I downloaded an old PC game onto my laptop and had to use DOS Box to run it, because Windows 11 wouldn’t allow a 16-bit application to run.
Why is it that a much more powerful laptop can’t deal with software my PC had no problems with 20 years ago? Same thing with backwards-compatible video games.
In: 3
16-bit CPUs processed data in 16-bit chunks. Their input and output buffers are literally hard-wired with 16 little conductors that pass binary strings 16 bits in length.
Operating systems and software are compiled to be compatible with particular CPUs, or CPU class specifications.
As CPU bit-lengths grew, it became too onerous to compile operating systems and software to accomodate them all. So the operating system you run now won’t understand the insructions the old software tries to send it because it isn’t designed to process instructions of the word length that the software provides.
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