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"For most people it started with the 80386 because it allowed running Windows and helped lead to the rise of the Internet." whaaat. A) In a vague, popular sen

by acheron 12y ago

"For most people it started with the 80386 because it allowed running Windows and helped lead to the rise of the Internet." whaaat. A) In a vague, popular sense, the x86 series "started" with the 8088 and the IBM PC, obviously. B) The 386 was contemporary with Windows 2.0 which was hardly popular. It was really used for Windows 3.0 which was a bit better. But the first majorly popular Windows release was 3.1, which was contemporary with the 486 (though it could run on 386s too). C) The number of Windows 3.x users with direct Internet connections was awfully low. At that point everyone doing consumer-facing networking was on AOL and similar services. Associating "Windows" and the "rise of the Internet" gets you to at least Windows 95, which was a Pentium-era product. I guess that intro statement doesn't really matter to the project, which does seem kind of cool, but it's also the first thing you read going to the page.

matthewmcg 12y ago
Didn't the '386 also inspire the creation of Linux?
- kyberias 12y ago
  Yes, and I think much more than Windows.
- chubot 12y ago
  Yup, also 386BSD. According to their website, Linus actually had some code in there in the early days, which is interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD
- michaelmike 12y ago
  Inspire is not quite the word I would use, I think. The reason so much was done on the 386 is because Intel finally dropped that god-awful segmented addressing in favor of a flat memory model. In addition, protected mode became actually useful and was necessary for a Unix-like OS to be created (where you have multitasking and protected sections of RAM). Doom was also a killer-app for the 386.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    > was necessary for a Unix-like OS to be created There are Unix-like OS's on MMU-less architectures. Though of course there are limitations (like not supporting fork(), only vfork()). But you're right that it made it a lot more attractive to try to do a proper Unix. There were even commercial Unix workstations based on MMU-less CPU's. An example is the Sun 1 workstation, that used an 68000 (Since the first version - the 68000 - is not fully restartable, various hacks were used on 68000 designs requiring an MMU; I'm not sure what the Sun-1 did, but one example that was used was running two of them in lockstep, and have the MMU halt the second one when the first one triggered a page fault, so that it'd be possible to inspect the CPU state before a bus-error would mess it up. From the 68010 onwards this was unnecessary)
dpcx 12y ago
I think he's stating that most people know about the 386, not that the 386 actually started the journey.
leoc 12y ago
> Associating "Windows" and the "rise of the Internet" gets you to at least Windows 95, which was a Pentium-era product. Not quite: back in '94 the iconic Web client was a Windows 3.x PC running Trumpet Winsock http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/ http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/ and Mosaic. Those machines could well have been Pentiums (or 486es) though.
- ddunkin 12y ago
  I ran Winsock initially on a 386 with 3.1. At this time, the dial-up business was booming and I'm not talking AOL/Compuserve. There were entire websites dedicated to listing and sorting through the hundreds of local ISPs cropping up, who had the latest 28.8 modems, best advertised modem ratios, etc... These companies were all setup well before Windows 95 came around.
- ConceptJunkie 12y ago
  I guess I'm a chump, because I actually paid for it back in the day. ;-)
stormbrew 12y ago
Well, the 386 had a pretty long tail. I'm pretty sure I remember 286 PCs still being sold in 1990 or so and 386 PCs being sold after win3.1 came out as well. And with how expensive desktop computers were in the late 80s, people kept them longer too I think. But this is all anecdata, and I was pretty young. But the first machine I ran windows 3.1 on was definitely a 386 (and I ran 3.0 on a 286).

by acheron 12y ago

matthewmcg 12y ago

Didn't the '386 also inspire the creation of Linux?

kyberias 12y ago
Yes, and I think much more than Windows.
chubot 12y ago
Yup, also 386BSD. According to their website, Linus actually had some code in there in the early days, which is interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD
michaelmike 12y ago
Inspire is not quite the word I would use, I think. The reason so much was done on the 386 is because Intel finally dropped that god-awful segmented addressing in favor of a flat memory model. In addition, protected mode became actually useful and was necessary for a Unix-like OS to be created (where you have multitasking and protected sections of RAM). Doom was also a killer-app for the 386.
- vidarh 12y ago
  > was necessary for a Unix-like OS to be created There are Unix-like OS's on MMU-less architectures. Though of course there are limitations (like not supporting fork(), only vfork()). But you're right that it made it a lot more attractive to try to do a proper Unix. There were even commercial Unix workstations based on MMU-less CPU's. An example is the Sun 1 workstation, that used an 68000 (Since the first version - the 68000 - is not fully restartable, various hacks were used on 68000 designs requiring an MMU; I'm not sure what the Sun-1 did, but one example that was used was running two of them in lockstep, and have the MMU halt the second one when the first one triggered a page fault, so that it'd be possible to inspect the CPU state before a bus-error would mess it up. From the 68010 onwards this was unnecessary)

dpcx 12y ago

I think he's stating that most people know about the 386, not that the 386 actually started the journey.

leoc 12y ago

> Associating "Windows" and the "rise of the Internet" gets you to at least Windows 95, which was a Pentium-era product. Not quite: back in '94 the iconic Web client was a Windows 3.x PC running Trumpet Winsock http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/ http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/ and Mosaic. Those machines could well have been Pentiums (or 486es) though.

ddunkin 12y ago
I ran Winsock initially on a 386 with 3.1. At this time, the dial-up business was booming and I'm not talking AOL/Compuserve. There were entire websites dedicated to listing and sorting through the hundreds of local ISPs cropping up, who had the latest 28.8 modems, best advertised modem ratios, etc... These companies were all setup well before Windows 95 came around.
ConceptJunkie 12y ago
I guess I'm a chump, because I actually paid for it back in the day. ;-)

stormbrew 12y ago

Well, the 386 had a pretty long tail. I'm pretty sure I remember 286 PCs still being sold in 1990 or so and 386 PCs being sold after win3.1 came out as well. And with how expensive desktop computers were in the late 80s, people kept them longer too I think. But this is all anecdata, and I was pretty young. But the first machine I ran windows 3.1 on was definitely a 386 (and I ran 3.0 on a 286).