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From: Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: 8088 vs 8086
Message-ID: <28636a4e@ralf>
Date: 22 Jun 91 15:18:38 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
Lines: 27
In-Reply-To: <17641@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Originator: ralf@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU

In article <17641@helios.TAMU.EDU>, chetl@daisy.tamu.edu (Chet Laughlin) wrote:
}I can't vouch for the red carpet/blue carpet story, but
}the first IBM PCs did use Intel 8086s.  They also had
}cassette ports in the back, as some of you may recall.
}The machine is called a PC-1 internally by IBM hardware
}reps.  The motherboard came with 256K of RAM if I remember
}right, and could hold 512k.  The PC-2 came out later,
}and had an Intel 8088.  There was room on the motherboard
}for 640k and the cassette port had dissappeared - but 
}Basic still supports it...

Nope.  The PC-1 had an 8088 as well, and was limited to 64K on the
motherboard (using 16K chips).	It also had only five expansion slots
compared to the eight on the PC-2, which could hold 256K on the
motherboard (though by adding one chip and replacing another, you could
get it to hold 640K on the motherboard).

BTW, even the newest PS/2s still have the identical BASIC interpreter
in ROM (copyright 1981).  Has something to do with the fact that IBM's
BASIC.COM and BASICA.COM make calls to absolute addresses in the BASIC
ROM....

-- 
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