Classic != IBM AT

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Thu Nov 5 18:38:06 1998

Once upon a midnight dreary, Russ Blakeman had spoken clearly:
>Philip.Belben_at_pgen.com wrote:

>> No thanks to whoever said the 8088 and 8086 were the same thing. If that's
>> the case, the Pentium and the 80386 are the same thing :-)

>In general terms, without getting into a lot of super-geek discussion, the
8086
>and 8088 are in the same category in that they are both predominantly an XT
>class processor, despite the 8 and 16 bit differences....

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.

Comparing the 80386 and the Pentium wouldn't be fair, tho. Comparing the
80386SX (with the 16-bit data bus) and the 80386DX (with the 32-bit data
bus) would be a lot better comparison... as again, the chips were fully
compatible, but the DX's were faster due to the larger data bus.

Just the way I seem to remember it...

Roger "Merch" Merchberger
Received on Thu Nov 05 1998 - 18:38:06 GMT