🚀 go-pugleaf

>In article <1990Dec7.145839.2703@mentor.gandalf.ca> dcarr@mentor.gandalf.ca (Dave Carr) writes:
>>Talk about people unclear on the concept.  The 80186(8) were intended for
>>the EMBEDDED market.

No, it was not.  It was intended for low-end commercial peecees, and the
286 was intended for high-end peecees.  At the time of its introduction,
the 80186 was under HIMO (high integration microprocessors operation) and
the 80286 was under HIPO (h. i. performance o.)

>>The only vendor I know that tried one in a PC was Tandy !

They were the first to have an 80186 peecee.  Others did it, like Convergent
Technologies (remember them?).

My opinion is that the 80186 failed upon two counts.  First, the on-board
peripherals used several interrupts marked `reserved by manufacturer' on
the 8086 datasheet.  One of these interrupts was absconded by either IBM
(for BIOS) or Microsoft (for DOS).  This created a nasty conflict.  (I
don't remember which - I'd have to go back digging into the datasheet.)

The second problem was that the 80186 turned out to be the wrong thing
for the market.  For example, it's DMA wasn't particularly attractive
speed-wise, and few peecees use DMA anyway.  Many peecees don't even get
it right - just ask Adaptec or somebody else who makes a card which does
DMA.  Second, gate arrays were to come by just a few years later, creating
a technology (and later companies such as Chips and Technologies) which
negated a lot of the benefit of the 80186 approach.

Not to say the 80186 isn't a nifty embedded controller, but as a CPU it
never made it.

The embedded controller market is the graveyard for failed CPU's.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal  512-482-8260  |  We was raising insurance premiums, ma.
Unicom Systems Development    |  We was spreading fear of arson.
<chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM>    |   - Michelle Shocked