Classic != IBM AT - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

5 Nov 1998

...
 > Yes, to say that the 8088 and 8086 were the same
is incorrect, but they
> _basically_ had the same core and everything... it was just the data bus
> was 8 bit on the 8088 and 16-bit on the 8086. They were fully compatible
> program-wise, just that the 8086 was faster as it could push 2x data over
> the 8088. 
Not only this, the 8088 BIU was kind of krippled and issued 16 Bit
Memory access also when a 8 Bit access would be sufficeient. This
costs even more bandwide.

...
  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.  
No, both are 'self contained' CPUs. But there are two other
processors within the family the 8087 FPU and 8089 IOP. The
complete design looks a lot like a real computer :)

Gruss
Hans

--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK