1 April 1986, Hillsboro, OR: Intel Corporation's Personal
Computer Enhancement Operation (PCEO) today announced Below
Board, a memory add-on device for the underachiever. Below Board
is designed for the IBM PC, XT, AT and their compatibles or
incompatibles. Below Board conforms to the -1.4 revision of a
memory specification, the most negative revision to date. It is
believed that Below Board will spawn a whole new generation of
incompatible software as well as hardware.
Below Board operates by moving Conventional RAM down to the
memory space below 0K, where DOS can't conflict with it. The
new memory space is called expended memory. This is a superior
alternative to competitive products which allow normal software
to fill-up the memory. Below Board always maintains at least
640K of free memory. A side benefit to this method of memory
management is that nearly 100% of the 8086 to 80286 processing
capacity is kept available.
Below Board establishes a new class of PC products known as
Vacantware. Such products use an undocumented instruction in the
8086 processor family called VANISH. The VANISH instruction
places the CPU in Vapor mode, in which the expended memory can be
erased or ignored. Expended memory is relatively efficient,
since even CPU's that have been greatly speeded up, still only
require one wait state. No other states are allowed.
Shipments of Below Board are expected to begin within 2 to 15
months. Prices and billings will be announced shortly after
delivery. all orders must be placed prior to last year.
