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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: koaftder on March 07, 2010, 03:40:15 AM

Title: 80386 poster
Post by: koaftder on March 07, 2010, 03:40:15 AM
This is probably the worst place I could ask about this but... In the early '90s my dad gave me a poster from a trade show that had an 80386 chip "flying" over a forest or something. Has anybody seen that before? Does anybody have one for sale? /me ducks.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: countzero on March 07, 2010, 05:40:26 AM
is stoning mob ready ? :madashell::flame::roflmao:
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: haywirepc on March 07, 2010, 07:01:22 AM
I never understood why anyone cared so much for the 386. I remember thinking it sucked compared to my amiga 500 at 7mhz, and that was a 386dx33mhz I was comparing to my 500 at that time. Run two programs at once in deskview or windows 3.1 and it slowed to a horrible crawl.

It also amazed me that before the 386, people just assumed pcs could
not multitask, even though there were 286 "turbo" 20mhz chips around.
Still, it did set the ball in motion for wintel dominance of the computer
market, so it must have been something special.

I happen to remember the 386 fanfare, including posters... But I would never care to own one. I also remember the same fanfare when the pentium chip came out... Oh boy, its got MMX!

Steven
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Zac67 on March 07, 2010, 12:24:10 PM
IMHO, the 386DX was the first decent Intel CPU - got rid if the weird memory models of its predecessors, supported real 32 bit instructions and had a competitive performance. In respect of the memory model and instruction set, it's the direct ancestor of today's x86 processors, even AMD64 ones.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: fishy_fiz on March 09, 2010, 01:33:29 AM
Quote from: haywirepc;546518
I also remember the same fanfare when the pentium chip came out... Oh boy, its got MMX!

Steven


Far from important, but pentium cpus didnt have mmx originally. It wasnt until halfway (or more) through thier lifecycle that MMX was added (P166MMX was the 1st iirc, but later on it was added to versions as low as 133mhz). At the time it was a pretty big deal, may be antiquated now (although revised versions are still in use today, so it must be worthwhile), but computer hardware evolution doesnt happen overnight, these are all important steps that led us to where we are today.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: tone007 on March 09, 2010, 01:36:16 AM
I've got a 233mhz MMX subnotebook (Toshiba Libretto) from 1998 that's still going strong, I swapped the HD out for a CF card and put Win2k on it.  Quite the original netbook, given a WiFi card.

..and it sounds like the OP will never get his poster at this rate.  Find one online and have it printed by someone with a plotter, maybe.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: bbond007 on March 09, 2010, 01:52:55 AM
Quote from: fishy_fiz;546766
Far from important, but pentium cpus didnt have mmx originally. It wasnt until halfway (or more) through thier lifecycle that MMX was added (P166MMX was the 1st iirc, but later on it was added to versions as low as 133mhz). At the time it was a pretty big deal, may be antiquated now (although revised versions are still in use today, so it must be worthwhile), but computer hardware evolution doesnt happen overnight, these are all important steps that led us to where we are today.


I had the 166MMX and I over-clocked that chip by over-clocking the bus. It was mad fast running that way and very stable...
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: a1200 on March 09, 2010, 01:57:24 AM
The 386DX at higher clock speeds was comparable to 486SX machines. I think the 386 is probably my fav. PC processor.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: B00tDisk on March 09, 2010, 02:21:22 AM
Quote from: Zac67;546534
IMHO, the 386DX was the first decent Intel CPU - got rid if the weird memory models of its predecessors, supported real 32 bit instructions and had a competitive performance. In respect of the memory model and instruction set, it's the direct ancestor of today's x86 processors, even AMD64 ones.


Yep.  80386 was a great CPU.  Yes, yes, x86 legacy blah blah but you know what?  An 80386 can address up to 4gb of RAM*.  Out of the box.  When they were new.  When 4gb of RAM would've cost you $3,640,480.00, on average.

You can follow the history of the CPU and what it could do just by looking at Windows install CDs, particularly NT based OS's - there's almost always an "i386" directory (I think Win7 and Vista 64 bit versions may have done away with this).
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Tension on March 09, 2010, 02:52:15 AM
Quote from: haywirepc;546518
... Oh boy, its got MMX!


Pfffffffffffft!!!
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Hell Labs on March 09, 2010, 11:25:45 PM
Quote from: tone007;546768
I've got a 233mhz MMX subnotebook (Toshiba Libretto) from 1998 that's still going strong, I swapped the HD out for a CF card and put Win2k on it.  Quite the original netbook, given a WiFi card.

..and it sounds like the OP will never get his poster at this rate.  Find one online and have it printed by someone with a plotter, maybe.

Win2k on one of those buggers? I've got a high end sattilite from that year and it can barely run windows 98!
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: tone007 on March 09, 2010, 11:30:19 PM
Only 64mb of RAM, too.  It actually seems to run faster with the CF than the old 6gb drive, maybe it likes the pagefile with no head delay.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Crumb on March 10, 2010, 12:47:05 AM
Quote from: fishy_fiz;546766
Far from important, but pentium cpus didnt have mmx originally. It wasnt until halfway (or more) through thier lifecycle that MMX was added (P166MMX was the 1st iirc, but later on it was added to versions as low as 133mhz). At the time it was a pretty big deal, may be antiquated now (although revised versions are still in use today, so it must be worthwhile), but computer hardware evolution doesnt happen overnight, these are all important steps that led us to where we are today.


IIRC Intel MMX chips had twice cache L1 size so even if your code didn't use MMX instructions it was an interesting upgrade :-)
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Bif on March 10, 2010, 01:26:11 AM
While much maligned, MMX was actually a pretty big leap in mainstream computing evolution at the time. While it was awkwards to use for some types of processing, using it in my audio engine for mixing/DSP sped it up considerably. Up to 8x performance in some parts of the engine, with other parts getting something between 1.5 and the 8x speedup. That's some pretty darn good speedup for the time! It's one of those rare things that got me excited about computing again.
 
In all my years since then I'm not sure I recall any kind of architectural change that brought on that much of a further leap in performance. Sure SSE and all it's variants were added, but it wasn't actually any faster than MMX, just much easier and more precise to use.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: dougal on March 10, 2010, 07:25:07 AM
I had a 386DX-40 with 32Mb of ram and a (i think) 4mb graphics card and Sound Blaster 16.

It was a pretty good machine. Could run Windows95 and play Doom and Duke3D at decent speeds, besides being stuffed with games like Monkey Island etc...

I even used to run my BBS from it.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Hell Labs on March 10, 2010, 04:31:06 PM
Quote from: tone007;546925
Only 64mb of RAM, too.  It actually seems to run faster with the CF than the old 6gb drive, maybe it likes the pagefile with no head delay.

God, that must be terrible to use. I mean, wow. How much crap did you disable in that install?
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: yakumo9275 on March 10, 2010, 06:20:20 PM
the other thing to remember was that the x86 FPU was (and still is) stack based making it pretty poor performer, MMX came in as register based and very easy to use... mmx was like WHOA!
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: brianb on March 10, 2010, 07:30:43 PM
Man that was my machine back in the day...  386DX-40, 8MB of RAM, SoundBlaster 16 card, 9600 baud modem, and Doom!  Built from the old Computer Shopper magazine...  Good times.
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Amiga_Nut on March 10, 2010, 11:19:04 PM
Quote from: tone007;546768
I've got a 233mhz MMX subnotebook (Toshiba Libretto) from 1998 that's still going strong, I swapped the HD out for a CF card and put Win2k on it.  Quite the original netbook, given a WiFi card.


The 110CT you describe is an awesome machine I've got 3 of the things. They're about the size of a VHS cassette which is tiny compared to even netbooks today. Recommend the rarer 64mb machine not 32mb though, then stick a PATA 7200RPM drive for capacity or a very high bandwidth CF card within a 2.5" IDE to CF all in one housing designed for legacy notebooks and stick XP* on it...job done....and works great with VICE for portable C64/VIC20/C16 goodness!

MMX was 3rd generation Pentium after the initial 60/66/75mhz models then the 100/120/133mhz stage. There was even a hybrid 300mhz MMX for notebooks only too. MMX does give a significant advantage for things like MPEG decompression even @ 166mhz. Some of the benefit will be the improved speed and size of the L1 and L2 cache too though.

(XP needs a lot of tweaking for the Libretto P1MMX models but it can be done and is worth it if you have USB PCMCIA cards (or USB dock) in them for the convenience of XPs bloatware driver directory onboard)
Title: Re: 80386 poster
Post by: Bif on March 11, 2010, 06:28:53 PM
Quote from: yakumo9275;547033
the other thing to remember was that the x86 FPU was (and still is) stack based making it pretty poor performer, MMX came in as register based and very easy to use... mmx was like WHOA!

Oh you made me dredge up horrid memories of X87 programming. Thanks!
 
Actually x87 wasn't too incredibly hard to program, but it was hard to program for if you also want good performance (on Pentium and up). The trick is to use the FXCH instruction to swap values in the registers/stack - this essentially gives you random access to the registers. With that, you can then pipeline better as you can compute unrelated things in different registers. Where it became very painful is that you now have to keep track of what results are where in the stack amongst a pile of FXCH instructions moving things around. Lots of commenting necessary.
 
I think that's really the most horrid thing about x86 winning the computing war. We are still stuck with all these arcane instruction sets. Thankfully its rare to need to hand assemble any of that any more, compilers are pretty darn good.