BitWrangler wrote on 2023-06-09, 13:50:
I think what wiped out the 286 as a base level DOS system was AMD finally winning in court and releasing the floodgates on its 386es, then it was wall to wall 386 integrated boards.
The 286 could have limped past 1992 but several major things killed it.
1. Cost, for a 286 to continue it would have had to get further integrated like a 186 or MediaGX as the 386sx was virtually the same price . The 286 already had a power consumption advantage which embedded it into the subcompact/ notebook laptop space into 1994, further focus on this could have embedded it into a niche terminal, pc104, embedded and handheld market longer for power, size and cost reasons.
2. Clock speed, the 286 was definitely beloved especially overseas but it did not continue getting refined into higher speed silicon. In an alternate universe Harris’s cutting edge process which did save power but was several years behind “others” would have gotten updated in 1988 to release a 33mhz part, this would have made Intels smear campaign against 286 chips less effective and forced them to get “good sx” chips out the door faster in quantity
As it actually Turned out Intel was given the chance to scale up and flood the early 386sx market with slow parts as others stagnated selling the same slow 286 parts.
3. Emulation, Dos extenders, software support.
Intel felt it could only survive if older chips were made unsellable, to accomplish they started with the 286 smear campaign in the late 80’s and heavily supported the development of free dos extenders for 386 chips. Microsoft and IBM abandoned support relatively quickly along a pure cost basis with full support from Intel, even though the 286 install base was massive in 1993. If a free and easy to use extender and programming toolset would have become available for 286 early that alone would have stifled the main reason the 286 went from being on sale one year to virtually unsupported the next. 286 extenders were expensive and had far less development and ease of use effort put into them.
Further the 286 (a von Newman ) actually could easily emulate 386 operations, especially on 640k dos software. Historically there were small emulators that worked extremely well but almost nobody knew they existed , speed was less important than compatibility back then and having an emulator even right in the bios with a work around for detection would have added further legitimacy even if it was a cludge.
It could also simplify cross portability if it was in a quality easy to use toolset.
The 286 sales chart is quite unusual as it literally shut off like a light switch.
Nothing like that happened before or since so it means a major shift across, corporate software, hardware vendors and consumers all in an extremely short period of time
