I suspect it got assassinated from Intel with the 386SX. Killing the 286 got rid of most of the remaining second-source competitors, until the Am386 came in to

I suspect it got assassinated from Intel with the 386SX. Killing the 286 got rid of most of the remaining second-source competitors, until the Am386 came in to save the day. When there was a significant gap in pricing between a 286 and a 386DX, there was definitely a case for "you can put more memory or a faster disc in the 286, or just bring down the total bill, even if both are 16/20/25MHz parts." You could make a compelling argument for buying the 286 if you knew you weren't running 386-specific software. Once the 386SX, with its lower price and ability to be easily adapted to existing 286 designs, hit the market, the case was much harder to argue. My family's first PC was a 386SX/16 clone. We never ran anything that was 386-specific on it except maybe one or two games, never expanded past the soldered-on 1Mb. A 286 would probably have done just as well, but the general hive-mind opinion of the time was "be sure and get a 386" (along with "be sure and get both sizes floppy drive")