 1980 the first P. C. was properly marketed by Seattle Computer Products. In 1981 the first IBM PC was  on sale to companies and even the wealthy public. This PC had 32 Kila Bytes of RAM , which compared to the average 128 Mega Bytes of RAM in today’s PC’s, indicates how small the hardware development was at in the early 80’s. The software built for this was extremely basic, using DOS version 1.0, but only as an option. The software was not the main selling point of the PC. It was marketed for its hardware, i.e. this was a revolutionary machine that could save large quantities of data files on to discs no bigger than a hand, from which it could be edited and re-saved, a major advantage on the manual way of work. Software was created to enable the hardware to work correctly. It was not until later that it was the hardware that was constructed for the software requirements.

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        1988 saw the emergence of DOS version 4.0 which was released for the PC. This version of DOS  used the full hardware capacities at the time, even the fastest Central Processing Unit, the Intel 80386, was pushed to it’s capacity. The 80386 was released less than a year before software was able to use it to it’s full capacity. This brings about the question; that if faster CPUs had been around at the time would software be able to be developed to use it’s full capacity? The answer is probably yes. The next CPU to be released, the 80486, if ...

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