Re: A Tale of Two Apples

[mspaeth@athena.mit.edu (Mark C Spaeth)]

In article <62m35f$a69$1@client3.news.psi.net>,
Steve Mentzer <!smentzer@pacbell.net! wrote:
!Try deperately, but ultimately failing to sound intelligent, Mitchell Spector 
!said...
!!In article bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major) writes...
!!!To make an analogy that's a bit more realistic, the current crop of PC's
!!!can't run the oldest PC software--or very old versions of DOS.  
!!    Could you give some examples of old PC/XT software that will not
!!run on a Pentium system? All the old 8088 titles I have seem to run
!!just fine on my 486 and my brother's Pentium.
!You will find incompatible software, if you look hard enough. The most common 
!cause of incompatibilities is lack of foresight on the part of the programmer. 
!Old software that took advantage of CGA,EGA or hercules might get confused when 
!querying(sp?) the BIOS and/or hardware and seeing an MCGA or VGA adapter. Most 
!of these problems caused the programs to bomb or lock up.

Actually there's a new class of incompatibility now...

A lot of old programs use installation schemes that look at the the type of the
partition in the partition table... Thus, the Fat32 of win95 isn't recognized
as a hard drive, and the software won't install...

Totally off the topic of II's, but worth noting...