Wasted Neurons Wednesday - Intel's forgotten processor

Submitted by Philip Storry on Wed, 03/04/2013 - 22:07

Intel really struck it big when IBM's PC design used their 8088 as it's CPU.
The Intel 8088 was a budget version of the Intel 8086 - the money was saved by only giving the 8088 an 8-bit data bus instead of a 16- bit one.

So here's the thing...

Wasted Neurons Wednesday - RAM and the IBM Compatible PC

Submitted by Philip Storry on Wed, 27/03/2013 - 21:22

The IBM PC was powered by an Intel 8088 processor.

That processor could address 1Mb of memory. Yes, a whole luxurious megabyte! Trust me, that was a big figure in 1981.

However, you didn't get the whole megabyte. Oh no. Things like video cards and the built-in BASIC need some RAM to use, so IBM reserved the upper 384Kb of RAM for that purpose. That gave the machine 640Kb of RAM to play with.

Happy Birthday IBM PC - still with us (just!)

Submitted by Philip Storry on Fri, 12/08/2011 - 22:57

Happy Birthday, IBM PC! 30 today!

And haven't you done well? A lot better than MS-DOS did, anyway...

I measure that by your legacy. This netbook I'm typing on - and my desktop machine - are still shaped by decisions in your design. From the CPU's ISA to the I/O systems to the fact that the keyboard has a Scroll Lock key on it...
Oh, wait, my netbook doesn't have a Scroll Lock key on it. But it does have Sys Rq, which I think I used once many years ago on a 286 machine.

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