4 ms·

That’s fascinating to know! I’d personally had a 386 and 486 before I finally got a Pentium, and I never understood the significance of the nomenclature. That’s

• anyfoo 5y ago
  They were also often prefixed with "80" until the 486, before the first of them, because they all came from the 8086, which was the first of the successor line of the 8080 CPU (or rather its 8 bit bus sibling 8088 was). After that came the 80186, which was not used in IBM compatible PCs (but in non-compatible ones) because it was more of a microcontroller and came with integrated but incompatible peripherals (like an interrupt controller). The CPU itself was still compatible, though. So were 80286, 80386, 80486 and everything after that. They all added stuff obviously, often massively, but they still all can run 8086 software. Though I've lost track of what's happening with Intel CPU as of recently, I just have some dim and unreliable recollection that real mode might finally have been removed altogether, not sure.
  • anyfoo 5y ago
    > until the 486, before the first of them Should read "until the 486, before the Pentium".