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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086

In the late 1970s, the cutting-edge microprocessor was 16-bit. The first 32-bit Intel chip was the 386, which debuted in 1985.

The TRS-80, a common small computer in the late 70s, offered 4kb-48kb of RAM.

When using hardware with that capacity, overflowing time_t in 2038 is hardly a concern.




IBM ran 128 bit virtualized architecture on top of 1988 chips.


Which was a backward-compatible extension of a 48-bit address space system built out of 1970s chips: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/system38/IBM_Syst...


On mainframes, right? But Unix wasn't written to be a mainframe OS.


true, I was just noting that the universal claim of the parent about dates and clocks wasn't so universal




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