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Win16 Memory Management

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Re: Win16 Memory Management

#21

Post by kalleboo »

I've been recently working with Classic Mac OS programming[0] and just that memory model (also using dealing with the lack of virtual memory using opaque handles to memory that need to be locked when used) is painful enough[1] - having to deal with segment addressing on top of that does not sound like fun. Thank god for the Motorola 68000!

[0]Made an AppleTalk chat client/server https://github.com/kalleboo/GlobalTalk-Chat

[1]The equivalent to HeapWalker I used was Metroweks ZoneRanger which was bundled with their compiler. It has a nice visualization of how fragmented the memory is https://bitbang.social/@kalleboo/116302075194704555

Re: Win16 Memory Management

#22

Post by jchw »

jdw64 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I think that if it were the old days, I probably wouldn't have been able to program. I remember that these days we program on top of 64bit virtual addresses, but how did developers do it back then

As someone who grew up coding after it was mostly 32-bit, I can't say this with certainty, but my gut feeling is that paradoxically you would have and it would've made you stronger.

Re: Win16 Memory Management

#23

Post by JdeBP »

atan2 wrote: post #18

I posted the same thing a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424862 I'll just stop posting on HN.

Check the ID numbers (48410844 < 48424862) and bear in mind that Hacker News has this thing where sometimes submissions get re-cycled for attention. Yes, annoyingly it does seem to make the presented datestamps wrong.

Re: Win16 Memory Management

#26

Post by cyberax »

hnlmorg wrote: post #4
jdw64 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I think that if it were the old days, I probably wouldn't have been able to program. I remember that these days we program on top of 64bit virtual addresses, but how did developers do it back then

16 bit programs used 16 bit addresses, generally speaking. Even with 32bit systems where you’d want more than 4GB RAM, application software still had 32 bit addresses (and thus 4GB memory limit). I think it was a lot more common for 8bit systems to allow for 16 bit addressing though. It’s been a while though. So hopefully I’m not misremembering things.

Not really. 16-bit programs on x86 used 32-bit pointers (effectively 20-bit due to the segment mechanism).

8-bit microprocessors used 16-bit addresses.

Re: Win16 Memory Management

#27

Post by JdeBP »

markus_zhang wrote: post #8
jdw64 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I think that if it were the old days, I probably wouldn't have been able to program. I remember that these days we program on top of 64bit virtual addresses, but how did developers do it back then

I think they learned by reading books such as Undocumented Windows or Windows Internals (not to be confused with Windows NT internals), and Microsoft documents. In fact, I’d argue it was more fun than programming Javascript these days.

It wasn't really the 'Undocumented' and 'Internals' books. Pretty much everything in the headlined article was to be found in the SDK, Microsoft Press publications, and in many third party books about DOS+Windows programming.

Petzold's Programming Windows book, for example, devoted an entire chapter (chapter 7) to memory management, with diagrams and examples. In the 2nd edition (which I just pulled off the shelf to check) that chapter runs to some 40 pages.

Re: Win16 Memory Management

#29

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

jchw wrote: post #22
jdw64 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I think that if it were the old days, I probably wouldn't have been able to program. I remember that these days we program on top of 64bit virtual addresses, but how did developers do it back then

As someone who grew up coding after it was mostly 32-bit, I can't say this with certainty, but my gut feeling is that paradoxically you would have and it would've made you stronger.

Exactly. I'd argue that all those programming Gods and Gods because they went through that period. Whatever didn't kill them made them stronger. We should replicate that experience by deliberately writing in low level C and assembly for a few years.

Re: Win16 Memory Management

#30

Post by elzbardico »

atan2 wrote: post #18

I posted the same thing a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424862 I'll just stop posting on HN.

People submit a lot of stuff all the time, very few people go through "New" and thus a new submission probably have a very short life time before it is drowned by newer submissions.

A submission to survive most likely needs some initial push from non-organic voting.

It probably helps if you share you submission early with your colleagues and in other sites.

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