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Please help ..My wife thinks Im actually smart

E

EvilHomer

Senior member
she just emailed me this question to stump me ....what the hell does it mean


"what is the escape sequence and instruction for the 80386 which allows
access to 4GB memory address space in real-mode?"
 
First she needs to make sure that it is a 386DX, which can address 4GB of memory, and not a 386SX, which only has a 24-bit memory addressing system that can only address 16MB of memory.

Real-mode has to deal with how a PC can address memory. It address in the following way in real-mode.
physical address = 16 * segment + offset

As far as the escape sequence goes, I belive it depends on the language/OS that is to be used. I'm by no means an expert, but I belive you need more info from her.
 
if your wife thinks you're smart, but you're not, why are you trying to get an answer to a question that you have no idea what it means? that's only going to make it worse, you know. she's your wife, you don't need to prove anything to her?
 
Originally posted by: Aflac
if your wife thinks you're smart, but you're not, why are you trying to get an answer to a question that you have no idea what it means? that's only going to make it worse, you know. she's your wife, you don't need to prove anything to her?
Click to expand...

You are obviously not married.
 
The 80386 featured three operating modes: real mode, protected mode and virtual mode. In the real mode, the 80386 (like the 80286) would run just as a fast 80186. The protected mode allowed the use of all the possibilities of the 286 and the protected mode extension of the 386, especially addressing up to 4 GB of memory. Finally, the virtual 8086(or V86) mode made it possible to run one or more virtual 8086 machines in a protected environment.
Click to expand...

Huzzah for Wikipedia... I'm not that smart either 😉
 
I am actually pretty smart but just not proficient in the escape sequence for the 80386...and as far as proving anything to her ...I have to prove myself worthy of her or she won't love me anymore...
 
The last 386 I saw had a hard time managing 640K of memory and need addon memory managers and what not to deal with anything above that, and GB was something we had never dreamed of.
 
Originally posted by: EvilHomer
I am actually pretty smart but just not proficient in the escape sequence for the 80386...and as far as proving anything to her ...I have to prove myself worthy of her or she won't love me anymore...
Click to expand...

I think there might be some truth to this. A profound repulsion for Intel processors can be gained with a deep study of the x86 instruction set. Hence, that repulsion could be re-directed to an attraction to a soft and warmed-bodied (yet ironically much cooler) wetware embedded device.

http://www.online.ee/~andre/i80386/
 
Originally posted by: Madwand1
Originally posted by: EvilHomer
I am actually pretty smart but just not proficient in the escape sequence for the 80386...and as far as proving anything to her ...I have to prove myself worthy of her or she won't love me anymore...
Click to expand...

I think there might be some truth to this. A profound repulsion for Intel processors can be gained with a deep study of the x86 instruction set. Hence, that repulsion could be re-directed to an attraction to a soft and warmed-bodied (yet ironically much cooler) wetware embedded device.

http://www.online.ee/~andre/i80386/
Click to expand...

LMAO you guys crack me up. :laugh:
 
Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Originally posted by: Aflac
if your wife thinks you're smart, but you're not, why are you trying to get an answer to a question that you have no idea what it means? that's only going to make it worse, you know. she's your wife, you don't need to prove anything to her?
Click to expand...

You are obviously not married.
Click to expand...

agh!!!
I was gonna say that...so true
 
Originally posted by: EvilHomer
I am actually pretty smart but just not proficient in the escape sequence for the 80386...and as far as proving anything to her ...I have to prove myself worthy of her or she won't love me anymore...
Click to expand...

As it should be.
 
Ooops, I just realized that the following is BS as she specifically says "access the 4GB address space from real mode..." Begin BS:You would put the processor in protected mode (see the 80386DX reference) by loading an extended memory manager like himem.sys and/or emm386.exe in the config.sys file for DOS and earlier windwoes. More recent versions of windwoes don't use external files for loading memory management.:END BS.

Good luck. I just used it, never programmed it. Repost this in the Processor section for perhaps more enlightened responses.

An idea. Could it be a trick question? AFAIK, you can only access 1MB of memory directly from real mode, beyond that you'd need an Expanded memory manager program (switched back and forth between protected and real mode and swapped 64kB blocks of memory in and out) and I don't think even that could do 4GB or an Extended memory manager - such large memory (even on local disk storage) was a pipe dream in (at least the early) '386 days. To access the entire 4GB mem space you need to be in 32-bit protected mode.

.bh.
 
Memmaker (DOS) and up to windowz 3.11 only support 64 megs max.
Ive tested this on my K7 soyo UPD with 1 gig.
I dont know the limit on Win95, Well at least not yet but assume still 64megs since win95 is just a gui DOS.
So even thought she has a 386dx and could even find moduals that could give her
4gig which i doubt since 8 and 16 meg were the largest for that simm size if not just 4 and 8meg.
Once they got the memory they would have to install Win98 or better, Would you even want to wait for it to boot?!?!?!?!

I thought it a trick question since she said 4Gig and not 4Meg.
 
Originally posted by: Slowlearner
The last 386 I saw had a hard time managing 640K of memory and need addon memory managers and what not to deal with anything above that, and GB was something we had never dreamed of.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly.


Ausm
 
At first I was going to say this is a trick question as everyone knows that you can only access 1mb of memory in real mode but I have since found out that I am wrong.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/assembly-language/x86/general/part2/

There is a bizzaro way to access 4GB of memory in real mode. You first switch to protected mode, change your segment size to 4GB, fiddle with your descriptor table, then change back to real mode. Segment sizes will now be 4GB even though you are in real mode.

Also, the question about escape sequences seems nonsensical. There is no escape sequence to get into protected mode. Escape sequences were crap we had to deal with get fancy fonts and such before the advent of wysiwyg word processors. Excape sequences also allowed for special control keys to be communicated accross terminals/dial up. However, given the fact that I never knew about the 4GB in real mode thing, I wonder if I was wrong about this as well.

Originally posted by: Slowlearner
The last 386 I saw had a hard time managing 640K of memory and need addon memory managers and what not to deal with anything above that, and GB was something we had never dreamed of.
Click to expand...
That was actually because of DOS's deficiencies not the 386.
 
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