Paul Williams skrev:
>Tony Duell wrote:
>>
>> Of course there's an 80186, and for that matter an 80188, which is
>> the same chip with an 8 bit external databus. Both were more widely
>> used in things like X-terminals, laserprinters, etc rather than PCs
>> (I seem to remember there was something about the IBM PC architecture
>> that made it difficult to use an 80186, but I will have to check the
>> details)
>Research Machines produced a 80186-based PC called the Nimbus. If there
>were compatibility issues they may not have been visible in the
>locked-in education market.
LOL, I actually remember reading a review of the Nimbus in an old issue of
Personal Computer World (when it was still a good mag instead of a four-
hundred page catalogue for windows software). Didn't it have quite fine
graphics?
The 80186 was also utilised in the Swedish educational computer COMPIS,
designed to run CP/M and the Danish COMAL language. It had high-resoluting
graphics (for its time), but was a quite a bad idea, developed by a company
run by an old pornographer and given the public contract on dubious grounds.
We still had a whole class room filled to the brim with these beasts when I
was in classes 7-9, but that room was never used by that time (mid-nineties).
What was most interesting about it, apart from its consciously designed non-PC
compatibility (so that pupils wouldn't run games, I suppose), was the rather
elegant double-box design, with two small, flat boxes (size similar to a Mac
LC) stacked on top of each other. One contained diskette units and PSU (IIRC),
the other the main board. The monitors were bisync, IIRC, probably to
accomodate the various graphics modes. As with all educational machines, they
could be networked in order to share printers and disk resources.
It was really soon obsolete. I think it was introduced around 1984, but I'd
have to check on that.
BTW, I am fresh to this list (joined this night), so I hope I'm not explaining
something obvious now.
I personally collect everything between eight and thirty-two bits, save for
standard PCs (I have a faiblesse for MCA machines though), and my flat is
filled with eight-biut micros, DEC workstations, STs, Amigas, Macs and PS/2s.
Just today I acquired another Mac (SE, though the front claims SE/30) and the
remains of an industrial VME-based computer. Are there any VME boffs around
here?
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6.
S? ja. Forts?tt bara som du g?r s? kommer du i s?kerhet, och raka dig n?r du
kommer hem s? ser du kanske inte ut som en apa. Du kan ju leva ett ombonat
liv, t?lja tr?gubbar eller n?t s?nt.
Lupin III till Jigen, Lupin den otrolige (Lupin III vs. fukusei ningen),
TMS 1978
Received on Sat Nov 11 2000 - 04:38:38 GMT