3 Aug
2006
3 Aug
'06
2:43 p.m.
A point I forgot to mention...
I am a 16 year old high school student who works with
computer daily. I
perfer to work with older systems (386s are fun!) because they are just
I am curious as to what is 'fun' about 386s (I assume you mean PC
compatibles, and not, for example, Sequent multi-processor machines).
They're not old enough in general not to use ASICs (or at least the clone
chipsents) on the motherboard. You're not going to get schematics or BIOS
source listings in most cases. So the real low-level hardware/software
hackability of these machines would seem to be little different from a
more modern PC.
To me, therefore they appear to be just a slower version of said modern
PC. They've got no real advantages that I can spot (unlike, say, one of
my PDP11s, or PERQs, or HPs, where (a) there is low-level documentation,
(b) they are repairable easilty to component level and (c) they run
rather diffeernt software to PCs). Can you enlighten me?
-tony