I could have sworn the title was “Linking the linker” but instead it’s the punchline at the end.

I don’t think it was this one – IIRC, the article I read was a bit more in-depth why the S-100 machine had to be used.

I can’t imagine as the tools for Xenix are just ports of the MS-DOS stuff, so Xenix-286 should happily link the linker so to speak. But before 1984/85 it’d be the way to go?

That claim seems curious. For one, addressing more memory doesn’t need a 386 with 32 bit tools, it needs a 286 with protected mode tools, and in 1988 either OS/2 or Xenix/286 would have worked fine.

The other curious thing is that software grows over time, and this machine would only be useful at a particular point (requires >640Kb but <1Mb.) If the linker in 1987 or so needed this much space, did it still need that much space in 1982? This claim only makes sense to address a very short point in time. It makes one wonder what the S-100 was doing from 1981-1985.

The “linking the linker” story is still available online at Tim Paterson’s website under the title “The First DOS machine.”

I know that Sirius and the S-100 mocked IBM for the limited maximum memory limit but anyone considering spending $10,000+ just on memory was going to be looking for a well stocked mini with software that took advantage of the memory space not some multi-user CP/M box.

it must be this one!?

I remember the “Linking the linker” article, too, and I’ve been trying to find it again, but it seems to have fallen off the Internet somehow…

This became impossible with EGA/VGA since they are mapped right at the end of the 640 KiB. Also, I recall reading than it was possible to move the video framebuffer with specialized Hardware (A CGA/EGA/whatever card that allowed you to map the RAM to another UMA location instead of the default as per the IBM defined Memory Map), but you also require to hack the Software because anything that wrote to the framebuffer directly wouldn’t find it at the expected location.

I’ve heard of people using a custom BIOS that’d have int 10 baked in for support over serial ports. But for sure even with a TSR you could then open up all the video memory for sure.

There was that infamous “Linking the linker” article I can’t find that used a tarbell machine that didn’t have ISA or video cards so it had something crazy like 900kb of conventional RAM.

Then you had DPMS and QEMM with even more crazy tricks like stubbing the BIOS to a protected mode image, and allowing you to use the 64kb of ROM space. I think it was stealth mode?

And of course Helix’s Multimedia Cloaking.

It’s no small wonder that DOS Extender took over the entire market.