Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!amdcad!pepsi!phil
From: phil@pepsi.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Brain-dead 286 - summary
Message-ID: <29430@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 8 Mar 90 21:55:11 GMT
References: <8681@rosevax.Rosemount.COM> <29405@amdcad.AMD.COM> <4983@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Sender: news@amdcad.AMD.COM
Reply-To: phil@pepsi.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 58

In article <4983@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> jmerrill@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Confusion Reigns) writes:
|The idea of a protected mode as I see it is not to keep programs from doing
|anything -- what would be the point?  It was intended to keep 8086 programs
|from getting out of line.  The 286's lack of a protected -> real switch is
|not an obstacle to any 'random program'; observe the hack involving
|resetting the chip.

For a particular box to have a security hole is one thing. But for the
processor to have a security hole etched in silicon means that there is
no security ever possible.

I have had the idea of a switch to real mode in ring 0 suggested,
and that sounds kind of interesting.

Would anyone use a 286A if it came out?

|>|   (WORD for WINDOWS already out) and the future WordPerfect for OS/2
|>|   will run so much better on a 386/386SX than the 286.
|>
|>This is untrue. Word for Windows does not take advantage of the 386.
|>Windows 3.0 will take advantage of the 286.
|
|I think the issue is speed.  The 386 has a 32-bit bus; the 286 has a
|16-bit.  For memory-intensive programs, this is important.

Uh huh. And what about the 386SX he mentioned as being so superior
for running Word for Windows?

|>|   So, it's not brain dead in the sense of being useless, but brain dead
|>|   in the sense that it isn't what it could/should have been had things
|>|   been done just a little bit different.
|>
|>Nonsense. Tell me specifically what you would have done differently
|>from Intel? I bet you can't come up with anything.
|
|I would have made it a 386.  Or a 486.  Or...

He said a little bit different.

|>A PC without DESQview is like Unix without ^Z.
|
|And DESQview without a 386 is like Unix without bg.  How many of us have
|EEMS boards?

A 386 makes DESQview much easier to run, but so do the All Charge Card,
the SOTA Pop, and several other products which are under development.
As a matter of fact, a lot of us in my group have AST Premium 286s,
with EEMS.

But if multi-tasking were so important, I would think QuarterDeck
would be almost as big as Microsoft. I don't think they are. A lot
of people's reaction is "why do I need multi-tasking?" I don't
understand it, but there it is.


--
Phil Ngai, phil@amd.com		{uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil
A PC without DESQview is like Unix without ^Z.