There is no processor which had such a lasting influence on computing history. When IBM decided to produce the personal computer, aptly named PC, they selected a cheap Intel CPU. The 8088 which was crippled as it couldn't address more than 1 MB.
This seemed wise, not because 640KB was enough for everyone as +***** is incorrectly quoted, but because 16 bits PCB boards were expensive to manufacture and why waste money.
The 8088 was very difficult to program, slow at 4.77 MHz, couldn't properly address memory and had some major flaws. However the IBM XT was hugely popular so it became the benchmark to write code against. The memory limitations were 'addressed' by a variety of clumsy and super smart solutions, still leaving the user with the need to configure his himem.sys and what else we got.
The limitations were overcome by some 'clones' like the NEC, the 80186 by Intel, but mostly by very smart programmers who developed memory management, paging schemes and what else laying the foundations for modern operating systems.
Most of all however it was a fun processor for programmers. Yes, it couldn't do what a 68000 easily achieved, making it the laughing stock of Apple, Atari and Amiga programmers, BUT it had a working business model. People actually bought software for it.
In case you come from another era: bit like the iPad 1 🙂
Getting the damned thing to perform was a huge challenge and I'm pretty sure that a new generation of programmers / hardware hackers got created not because the 8088 was anything good, but because there was a challenge: how to get that crippled thing to sing and dance.
Don't forget it came – in the IBM PC package – with a GPU which if possible was even more behind times compared to the home computers of these days like the BBC, Armstrad, Amiga, Atari etc. Most were better performers and certainly easier to program.
I had the smart insight bad luck to buy a clone PC, meaning it was compatible on MS-DOS level, not on machine instructions, nor on a closer spec called PC–DOS.
Now this should have been easy as who would bypass MS-DOS? Why would you? And indeed mine worked fine, except that it actually had better hardware than the original and suddenly the flaw became clear. Nobody would ever take advantage of it.
Mine could do full pixel addressing on high res, nothing like the CGA of the orginal, but I couldn't use it. My amber monitor would only show the WordStar formatting codes while I was sure it could do a better job.
Ah well, I was busy writing a thesis (on a very different subject than computers), but why not try to write an editor. Wysiswig they were called when invented: word processors which could show formatting on screen. Nobody could, but there was a rumor Microsoft would start doing it.
I realized that if they would release it, it wouldn't support my specific, slightly different, hardware so I decided to write one myself. Took me six months, but by then I had a lightning fast completely graphical text editor which did italics and more stuff I can't show here because G+ is still behind my home brew program.
When Microsoft Word finally was released my thesis was already finished and so was my wife's one. The only two users the system ever had. But I did test and my software was way faster on page refreshes than Word 1.0 so reason to celebrate.
Apparently I could do more than writing theses for my university. I'm still happy, both for the limitations of the 8088 which made you puzzle and think twice if not more before committing code to it as well as the luck (with hindsight) of having a not completely compatible machine forcing me to write most code myself.
(In case you want to know: all events triggered a career change where for a few years I was a dedicated graphic programmer specializing in 3D, but that's for another story).
What memories do you have of that humble 8088 CPU
#ComputerHistory #IBM #Programming #8088 #CPU #Tech
Jack of many trades +Shaker Cherukuri but yes I knew my way around some assembly where needed, but I was mostly concerned with figuring out algorithms fast enough to get 3D code working on the extremely slow hardware of these days.
ping +Wayne Radinsky as this might interest you.
Too many memories to list and cringed when you said "himem.sys" 🙂 Oh the hours spent on that machine and it wasn't much better when it jumped to the 286/386 and the memory games or the infamous Dr. DOS. I think the iPad was much smoother process IMO… just cause you couldn't brick the device, that alone sets it apart.
C:DOS
C:DOS RUN
RUN RUN RUN
Well you could brick it by reprogramming the video controller +Dave Friedel .. Or to be more precise you could blow up your monitor.
We were custom-programming 6800-based Unix System V computers back then at Quotron for real-time processing. PCs were for showing pretty pictures.
I had a Tandy 1000 until the mid 90s when my HS English teacher stopped accepting homework printed on a dot-matrix.
DOS=HIGH,UMB +Richard Anderson
The problem with G+ is that everyone repeats the mantra that it's for SEO (true) and techies (false).
So many users according to some statistics, but posts like these hardly get traction as they are too specialized which should solve itself if quoted numbers were real.
+Max Huijgen Depends on what you call traction. If it finds an engaged and intelligent audience, that's good, and many do.
+Max Huijgen dont feel sad! we are here 🙂
True that's about quality versus numbers +John Blossom but the dynamics of this place promote relatively superficial posting sticking to 'easy' subjects.
And I should know as I cover a wide range and the metrics are unfortunately clear.
Unless of course I have the 'wrong audience' but if true there is no way for a poster to get out of that sink hole.
Who is getting traction on slightly more technical posts +John Blossom
+Robert Scoble would this work on Facebook?
That's funny +Max Huijgen. How to get around the 1MB RAM limit, ouch. 😀 What was that we used to call it? Oh yea, then we got into Extended memory. LOL.
Although I started with an Apple II, my first in the PC line was the 8088. Though it was the NEC V20 that really pumped the 8-bits & I didn't know true computing till I found the NEC V30 and the HDD.
Gosh I am feeling old. I remember trying to assign IRQ via jumpers on a board with no documentation. Spending nights trying to get connected to a BBS. Modifying autoexec.bat files to drive my coworkers crazy when they booted up in the morning. 🙂
It was my first PC. Put in the 5.25" floppy and boot dos. It was exciting to see that orange c:. I remember upgrading to a meg of ram for $250. Computers are cheaper, faster, more powerful now, but they have never excited me more than back then.
It was also crippled by the fact that the data bus was only 8 bits instead of the 16 bits of the 8086. And segmented addressing. ::shudder::
"himem.sys" <runs screaming from the flashbacks>
I started out in Unix, made very brief traumatic forays into ms dos etc (and then settled for using them as giant dumb terminals dialed into my beloved unix systems). When linux came along, jumped ship from WinNT and never looked back. Although I had to put up with windows at work until four years ago 😛
+Max Huijgen you brought back some great memories with this one. I went from Unix System V to a PC and felt like I was starting from scratch. But it was a lot of fun figuring how to get the most out it. Thanks for sharing this.
Haha can't forget sitting on these for long hours learning DOS, COBOL, Dbase, C++, BASIC, LAN, UNIX in 1992! Who learns them nowadays! Also the memory of dealing with these in the law office. Old is gold.
MHz, please, you're not an economist, are you? 4.77 mhz, whatever that means, is no more than a billionth of 4.77 Mhz, which should be written 4.77 MHz. 😉
great days! brings back good (and frustrating) memories
I hope your thesis was about writing a WYSIWYG editor, then you killed two birds with one stone.
Yip +God Emperor Lionel Lauer but the reason for that 8 bit address limit was PCB costs.
+Travis Owens nope, political science masters. Very, very different subject.
+Christian Andersson you're right of course, changed it into MHz.. By the way derived from the NTSC frequency which drove the XT.
+Max Huijgen At the time, most of us blamed it on RAM prices as well, as it would've required twice as many DRAMs. But yeah, I think IBM were building them with 4 layer PCBs at the time.
I wrote the post from memory; i'm now looking at wiki and see that compatibility with existing 8 bits hardware was another reason +God Emperor Lionel Lauer
+Max Huijgen 4164 DRAMs were bloody expensive at the time!
Man, it was a biiig deal to jump from 4MB of RAM to 8MB. And then – 16MB! Wow.
Hoh, hoh, +John Blossom these were the days of KiloBytes…
Hmm, nothing really changed:
Interestingly, we also found that of those profiles that have gender specified 100% were male while 0% were female. says +Plus My Reach about this post.
I started on the 8086 myself. With the full 640kb of RAM 😀 And DOS 2.3 on the floppy. My first ever hard drive was 20Mb. 😀
As to your question +Max Huijgen I have to go with +John Blossom…what's traction? Seems like a pretty lively and engaging thread to me. 😉
True, traction got better +Iblis Bane
Be careful what you wish for… 😉
+Iblis Bane I started on the 8086 myself
Bet you didn't. There were 8086 based machines at the time, but IBM's was an 8088.
Haha, you're probably quite right +God Emperor Lionel Lauer..they called it the 086 XT though (although mine was almost certainly a clone or a fake or something.) (Dune fan? 😀 )
The XT was technically the later model with a hard disk! Yes, no need for floppies +Iblis Bane
I built one in my clone when I finally had the money. A whopping 20 MB if I remember well. Before could afford this , upgraded to a second floppy drive. Wow what a convenience
+John Blossom , when I finally got my 16MB on my old Radio Shack/Tandy, I thought to myself, "I'm in the big leagues now!" What a dummy I was. The old BBS days were fun, though!
+Iblis Bane Ayup, Dune fan. Our arsehole Prime Minister decided to bring back the British honours system, so some of us decided to give ourselves 'honours', & I figured that I might as well do it properly.
Haha, I like it +God Emperor Lionel Lauer. 😀 My favourite of the books by the way, barring the first one. 😉
Found my old, not completely compatible clone http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/sanyo.html
20MBs disk? man, you guys had it big… mine was 4MBs on a schneider 286
later had a schneider 386 with 40 MBs..
and in late 1994 got a IBM-PS/1 with 90MBs 486 DX2 with 4MBs of RAM
I just remember being so deliriously happy when I saved up enough money to get a 10!!M!!!! hdd!!!!!1!
+God Emperor Lionel Lauer Amstrad's PC1512 and PC1640 were 8086-based, and they sold loads of them.
I've still got one, with a 20MB hard drive and monochrome screen. Stupidly, I threw a matching EGA monitor away as I lost some storage space at the time.
+Cindy Brown -ST-510!- ST-412!
(Corrected model name.)
Could this of been connected to the Daisy Wheel printer?
( reminds me of my Pop's computer room, and the obnoxious noise 🙂
Don't think so +Jo Anne Thomas Afaik it mostly matrix printers were used with the old PC's. And they made a hell of noise, so you might remember that.
I hated the dot matrix printers when I had my old Trash-80. So, I found a guy who converted one's guts into an IBM Selectric so I could get a decent typeface. Problem solved.
+Jo Dunaway Selectric. Smooooth….
Yeah, that old Epson dot matrix wasn't cutting it, +John Blossom . The Selectric I could even used different type-balls on, loved it. I still like Epson; I have an Epson AIO now.
+BAG GAB
There's a 3.5" floppy above it, and a hard drive in the bottom left bay.
+BAG GAB I've got an Acorn Electron (32K) with a 640K floppy drive. I remember backing up my work disk, taking more than 20 swaps 🙂