While the state of the art advanced fast, there was also a great deal of market spread. An early 386 would be several grand, but at the same time there were al

While the state of the art advanced fast, there was also a great deal of market spread. An early 386 would be several grand, but at the same time there were also floppy-only 8088 machines from about USD500 on up, and a significant installed base of XTs and clones. The software evolved far more slowly because of this-- you still had a lot of "It supports an 8088" or "it supports CGA" until the early 1990s.