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A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

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Reply 120 of 229, by 386SX

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pinkdonut666 wrote:
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I'M ALMOST OFFENDED... almost...

naw Just kidding.

I can defiantly understand if you're only into late 90s PC games then a 286 wouldn't be much use to YOU.

But those of us who play (and love to play with) games & computers from the 80s 286 are fairly awesome. Father than a 4.77mhz 8088.

games like Silpheed come to mind for games with Adlib & Gameblaster music, CGA/ EGA graphics that run a little slow on an 8088, but great on a 286.

my collection consists of 8088 XT and 286 AT class machines that I use almost every day! even when doing something simple like formatting floppy diskettes for use on other systems I will often fire up my Turbo XT clone.

something about the feeling of the older machines, the sounds that they make and the speed of everything is lost on 90s machines.

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Reply 121 of 229, by AlessandroB

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pinkdonut666 wrote:
https://i.imgur.com/rfkVjgTl.jpg […]
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rfkVjgTl.jpg

I'M ALMOST OFFENDED... almost...

naw Just kidding.

I can defiantly understand if you're only into late 90s PC games then a 286 wouldn't be much use to YOU.

But those of us who play (and love to play with) games & computers from the 80s 286 are fairly awesome. Father than a 4.77mhz 8088.

games like Silpheed come to mind for games with Adlib & Gameblaster music, CGA/ EGA graphics that run a little slow on an 8088, but great on a 286.

my collection consists of 8088 XT and 286 AT class machines that I use almost every day! even when doing something simple like formatting floppy diskettes for use on other systems I will often fire up my Turbo XT clone.

something about the feeling of the older machines, the sounds that they make and the speed of everything is lost on 90s machines.

No, I like games the first half of the 90s. I had the DX2 just released, so the games were structured to work on the 386s, I mean Bullfrog games for example. My first PC experience was with a friend of mine 386DX40 ... Stunts, Monkey II, Indy 4, Red baron ... I like them as memories, but the preferred games of the King DX2 66Mhz was.

Reply 122 of 229, by appiah4

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I agree with the above sentiment. Games from early 1990s is too much for a 286 and even for people who like earlier games, the experience of an Amiga renders the 286 totally lacklustre for them as well.

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Reply 123 of 229, by HanJammer

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appiah4 wrote:

I agree with the above sentiment. Games from early 1990s is too much for a 286 and even for people who like earlier games, the experience of an Amiga renders the 286 totally lacklustre for them as well.

I disagree. Even 3D games like Stunts, F-29 Retaliator, Gunship 2000, Robocop 3 run fine on a 286 not to mention 2D games like Wolfenstein 3D or platformers (Prince of Persia, Another World, Prehistorik, Prehistorik 2 and others). Even excellent and pretty advanced 3D game from 1995 - Darker - is very playable on a faster (20-25MHz) 286.

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Reply 124 of 229, by 386SX

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HanJammer wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

I agree with the above sentiment. Games from early 1990s is too much for a 286 and even for people who like earlier games, the experience of an Amiga renders the 286 totally lacklustre for them as well.

I disagree. Even 3D games like Stunts, F-29 Retaliator, Gunship 2000, Robocop 3 run fine on a 286 not to mention 2D games like Wolfenstein 3D or platformers (Prince of Persia, Another World, Prehistorik, Prehistorik 2 and others). Even excellent and pretty advanced 3D game from 1995 - Darker - is very playable on a faster (20-25MHz) 286.

I suppose high end 286 with fast ISA vga cards (?). Cause my 386SX-20 with 4Mb of ram and an awful vga did run Stunts at acceptable frame rate only @ medium detail level.

Reply 126 of 229, by brostenen

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Most of the hardware from a C64 is replicated. Like FPGA-SID, complete motherboard's, PLA-Chip and so on. Only two things that are not replicated from a Commodore64, is the keycaps them self and the VIC-II chip. Regarding filthers and stuff, then MOS (Commodore in other words), changed the SID chip so many times. All in the name of cost reduction and stuff like that. You can't get the keycaps, yet a fully keyboard have been replicated, using microswitches.

Different PLA's
Keyboard replica (Mechboard)
C64 Cases made on original molds.
Motherboard/systemboard replica.
Brand new reproduction kernal rom
SID in FPGA solution.
And if FPGA SID are too expensive then this SwinSID-Nano (I have one, and can not hear the difference)

By the way... I might have been too fast. 6510's might not be produced anymore, yet there are still new old stock, never used parts out there.

To say it in other words. Then you do not need to reinvent the C64 in a complete FPGA form. Individual computers have done it already in the form of a Cameleon64, and even the disk drive have been recreated, using an RaspberryPI-3. That solution is called PI-1541 and is a cycle correct solution.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 127 of 229, by HanJammer

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386SX wrote:
HanJammer wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

I agree with the above sentiment. Games from early 1990s is too much for a 286 and even for people who like earlier games, the experience of an Amiga renders the 286 totally lacklustre for them as well.

I disagree. Even 3D games like Stunts, F-29 Retaliator, Gunship 2000, Robocop 3 run fine on a 286 not to mention 2D games like Wolfenstein 3D or platformers (Prince of Persia, Another World, Prehistorik, Prehistorik 2 and others). Even excellent and pretty advanced 3D game from 1995 - Darker - is very playable on a faster (20-25MHz) 286.

I suppose high end 286 with fast ISA vga cards (?). Cause my 386SX-20 with 4Mb of ram and an awful vga did run Stunts at acceptable frame rate only @ medium detail level.

My Philips P3348 with i386SX-20Mhz 5MB RAM indeed feels slower than my Harris 286-20MHz.

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Reply 128 of 229, by appiah4

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Rare parts like a Harris 20 and AMD 5x86 133 are no longer a valid representation of performance of itheirclass IMO. The average 286 to me is a 8-12MHz part with CGA (or EGA at best) and fast 286s were 16mhz with (budget) VGA and that sucks balls for most games you mention.

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Reply 130 of 229, by 386SX

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appiah4 wrote:

Rare parts like a Harris 20 and AMD 5x86 133 are no longer a valid representation of performance of itheirclass IMO. The average 286 to me is a 8-12MHz part with CGA (or EGA at best) and fast 286s were 16mhz with (budget) VGA and that sucks balls for most games you mention.

Beside how interesting sounds such high freq 286 systems compared to the expensive high end 386 back than, I think too that a 16Mhz 286 already sounds "the" high end 286 while vga cards still were not really good at all. I had a real cheap 386SX system by the way, I don't know if I miss that system for nostalgic reasons or still hate it. 😵 I had it months later than a friends medium-high end 486SX@33 and probably there were already faster cpu around.

Last edited by 386SX on 2019-12-10, 10:41. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 131 of 229, by HanJammer

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appiah4 wrote:

Rare parts like a Harris 20 and AMD 5x86 133 are no longer a valid representation of performance of itheirclass IMO. The average 286 to me is a 8-12MHz part with CGA (or EGA at best) and fast 286s were 16mhz with (budget) VGA and that sucks balls for most games you mention.

20 or even 25MHz Harris are by no means rare. I would compare it rather to Am486DX4-100 or Am386DX40.

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Reply 132 of 229, by Scali

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I think 16-20 MHz 286 were the 'golden era' for 286 machines.
The earlier 286 machines were generally expensive high-end ones. In the early 90s, cheap 286 clones started to replace turbo XTs as the low to mainstream PC for the average consumer, and the 16 and 20 MHz models were most common.
They were superceded by the 386SX-16 to 386SX-25 not much later though.

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Reply 133 of 229, by appiah4

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HanJammer wrote:

20 or even 25MHz Harris are by no means rare. I would compare it rather to Am486DX4-100 or Am386DX40.

They were certainly not common or cheap at any period when 386SX were not more common and more affordable where I live.

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Reply 134 of 229, by Jo22

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Indeed. The Baby-AT form factor also was very popular thanks to the 386 CPUs (DX-40 and SX) which were often backwards compatible with (modified) 286 chipset designs.

appiah4 wrote:

I agree with the above sentiment. Games from early 1990s is too much for a 286 and even for people who like earlier games, the experience of an Amiga renders the 286 totally lacklustre for them as well.

Well, surely the whole AT platform was more limited than the Amigas' design. However..
The 80286 CPU was closer to the 68010 or 68020 than the 68000, I think.
For example, the 286 had things like virtual memory, an MMU and privileged instructions (ring scheme).
By comparison, the plain 68000 was rather limited in features.
The 68010 was more intelligent, though, and had some instruction cache/loop cache thingy.

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Reply 135 of 229, by Scali

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Jo22 wrote:

For example, the 286 had things like virtual memory, an MMU and privileged instructions (ring scheme).

In that era it wasn't relevant for games though.
We were still using DOS, and there was no use of virtual memory, protection levels or anything. 1 MB was plenty of memory for games of the day.
Even when the 386 became the standard for games, there was no use of protection, and only limited use of virtual memory, if at all (swapping would generally make games unplayable anyway). Games were still using DOS, with DOS Extenders. Not a fullblown virtualized multitasking OS.

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Reply 136 of 229, by appiah4

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Scali wrote:
In that era it wasn't relevant for games though. We were still using DOS, and there was no use of virtual memory, protection lev […]
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Jo22 wrote:

For example, the 286 had things like virtual memory, an MMU and privileged instructions (ring scheme).

In that era it wasn't relevant for games though.
We were still using DOS, and there was no use of virtual memory, protection levels or anything. 1 MB was plenty of memory for games of the day.
Even when the 386 became the standard for games, there was no use of protection, and only limited use of virtual memory, if at all (swapping would generally make games unplayable anyway). Games were still using DOS, with DOS Extenders. Not a fullblown virtualized multitasking OS.

Yeah, but those are exactly the kind of games that had the superior versions in terms of graphics and sound on Amiga anyway.

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Reply 137 of 229, by Scali

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appiah4 wrote:

Yeah, but those are exactly the kind of games that had the superior versions in terms of graphics and sound on Amiga anyway.

They did, but still PCs were very popular in those days for home users.
Partly because they could run business applications (WordPerfect, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, Windows 3.x etc) as well as games.
Amiga was never too big a success, and the late 286/early 386(SX) era is when PC took over from Amiga and other machines as the primary gaming platform.

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Reply 139 of 229, by Scali

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imi wrote:

in the US maybe, but Amiga was huge in europe during that time.

I should know, I am in Europe, and was/am involved in the (Amiga) demoscene.
But I'm being realistic: while Amiga was 'big' in Europe (mostly North-Western Europe actually, the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland... that's mainly it I think), it was still not the dominant platform (not like eg the C64 was before that). In the best days I remember, maybe about 30% of 16-bit machines were Amigas. Atari ST was also a reasonable share, and the majority was PC.
Say in 1990, I may have had 3 friends with an Amiga, 2 or 3 with an Atari ST, and 8 with a PC (Turbo XT or 286).
I myself cheated a bit... I had a C64, Amiga and PC at the same time (actually 2 PCs at some point, because I had my Turbo XT, and the 386SX-16 alongside it... Both were Commodore PCs of course).

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