"Roy J. Tellason" wrote to "Greg Mayman" (16 Dec 02  20:06:09)
 --- on the topic of "THOSE OLD EXPENSIVE [1/2]"

 GM> I don't know why the 80xx software is so big. Does it include
 GM> workspace in the file, or what?

 RJT> I never got into it enough to figure that out.  But you're loading
 RJT> segment registers as well as the usual ones,  depending on which
 RJT> memory model you're using.

I know the answer to this one. It has to do with the compiler libraries
getting filled with all of kinds swiss army knife like routines. Say one
program uses but 1% of the library but it compiles the other 99% just
the same because the required routines are so deeply embedded they can't
be compiled alone anymore. For example you can't just print "Hello
world" without first having called a few zillion odd subroutines which
have nothing to do with illuminating spots on your phosphor. These would
for example be memory management, exception supervisory, break vectors,
virtual machine, emm, hdd, blah... it goes on ad nauseum. Go and explain
to me why an executing program which doesn't do any disk I/O has to
access the hard disk at some point or other, it's not a virus, and
there's plenty of ram so the virtual memory is turned off?! #$%{at}^!!!

 Mike
 ****


... New computer?  But I like my vacuum tubes... They keep me warm.
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