HI, Guys, You can not physically plug an 8086 CPU into a socket made for
the 8088 CPU. The 8086 is physically longer than the 8088, so the pin-outs
are most definitely not compatible. You could boost the speed of an XT
machine with that 8088 processor by replacing it with an NEC V-20
microprocessor. You could get 20-50 percent more performance that way. The
v-20 came in 4.77-, and 7.16MHz clock speeds. NEC's replacement for the
8086 processor was the 9.54MHz V-30 processor. Their replacement for, or
clone of the Intel 80186 processor was the V-40. They were talking about an
80286 clone to be called something like the P-51 or the P-52 or something
like that. If they actually made it, it found a home as the processing
heart of control systems, or other subsystems rather than as the heart of a
PC system. A Compaq DeskPro with a 9.54MHZ NEC V-30 processor and a 9.54MHz
Intel 8087-3 Math Coprocessor and a full 640K of RAm, EGA controller or
8-bit VGA controller, and a fast ESDI hard drive would give a lot of 286
machines a respectable run for their money in doing real-world business
tasks with mainstream applications like Lotus 1.2.3 2.X or WordPerfect 5.1
or earlier. The only way to outclass the DeskPro 286/12 in the 80286 market
was to get something like Dell's System 220 with the 20MHz 80286 processor,
which Dell claimed would outperform some 16MHz 80386 machines in real-world
application speed tests, and do it for several hundred dollars less.
Now, you have to remember that, in 1988, a cheap 80386SX16 system with 2MB
of system RAM, a basic VGA card with 256K of DRAM on board, a 60- or 80MB
hard drive, and one floppy drive, with a basic VGA 12-inch monitor and DOS
3.3 was considered a bargain at about $3200 U.S. dollars. Even as late as
1991, IBM was still selling thousands of PS/2 model 30/286 machines to
businesses to use as work stations to connect on the network, and they came
with 1MB RAM, a 9.54MHz 80286 processor, VGA on the motherboard, 1.44MB
floppy drive, and either a 20-, 30-, or 40MB IDE hard drive. And, of
course, by the fall of 1991, the 50MHz 80486-based machine was the
power-users' dream machine. A couple hours thumbing through reviews in the
computer mags of 1987-1992 would be a shocker for many people to see just
what you got for your three or four thousand dollars, and how much the
options cost. In 1989, if you had a 5.25-inch 1.2MB floppy drive in your
new box and you wanted to add a 1.44MB 3.5-inch floppy drive, you would
prepare to shell out at least $110 for the privellege. Want an Intel 20- or
25-MHz 80387 math coprocessor to go along with that comparable 80386DX CPU,
get out another $550 or so. Memory? Fifty dollars per megabyte was cheap!
Bigger hard disk? Double the price of the whole system to go from, say 60MB
to 180MB. Want that hot monster 650MB ESDI speed deamon for the PC on your
desk? Forego the purchase of at least one complete 80386SX workstation for
one of your employees! We haven't even talked about fast modems, greyscale
scanners, laser printers, CD-ROM drives. A cheap, basic sound card was
barely under 100 dollars.
I'm typing this message on a Compaq DeskPro made in 1988. As originally
purchased, with it's 314MB ESDI drive, one high-density floppy drive, 5MB
RAM, VGA video card with 256KB RAM, 190-Watt, filtered, "steady state" power
supply, 25MHZ 80386DX processor, 33MHz 80387 Math CoProcessor, 25MHZ 80385
cache controller with 32KB of 15NS hardware Cache memory, and engineering
designed to work continuously without fail for years on end. That beast, so
configured at the end of 1988 or the beginning of 1989, was the dream
machine, and the reference standard by which the Ziff Davis mag writers
compared all other machines, and Compaq would sell you one or as many as you
wanted for a cool fourteen thousand dollars with a 14-inch VGA monitor and a
keyboard, and Compaq DOS 4.0. Over ten years later, it stays on most of the
time, now running with 13MB RAM, an Evergreen "Make it 486" upgrade
processor that almost makes it an 80486DX2/50 machine, usually testing out
at about 47 or 48MHz depending on how it feels today. We've got two floppy
drives, a better VGA card, a GateWay CrystalScan 14-inch monitor, a
wonderful Fujitsu keyboard, a desktop TrackPoint "mouse" and a Diamond Supra
Espress 56K v.90 external modem; and that same old 314MB ESDI hard drive and
controller. It all still works, and it's hardware is all completely Y2K
compliant, as it always has been. For all I know, it might still work just
fine ten years from now, and I bet you won't be able to say that for many of
these cheap Pentium-based Chinese-made motherboard equipped systems that
people are dragging out of the computer stores this week. This beast would
laugh at things that might kill a lot of modern cheap systems. It's the
old, tough, slow, tortoise who can live 100 years as opposed to the fast,
brash rabbit that might not see more than a few short years and is easily
caught and killed. Now if I could just get that four megabyte base memory
board to give me the maximum 16MB memory and I'd have this beast taken
almost as far as it could go down an upgrade path.
Reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA USA
CP/M + IBM = 'Just about what we got NOW.'
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