Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!oliveb!intelca!mipos3!omepd!omews3!jhunt
From: jhunt@omews3.intel.com (Jim Hunt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 80x86 numbering (was: 80486)
Message-ID: <4016@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 88 04:36:10 GMT
References: <15374@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <45900175@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <10254@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <2618@rti.UUCP>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: jhunt@omews3.UUCP (Jim Hunt)
Organization: Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, Oregon
Lines: 18

In article <2618@rti.UUCP> bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) writes:
>There is, of course an 80186 (and an 80188) - this was a chip used briefly
>before the 80286 came out.  It was never very popular, but it was used by
>a few clones (like the Radio Shack Model 2000 I believe).  It was really
>just an 8086/8088 which had some of the microcode optimizations used by
>the 80286 - which means it runs about the speed of a '286 at a similar
>MHz rating, but without protected memory.
>

Actually, the 80186/80188's main features were on board peripherals, such
as DMA, timers, interrupt controller, chip select logic, etc.  It didn't
sell well in the PC market because it wasn't as fast as a 80286 and the
on board peripherals were not PC compatible.  It does have a substantial
market niche in the 16 bit embedded control arena, however.  A CMOS version
of the component, with some feature upgrades, was recently released.

Jim

Standard disclaimer:  Intel is not responsible for anything I say here.