Olivetti M20

[Chuck Guzis]

On 15 Jan 2007 at 19:19, Roger Holmes wrote:

> 1) To prevent one process overwriting the memory belonging to another  
> process.
> Segments did not HAVE to be 64k, that was their maximum size, the  
> minimum
> was 128 bytes.
> 2) To provide virtual memory.
> 3) To protect the executive from processes.
> 4) To allow non contiguous physical address space to appear as a  
> logical contiguous address space
> 5) To provide mapping out of faulty blocks of memory
> and probably as many reasons I have not thought of off the top of my  
> head.

Consider the time this was introduced.  It was a $5K personal 
computer from 1982 whose base configuration was 2 floppies and no 
hard disk.  Just about any of the above was probably held to be 
superfluous by most manufacturers in that context.

Cheers,
Chuck