This is an old email from 1990 more recently disclosed as part of an antitrust exhibit:
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00307.pdf
Note the 32-bit "extender techniques" mentioned, for example Watcom's Win386.
Notice that Paul Maritz of MS completely missed the limitations of these. Even Win9x's Win32 implementation still had some of these problems.
