sad sad sad

Colin McGregor colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Tue Oct 21 01:10:50 UTC 2003


"James Knott" <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> on Monday, October 20, 2003 8:48 PM
wrote:

> Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 12:06:38AM -0400, Justin Zygmont wrote:
> >
> >>it's been a sad day today, my 386 just breathed it's last.  In memory of
> >>"the good days" when 100MB drives were monsters, I saved the 386sx bios,
> >>dip chips (ram), and the VLSI chipset.  If only electronics could speak,
> >>the things that motherboard could tell.  An expensive and often
> >>envied CPU in it's hayday, 386sx-16 managed to see MS and DR-DOS, SCO
> >>UNIX, and slackware linux before it's dying day.  386 was almost 14.
> >
> >
> > I never admired the 386SX, only the DX.  Chopping of half the data bus
> > of a a poor defenseless 386 just seemed cruel, all to satisfy the
> > marketing weenies. :)
> Wasn't the reason for that, so that motherboard manufacturer could
> quickly adapt a 286 motherboard to the new chip?

More-or-less, yes. The '386SX internally was a 32 bit CPU, but it talked to
the world as if it were a 16 bit chip (unlike the '386DX chip that was 32
bits inside and out). This meant that many of the (by then) cheap support
chips that had been developed for the '286 chips could be re-used in '386SX
designs.

Me, I bought a '386SX-25  based box, and admittedly it didn't have the speed
of the '386DX, but it did run Windows 3.1 and later Yggdrasil Linux  just
fine.

Colin McGregor

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