Hacker News Reader

> Windows applications had to run within the first 640K of RAM. In reality, around that time most corporate machines were 80286 machines and as I recall a high specced machine usually had 2MB RAM.

There was a protected mode version of Windows 2.0 that would run on 386s and allow larger memory access. I believe it also ran on 286s, but protected mode was crippled quite a bit on those chips.

View on HN

I can't remember the specifics now - it was 35 years ago or something... but as I recall the memory situation wasn't sorted out until Windows 3.0. That's what made Windows 3.0 so exciting - the memory model.

That was windows "enhanced mode", when running on 386. 286 could not return to real mode, once entering protected mode (by design; a way was found later by resetting the cpu) and had no vm86 mode. 386 had these features, and by the time of windows 3.0 release it was popular enough, so they could be used.

No, even without those 386 features, Windows 3.0 did introduce a new memory system that allowed Windows applications to more easily use up to 16MB of RAM IIRC.

For Windows 2.x it was less about protected mode than the MMU -- paging allowed EMS (bank selection in real mode) to be done by the CPU.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com