PC/MS DOS
In the DOS era overlays were popular because the operating system and many of the computer systems it ran on lacked virtual memory and had very little RAM by current standards — the original PC had between 16K and 64K depending on configuration. "Several DOS linkers in the 1980s supported in a form nearly identical to that used 25 years earlier on mainframe computers." Binary files containing memory overlays had a defacto standard extension, .OVL. This file type was used among others by WordStar and dBase. The GFA BASIC compiler was able to produce .OVL files.
Read more about this topic: Overlay (programming)
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
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