Parallel port replacement??

That's not new, nor is it XT based. The XT was an 8088 CPU. The 80186 never made commercial CONSUMER release in PCs (a very rare few). The

AlwaysWrong strikes again. The 80186/8 never made it into PCs because they were *INCOMPATABLE* with the 8086/8 (it had nothing to do with the '286). You *couldn't* make a 100% IBM compatible 80186 PC.

What a dim bulb you are, DimBulb.

You could, however, make it close enough for many purposes. There were a number of 80186/8-based PCs made in Europe, primarily for the educational market, e.g. the RM Nimbus and the Acorn Master 512 second processor for the BBC micro.

Tandy 2000 is another,

AS long as you didn't care about hardware or BIOS compatibility,

Kinda like Vista.

It was NOT POSSIBLE to make an IBM compatible PC with an 80186/8 since the interrupt vectors overlayed the ones already carved out in BIOS. (the other way around, actually)

IBM compatible.

In my defense, I went looking for something that was still made and roughly the same power as a XT or 286 for bit banging. My employer at the time had lots of legacy instrumentation based on ISA and custom code. At 69-99$ out the door for the JK card, and (with some mods to the code) backward compatible with 1990s C and Quickbasic, that is not that bad a system. I still have ISA based instruments in my life that I'm fighting to keep running, so I understand the OPs pain.

Sorry, I was too busy in college chasing after chicks to bother with the difference between a 186 and a 286.

Steve

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^in - sorry

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You're still a young'un then. ;-)

The BIOS and DOS are included. As for hardware compatibility, not having ISA slots was rather more of an issue than the differences between an 8086 and an 80186.

In the case of the Master 512, it was a co-processor board which fit inside the BBC Master 128, which provided the video, keyboard and mouse. There was no way it was ever going to be remotely h/w compatible with a real PC. OTOH, it was a lot more compatible with the BBC than a real PC would be, and that was a significant issue for the educational market.

For the most part, the only thing that mattered was the ability to run DOS software. In that regard, it's like comparing Win95/98/ME to NT/2K/XP. Internally, the two are completely different, but externally they're close enough that it's straightforward to write applications which run on either. f

The 186 was just an 8086 with on-chip peripherals. It's intended, and touted, as a microcontroller, not just a CPU. I had a job programming one, and it's just like programming an 8086; the on-chip peripherals are addressed by addresses, just like the ones you'd have to build if you used an '86.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Speaking of dim, the 80186 was never INTENDED as a general-purpose CPU - it was an 8086 plus on-board peripherals, i.e., an industrial control unit, or microcontroller.

The only "incompatibility" for using it in a PC was the different addresses (internally) for the on-board peripherals than what they used for addresses in the PC.

Been there, done that.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Wrong! It was *intended* to be part of the x86 family but it was incompatible with the IBM PC, so was relegated to the embedded space. It was quite successful there though.

And interrupt vectors overlaid BIOS', which was the major issue. IBM screwed that one up (they were intended for the '186 and marked "reserved" in the '86).

Yes. Sorry is the correct term.

Who said anything about MS-DOS? It used DOS-Plus (the forerunner to DR-DOS).

No. The 286 API is what drove the MS-DOS release, not the other way around.

Well, nobody (snicker) gets the prize in this thread. He knows more about it then both of us.

That originally posted link was not pointing at an XT though, as someone claimed.

If it wouldn't run MSDOS it wasn't a 100% compatible, by definition. Is that clear enough? Keep it up, you're almost up to DimBulb's level here.

Totally clueless, as usual, DimBulb.