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schlupa | 9 months ago

The big advantage we had on Atari and Amiga was that the 68000 could address more than 640K without a sweat. PC's had this annoying limit up until the 90s and the complexity that it introduced was mind blowing (EMM, EMS, XMS etc.). In 87 when I was student at University, I managed to write all my sofware on the Mega ST2 and print my papers with Signum! on my 9 pin matrix printer in a quality that my PC colleagues were absolutely jealous of. As said, the advantage was then quickly lost even if I still could use my 1991 acquiered TT up until the mid 90. But by then, the PC was indeed already in another category (CD-ROM, SVGA, Soundcards, Win95 and/or NT or OS/2, beginning of Linux etc.). Our poor niches computer couldn't follow against the sheer mass of the market.

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spankibalt|9 months ago

> PC's had this annoying limit up until the 90s and the complexity that it introduced was mind blowing (EMM, EMS, XMS etc.).

Competent enough people on both ends, end-users and programmers alike, simply worked around that. In the end, it still allowed for a platform of industry-leading applications and games, many of them not available on Amigas or Ataris.

hnlmorg|9 months ago

Not until the 90s. Again, you’re talking about 90s hardware and we are talking about 80s hardware.