Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!pacbell.com!ames!amelia!roelofs
From: roelofs@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Cave Newt)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Detecting an 80486
Message-ID: <7442@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 21 Jul 90 02:54:16 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago
Lines: 25

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:

>>For status programs that wish to detect what sort of processor they
>>are running on, does anybody have the scoop on official detection
>>procedure for an 80486?   Assuming, for example, that one already knows
>>that one is on a 386 or better.  I already have code to detect
>>8086, 8088, 80186, 80286, 80386, 8087, 80287 and 80387 -- I want to make
>>it complete.

In article <104096@convex.convex.com> dodson@convex.com (Dave Dodson) writes:

>PC Magazine, July 1990, pages 425-426, tells how to separate 80286s, 80386s,
>80486s, and lesser chips.  

This discussion came up recently in a related newsgroup whose name escapes
me at the moment (egad!  there's only about a dozen of them nowadays...), 
but I suspect it was one of the OS/2 groups.  At any rate, the point (which
has not been mentioned here so far) was that all the proposed methods so
far generate a General Protection fault if the processor is currently in
protected mode (including, I believe, PC Magazine's).  To the best of my 
knowledge, nobody has yet discovered how to do this (this is relevant to
an msdos group since a number of DOS extenders such as 386^max run DOS in
protected mode).

I could, of course, be wrong about this. :)