Markk wrote:Anonymous Coward wrote:
It actually turns your XT into more of a 286 than a 386, as the 386 CPU that comes with it as marked as "16-bit software only"
I think early 386s had a bug that made them halt when trying to run 32bit software. But that didn't affect all of them. The bug-free ones were labeled ΣΣ (sigma sigma), and the buggy ones carried a "16bit software only" label, and they could be selled, as most people would need to run 16bit dos software. I have 3-4 early 386s and all of them are the ΣΣ model 😎
Its a bit more complicated.
There is a good description here http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx … 30978&seqNum=27
chapter '386 Bugs'.
My 16 BIT S/W ONLY 386 looks like this
http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/forum/386_top.jpg
Though even if your old 386s are double Sigmas, they still have the Errata 21 Bug.
So f.e. if you have a slow older 386 with Waitstates enabled, a 387 coprocessor, run Win 3.x in enhanced mode, play tracked music with a soundblaster that utilizes DMA for transfer, let the player use FPU interpolation and then add a memory intensive program that starts to swap out via paging.... ...then your 386 might lock up.