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From: john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Identifying an iAPX series processo
Message-ID: <193@moncol.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 00:40:55 EST
Article-I.D.: moncol.193
Posted: Sun Mar 23 00:40:55 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 03:47:41 EST
References: <7901@watrose.UUCP> <53500027@trsvax>
Reply-To: john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer)
Organization: Monmouth College, W. Long Branch, NJ
Lines: 36

In article <53500027@trsvax> kevin@trsvax writes:
>
>> Question: is it possible to identify in software the type of processor
>> a program is running on (assuming MS-DOS here...)?  I would like to
>> know whether it's an 8088, 8086, 80188, 80186 or an 80286.  If it
>> is possible, how do I do it?
>
>Yes, it is possible, at least to distinguish between {8086|8088},
>{80186|80188}, and 80286 flavors of processors.  The 8086 (and the 8088,
>I guess) don't mask shift counts, so if you shift a 2 in AX by a number
>of places greater than 16 (?or 32, maybe -- 32 works for sure) you'll
>get a zero.  On the 186 and 286 you'll get a non-zero value.  To
>distinguish between the 186 and the 286, do a PUSH SP, pop it into
>another register and compare it.  The 186 pushes the SP value *after*
>it's been decremented, the 286 pushes the SP value *before* it's
>decremented.
>
>I don't know if you can tell if you're on a *8 or *6 version processor,
>though.

Yes, but it requires writing self-modifying code. The trick is that the *6
and *8 processors have different pre-fetch queue sizes.

For a difinitive answer on the subject- RUN, DO NOT WALK to the nearest
newstand and pick up the April PC Tech Journal. There is a big article
(including asm source) about doing exactly what you want.


-- 
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