> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Next up: Why, in the year 2014, am I still running installers that have
>> 16-bit dithered logos? WTF?
>
> Obviously you need to be able to run it in safe mode...
>
> Speaking of which, even though the 80386 processor was introduced
> in 1985 (that's almost 30 years ago), PCs still boot up in 16-bit
> mode. Yes, even the new 64-bit ones.
>
> The very first thing that the OS does is to switch to either 32-bit
> mode (if the CPU is that old) or to 64-bit mode. After that it will
> usually never revert back to 16-bit mode ever again.
>
> Support for 16-bitness increases the CPU complexity and thus its price,
> and is overall just dead weight that has little to no purpose.
>
> (Granted, there might still be *some* software out there that's 16-bit
> and needs to be run even on a modern PC... although this will happen
> *only* on Windows. I don't think Linux or BSD has ever run anything
> in 16-bit mode for as long as they have existed.

I think on some releases of Linux or BSD, you could run XENIX 
executables, which were 16bit, if memory serves me right.


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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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