14 Jun
2026
14 Jun
'26
7:03 p.m.
On 6/14/26 20:23, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
IBM chose the 8088 because the 68000 was nearly equivalent
to the 360 at the time and the NS32000 wasn't in silicon yet.
I cloned a Nat Semi 16032 system running Genix and Xenix
back in about 1983. It was a total DOG. It took literally
FIVE MINUTES to load emacs. Now, of course, that was
limited by the 16-bit bus and slow Multibus I system bus,
but it was pretty awful. Maybe the 40 MB MFM disk drive was
also an issue. The CPU clock speed was 8 MHz. After being
frustrated with the performance, I jumped at the chance to
buy a uVAX-II CPU board and cobble together a system based
on that. Wow, that was a real boost. The uVAX-II CPU ran
at 32MHz, so that might indicate the performance jump. It
also had 32-bit access to memory.
jon