Re: Currently the best recordable media?

"J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:dvu4c901lp6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Richard Crowley wrote:

"Bob" wrote ...
Scott Dorsey wrote:
<snip>
Rumor has it that the 8088 made the difference because it had
a 16-bit core, but an 8-bit I/O which made it cheaper to
manufacture.

No rumor, and "cheaper to manufacture" wasn't quite the issue, the
issue was that IBM had warehouses full of 8-bit components for the
System 25 Datamaster, an 8 bit machine, that they wanted to use up
instead of trash.

Useful distinction, that. The 8088 was no cheaper at all for Intel to
manufacture. It would have been the exact same die except that no one told
the design team they wanted that option until the first stepping was out.
(for the 80186/80188 it _was_ the exact same die). Same number of pins
(40), so no package savings either.

However, product differentiation probably called for a lower price from
Intel. And there were apparently some real savings in the systems cost
from slightly reduced bus interfacing requirements. As with most
processors to follow, the 8086 had more memory bandwidth than the processor
could keep up with, so the performance hit was less than you might think.

Folks forget what time scale Boca was working on--most of the "should
have" chips simply were not available on time.

I knew the IBM PC had one the day I heard that about half of all
independent software development for the desktop sector was going on their
machine. I think opening up the hardware and software for third party
support was a brilliant move. That combined with the confidence inspired
by the IBM name was the sole reason for the success of a mediocre machine.

Peter A. Stoll
former 8086 design engineer
former chief and only engineer on a "one day task force" to fix an 8088 bug
before introduction.
In a later life I had the misfortune to spend a couple of days designing a
card which had to live on that miserable and almost completely undocumented
excuse for a bus.
.

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