🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <315@bally.Bally.COM> pete@bally.UUCP (exilied in my own office) writes:

| I spoke with an engineer at SCO (whose remains unnamed) who sadly
| told me that there was no way to tell an 80386 from an 80486.
| 
| SCO wanted to market a higher-priced version of Xenix for 80486, but they
| could find no way to detect the difference.

  This is a lot of hogwash. There are several instructions in the 486
not in the 386, and a number of other instructions which have diferent
timing between the two processors. Detecting which you have is a
reasonable things to do. Oh, and the 486 has some FPU instructions not
in the 387, so you could tell that way, too.

  Either he's incompetent or you misunderstood him.

  Perhaps he meant that the 486 offers nothing but speed over the 386
from a standpoint of actual capability, and SCO didn't see a way to
market a version with extra features which would justify a separate
product.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me