I heard/read somewhere that the "Runtime Error 200" was actually caused some sort of subroutine that was trying to figure out how fast the computer is. It's certainly ironic that it doesn't work on really fast computers since that's exactly the "problem" it's trying to address.
The other interesting thing about it is that in most programs there is no legitimate need to know how fast the computer is (the program is bloated and wasting time trying to figure out something it doesn't even need to know). Of course, with some programs (like interactive games) the speed of interaction is critical, but those are the exceptions. A well-written program (even an interactive game) wouldn't rely on a specific speed of computer, anyway, as long as the computer was some "minimum". It's also interesting that CPU speeds are pretty much maxed out at a few GHz. For a long time it looked like they were going to be able to keep increasing CPU speeds, but they've pretty much reached the physical limits of electrical physics. They've needed to figure out other ways of increasing speeds besides creating faster oscillators. Some of the early attempts were things like pipelining in the CPU (performing two CPU instructions at once) and caching, but the most common solution nowadays is multiple cores/CPU's. Of course, that takes special programming techniques and lots of complication at both the hardware and software level. They're also experimenting with things like optical and quantum computing, and even things like "three-dimensional" CPU's where the different parts of the CPU send signals with back and forth with magnetic waves or photons instead of signals running along "wires". The other interesting thing is that people are still obsessed with speed, but sometimes speed is your enemy instead of your friend. I remember talking to a guy one time who used to be in the Air Force and he talked about how they still sometimes use prop-driven planes instead of jets because the jets are too fast to do the specific job they're trying to accomplish. Anyway, just some passing thoughts. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
