3 ms·
I had a 286 12MHz and then upgraded to a 386sx 40Mhz (both manufactured by AMD, btw). It was a HUGE upgrade. First, 12Mhz to 40Mhz was an amazing upgrade, but
by xanathar 5y ago
I had a 286 12MHz and then upgraded to a 386sx 40Mhz (both manufactured by AMD, btw).
It was a HUGE upgrade.
First, 12Mhz to 40Mhz was an amazing upgrade, but that was definitely not the reason why I upgraded.
The real reason was *compatibilityé.
The 286 was compatible with close to nothing by the early 90's.
Doom? Sure, runs slow on the 386sx, but on the 286? Does not run at all.
And the same goes for all games and programs using one of:
1) 32 bit DOS extenders
2) EMS
3) any amount of XMS more than my 286 could handle
4) >600KB conventional memory, because there's only that much HIMEM.SYS can do
5) Windows 3.0 in 386-enhanced mode
- nsxwolf 5y agoI had the exact upgrade path as you, except that my 286 12mhz was on an accelerator board inside my 4.77 MHz 8088 equipped IBM XT. So I got to be wowed by huge upgrades twice! The 386 40 was my first "homebuilt" before I had ever heard the term.
- fullstop 5y agoMy NEC 286 had a Turbo button to slow things down. I only remember having to use it for a few games which ran too quickly.
- bluedino 5y ago>> The 286 was compatible with close to nothing by the early 90's. Wolf3D came out in 1992, it was the perfect companion for a 286. Same goes for Duke Nukem II in 1993.
- Narishma 5y agoDoom came out much later in 1994. Wolfenstein 3d and a ton of other games worked fine on a high speed 286. EMS also works fine, heck it even works fine on an 8088. What doesn't work are things like EMM386 that emulate EMS using extended memory. The 286 supported up to 16MB of XMS and if you could afford that much RAM, you probably could afford a 386 or 486 CPU..