General > General Technical Chat

nostalgia of 386-level systems?!?

<< < (6/8) > >>

SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: DiTBho on April 02, 2022, 06:41:50 pm ---8080 and z80 are simple for me, 80286, 80386 and above are too complex for me.

--- End quote ---

Then you are basically questioning the point of designing a 386-based board, because you don't like the 386 and don't understand it?
My post was just meant to show that it's not purely a matter of "nostalgia", since there are even much older CPUs that people design boards around, and there's certainly an interesting learning factor beyond the nostalgia.

The fact the 386 is much more comple than a Z80, yet is still "approachable" enough that you can make your own board around it, makes it all the more interesting for learning purposes.
It's probably possibly to do the same thing with a 486, although that's beginning to be a bit hairy.

The architecture may not have been the best ever designed, for sure, but this still has had a large impact on the modern history of computing, so there's much to learn with it. Even the bad sides.

And, in spite of its quirks, the "protected mode" of the 386 was actually rather interesting, and was never really used to its full potential. Maybe because it was a bit too "inconvenient", and laziness almost always wins. ;)

DiTBho:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 03, 2022, 06:23:45 pm ---the "protected mode" of the 386 was actually rather interesting, and was never really used to its full potential. Maybe because it was a bit too "inconvenient", and laziness almost always wins

--- End quote ---

Even IBM with their OS/2 never really used to its full potential
Too complex even for their engineers.

DiTBho:

--- Quote from: aneevuser on April 03, 2022, 01:19:06 pm ---I suspect that one reason for significant i386 nostalgia is the fact that it was the first Intel device to support paged virtual memory, which I guess lead directly to the development of Linux, and sad, nerdy people subsequently spending hours downloading SLS ...

--- End quote ---

"and nerdy people subsequently spending hours downloading SLS ..."

That's true, I was there when I read a comment about it in the source of Linux v0.0.2 ;D
Linus T. was later able to log into a Sparc server, but only later.

SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: DiTBho on April 03, 2022, 07:09:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 03, 2022, 06:23:45 pm ---the "protected mode" of the 386 was actually rather interesting, and was never really used to its full potential. Maybe because it was a bit too "inconvenient", and laziness almost always wins

--- End quote ---

Even IBM with their OS/2 never really used to its full potential
Too complex even for their engineers.

--- End quote ---

Complexity is one thing. Possibly legacy is another. Even OS/2 had to be compatible with a bunch of exisiting stuff, so that may be the main reason.

It's a bit like Harvard vs. Von Neumann. Although strict Harvard architectures would have avoided a whole lot of security issues, Von Neumann won because it was much easier to use for general-purpose computing.

For instance, the executable bit of the 386 protected mode (which was already in the 286? not sure) was never really put to use until very late, if I'm not mistaken.

aneevuser:

--- Quote from: aneevuser on April 03, 2022, 01:19:06 pm ---I suspect that one reason for significant i386 nostalgia is the fact that it was the first Intel device to support paged virtual memory,

--- End quote ---
This is rather off-topic, but I claimed above the the 386 was the first Intel processor to support paged VM, but a bit of googling (and Wikipedia) seems to suggest that the 286 protected mode could also support paging, and that the 286 even had an on-chip MMU, which I find somewhat surprising.

Can anyone confirm this? I believe that I have an ancient 286 data book somewhere, but I can't find it to verify this.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod