🚀 go-pugleaf

parnes@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Gary Parnes) writes:

> Does anybody know what compatibility problems there will be if I took and
> IBM 8086/286/386 compatible computer to Japan?  Do they use ASCII?  For that
> matter, do they use standard DOS at all?
There may be a smattering of DOS compatabiles in Japan, but for the most 
part the Japanese NEC and Toshiba machines dominate the market. These 
machines each use a proprietary OS - so an app for one machine will not 
necessarily run on the other.
    As far as compatability goes, a well behaved DOS program (that is,
that uses all DOS function calls instead of BIOS or direct calls) will 
run on the NEC machine (that means not many at all!).
    The Japanesse NEC OS uses that same characters as in the PC, but 
only in the 0 -80 Hex range. Characters after this are concidered "halfs"
of the Japanese ideographic characters.

> I have heard that it's a "no-no" to take pkzip out of the country since it
> uses the DES to optimize compression, for example...
PKZIP uses DES? I dont think so...........


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| Mike Francis                                       Borland International |
| mfrancis@borland.uucp                           Mike_Francis@mcimail.com |
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