<If Intel's 8088 was stripped of half it's bus width, why was it used so muc
<more than the 8086? One of the few computers that I've seen with an 8086 i
it was half the bits on the bus but the actual data rates were very close
to each other. The 8088 would go out and do two hits for every one 8086
on the bus but both executed the same instruction in the same number of
internal cycles. So for half the bus width you needed less support parts
and lower cost for only 20% performance hit. The PC was slow not becuase of
the 8088 though... it was the 4.77MHz clock when 8MHz parts were available.
that choice was also related to the cost (slow parts are cheaper than fast
parts).
The 8086 and 8088 are the same CPU save for different bus width. They are
not socket interchangeable.
Allison
At 04:15 PM 12/27/98 -0500, Allison wrote:
><Yes. I've been using a 386DX with 128k cache with Win3.1 and Netscape 3.0.
><Doesn't seem significantly slower than my friend's P90 with W95. Sometimes
><Netscape crashes with some .JPG files (GP fault in the VGA driver) and I
><have to start over.
>
>Either buggy VGA driver or not enough ram. I found NS would do that with
>8mb and with 12mb it wouldn't!
Yes it did it with 8M, and sometimes now with 16Mb. The last was with some
of the very interesting Moffett field computer museum images.
By the way, I found the 1975 Volume of the UK journal "Radio and Electronic
Engineering". Several interesting 25 year review articles under the title
"25th anniversary of the stored program computer" Yes, maybe many will
dispute the 25 years.
Some of the articles so far I don't exactly agree, such as valves started to
decline (number in service) by 1950. The era of the transistor was from 1950
to 1964, etc.
>
><Haven't tried much newer, it doesn't seem right to require a 300MHz
><processor and 64MB ram to mostly read email, much less type mail messages!
><I did adjust several things, like remove smartdrv's "buffering" for the HD,
>
>You do want it to cache on read from the HD, it helps. The exception is
>with some IDE and SCSI drives there is hardware caching and smartdrv
>just adds software to slow things down.
Yes still cache just not (double) buffering. With the IDE hardware, may be
called triple buffering. The HD never seemed to stop!
-Dave
<Hi. I read about the AMD 29000 series microprocessors, and they seemed to
<be pretty interesting. Does anyone have any examples of micros that used
<such a processor? (And: Does anyone have one that they'd want to get rid
<of with compensation?)
generally used in custom microprogrammed systems where speed is everything.
DEC used it as a graphics drawing engine for a high speed laser printer
(40ppm!).
Allison
<don't know why Intel's 'low cost' processors are always so bone headed:
<486SX, which removed the one true thing that made it a 486, 8088, removing
<the crucial 16-bit bus of the 8086, 386SX, which worked pretty well, but
<still halfed the external bandwidth (did Intel ever make a cheap version o
<a 286?), and now we've got Celeron: Until the Celron A, no cache at all...
This show a fundemental lack of knowledge about Intel CPUs and their
busses.
8088 actually runs for the same clock about 20% slower than the 8086
but using significantly fewer glue chips.
The 386sx is a lower pin count 386 that uses a 16 bit bus insted of the
32bit again for lower cost and lower power. Bus bandwith was not half
as it is faster than that.
Celeron, PII with big internal cache. I just powered up a celeron 333mhz
with 128k internal cache and it's remarkably fast(and cheap).
286 never saw a 288 version.
ISA and EISA bus machines are slow as the BUS speeds are limited to ~8mhz.
This is where many older machines hit the speed wall. PCI and other
extended busses are faster (to the limits of the cpu level bus).
Allison
<Yes. I've been using a 386DX with 128k cache with Win3.1 and Netscape 3.0.
<Doesn't seem significantly slower than my friend's P90 with W95. Sometimes
<Netscape crashes with some .JPG files (GP fault in the VGA driver) and I
<have to start over.
Either buggy VGA driver or not enough ram. I found NS would do that with
8mb and with 12mb it wouldn't!
<Haven't tried much newer, it doesn't seem right to require a 300MHz
<processor and 64MB ram to mostly read email, much less type mail messages!
<I did adjust several things, like remove smartdrv's "buffering" for the HD,
You do want it to cache on read from the HD, it helps. The exception is
with some IDE and SCSI drives there is hardware caching and smartdrv
just adds software to slow things down.
Allison
How do I change my email address on this forum.
My currenet email address is handyman(a)sprintmail.com
My new email address will be musicman38(a)mindspring.com
Phil...
It's fairly easy to reverse the video on a CGA computer (laptop or otherwise). All that you have to do is write a different attribute byte to every character of the display once. This will reverse the display and, generally (in terms of DOS character programs) it will remain reversed unless another program writes directly to video memory. I wrote a program to do this, and I probably still have it. If you will E-Mail me directly, I will send it to you if I can find it. You can run it in autoexec.bat, or manually, either one.
Barry Watzman
>> The Wang laptop (transportable) was a huge black machine that connected
>> several peripherals via it's 50 pin Centronics interface connector
terminated
>> at the end of the chain. I have never seen a 3 1/2" floppy for it so I am
not
>> surprised that it had only a 720 available. I don't think they made a
1.44. I
>> had a MO drive for them once and I know there was a CD also. You could
chain
>> more than one hard drive too. Wang had pretty good firmware, so I am not
too
>> surprised that they are plug and play. I have no idea how well Wang
complied
>> with the SCSI standards.
>> Paxton
>>
>
>If they did it like everything else that they made, they did it 'their
way'!
>
> - don
>
They didn't do the printer their way'. It's a Brother EP-41-45 thermal
typewriter printer just stuck into the case. Does anyone know what speed
the modems in those things were? Mine's loaded with the 1MB RAM option, and
modem, but have no idea if it's actually useful or not. One other question:
How do I access the RAM above 640k? Do I need a special driver, or does it
somehow have 1MB base RAM (Is that even possible??)
--
-Jason Willgruber
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#: 1730318
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1>?
In a message dated 12/25/98 5:02:56 PM Pacific Standard Time,
roblwill(a)usaor.net writes:
> I'd say that it's fairly intelligent. In the manual, it says that a 360k
> 5.25", 720k 3.5", and 1.2MB 5.25" drive were available. It claims that any
> one or all the drives could be connected. It says nothing about a 1.44MB
> 3.5", though (were 1.44MB drives around in 1986?). It supposedly can
>
The Wang laptop (transportable) was a huge black machine that connected
several peripherals via it's 50 pin Centronics interface connector terminated
at the end of the chain. I have never seen a 3 1/2" floppy for it so I am not
surprised that it had only a 720 available. I don't think they made a 1.44. I
had a MO drive for them once and I know there was a CD also. You could chain
more than one hard drive too. Wang had pretty good firmware, so I am not too
surprised that they are plug and play. I have no idea how well Wang complied
with the SCSI standards.
Paxton
> I wonder if these things would work with my GS and let me read PC disks with it?
> This sounds like a fun thing. :) What was that price again?
I can't speak for the GS, having never used one, but one of the things I
did with Digital's SCSI floppy controller while debugging the firmware was
to hook it to an Amiga and have the Amiga use it as a hard disk....
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
