4 ms·
8088 chip does not include FPU, does this laptop has one, otherwise it is going to be very slow.
by teleforce 3y ago
8088 chip does not include FPU, does this laptop has one, otherwise it is going to be very slow.
- tjohns 3y agoThat's what the 8087 coprocessor option is for.
- whartung 3y agoVery little is going to prevent this thing from being very slow. It’s an 8088 running 4.77Mhz, on a not really great system architecture. Head to head the original PC was slower than competing Z80s at 4Mhz. The truly singular advancement the 8088 brought was more precious, precious memory. The PC itself was a different phenomenon. What it lacked in performance it made up for in many other ways. For most applications, particularly early on, the 8087 did not bring a lot to the table to improve performance. GW-BASIC did not recognize it, for example. Wasn’t going to make Wordstar any faster. And it was an expensive add-on. Numeric coprocessors we’re always pretty niche until they came bundled with the 486 and 68040, even then the 486SX and 68LC040 continued to sell, and did not have bundled FPUs.
- Andys 3y agoA lot of software back then tended to stick to integer operations for everything as much as possible, at least where performance mattered.
- wkat4242 3y agoAlmost no DOS or Win3 programs were able to use a 8087 FPU anyway. Only very specific stuff like autocad. Perhaps lotus 123.
- ch_123 3y agoThere is a slot for an optional one, but as others have pointed out - software for the 8088 which used FP were few and far between.