[anthk]

Eh, BIOSes had an API-like interface under ASM assembler macros under DOS. It was relatively easy to do stuff directy with hardware.

>many PCs had a 60MHz Pentium 1 or a 100MHz 486DX4 with 64MiB of RAM and it ran

By 1998 most people switched to a Pentium because of the huge performance gain. And by 2000, everyone had a Pentium2 with ~96mb of RAM.

[qayxc]

> And by 2000, everyone had a Pentium2 with ~96mb of RAM.

That's a bold claim! The PII was released around 1998 and you basically just asserted that everybody buys the latest CPU as soon as its released.

The reality is that most PC users never upgrade their machine and buy a new one instead. The average age of a PC is about 5 years and no, aside from enthusiasts nobody buys the latest and greatest as soon as gets released.

Businesses in particular hold on to their assets for some years due to depreciation (which incidentally is 5 years for PC class devices).

So in 2000, the average PC was 1995-level hardware.

[anthk]

I was there. In 2000 the average PC was 1997 era hw... with a Pentium2, AMD k7, or a Celero overclocked to ~450MHZ? making a great alternative to a Pentium2 and a Pentium III@450.

Windows 98 was on its peak and the Pentium MMX often was horrendously slow to start up things. Good with Windows 95, but by 2K everyone was onto 98/SE because of good additions and an easy PNP support.

W98SE was used even when XP got released and a few years more.

Also, your statement about the P4 with that huge amounts of RAM (2GB) is even more unusual than a PII in y2k.

When I had an AMD Athlon in 2003, I barely had 256MB of RAM. I stayed with that up to 2009 with Debian 4 DVD's.I tried some Fedora releases and they where a huge no-no in my machine, and Solaris was impossible.