Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!crash!pnet01!jca
From: jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 286 BIOS question
Message-ID: <109@crash.cts.com>
Date: 29 Jul 89 18:36:04 GMT
Sender: root@crash.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 20

A 286 will always run a hair faster than a 386 that are at equal clock speeds
the reason being that the 286 has a smaller microcode than a 386.  But of
course, you have all of these nice things that a 386 can do that a 286 can't 
even think about doing.  The bottom line is...do I really need the 32-bit
power of a 386?  If all you're running is DOS...then no.  But if you're
running something along the lines of Unix, then yes, you need a 386SX minimum.
The fact that Sun never produced a 286 workstation is proof to me that the 286
can't handle Unix effectively.  The problem is with the brain damaged nature
of the 286.  Just loading a descriptor table is a very expensive operation and
interrupt handling is slower than in real mode.  But the other side of the
coin, a high speed 286 can make a decent file server under SCO Xenix.  But I
would never use a 286 based machine as a work station.

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