5 Nov
1998
5 Nov
'98
11:23 a.m.
On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, Don Maslin wrote:
Do I not recall correctly that the 8088 was in fact
half of a two chip
set and that the 8086 was 'self contained', and that IBM elected to not use
the other half.
The 8088 and 8086 really are nearly identical except that the 8088
multiplexes an 8-bit data bus. I can't imagine what you're thinking of,
except perhaps for the optional 8087 FPU.
Intel did try to confuse things later on, though. For example, the SX/DX
designation of the 386 originally meant single-wide and double-wide data
bus, but then Intel marketing decided to create the 486SX, which was just
a normal 486 with the FPU crippled.
-- Doug