One of the vew designs, that (tried) to uitlize the fill power of the 86-family. In faxt: today everybody is moaning about the 'crude' x86 structure (but using it) and nobody temembers that the CPU was only one single part of the design. A design ready to build high efficient and fast computers for multi programming operating systems (Unix et. al.) Thats like naming the Newton a fancy post it thing. The 8089 was a full featured CPU, just with an special command set suited for I/O operations. Anything from serial I/O via disk I/O up to code translations could done in a very smooth and genuine way. Just imagine that the HW depending part of any device driver would run on a seperate CPU - including all the time consuming puffer/unpuffer, notifications, polling and what-ever operations. The 86, 87 and 89 are three independend microprocessors suited for special tasks (asymetric multiprocessing). Today the x87 is reduced to an additional fp register set, the 89 is forgoten and everybody aplaudes the symetric processing hype :( Just think what kind of computing could be possible if this sceme had worked out - need more float ? just add some FPUs! need a lot of I/O ? add anoter IOC... Need huge 3D power? Add some 'MMX' processors and not just some new commands for the same old FPU. Think I should stop. Gruss H. /370 Veteran P.S.: The Apricot is still a white spot in my collection. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK