The Hardware Environment

Although previous versions of both MS-DOS and Windows have tried to provide support for all earlier hardware systems, much of this backward compatibility has been achieved at the expense of limiting functional capabilities. The support for the owners of earlier computer models, including 808x and 80286 CPUs, has prevented programmers from making the best use of the potential capacities of newer machines and, of course, placed the end user—knowingly or otherwise—under similar restrictions.

At some future time and in a similar fashion, the restrictions inherent in the Windows 98 operating system will also be considered archaic, restrictive, and cumbersome. When that time comes, Windows 98 will, in turn, be replaced by a new operating system.

For now, we’re programming for the 32-bit environment and need to meet its requirements. We’ll start with the requirements for the computer system, RAM, and hard drive space.

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