It always breaks my heart when an AT PC is treated like a puny XT on sugar. 😢
- For the record: The 286 is more than a hippster version of an 8086. It's a real CPU with a complex die. *sigh*
Back in the 90s, a 286 PC had the potential as a multimedia machine - on eye level with faster 386/486 PCs.
In fact, the original MPC Level-1 spec was based on a 286, before it was changed to a 386SX.
On Windows 3.1, *for example*, you could run current versions of AutoCAD, AutoSketch on your 286.
You could do MIDI processing with Cubase, attach a modem and go online with AOL, WinCIM or Videotex services. In color with graphics!
A 286 could run Photoshop, Picture Publisher, Graphics Work Shop and many more graphics intensive applications.
You could even watch videos through, say, Video for Windows 1.0.
You could program in Visual Basic, Turbo Pascal for Windows, Delphi, DBFast for Windows, Fox Pro, use GUPTA SQL.
Anyway, each to his own. Perhaps it's just to me. Or maybe it's because of the country I live in, not sure. 😅
In my place, in the 90s, you could get current Windows software to work on a 286 even in the the late 90s.
Because many titles featured Windows 3.1 applications, still.
The 286 platform is (was) not about text-mode dungeon crawlers, annyoing PC speaker music or ugly 4-color CGA graphics for the giggles. 🙄
No. That's not what the daily life of a typical 286 PC user was. We were a bit more demanding. At least in the 90s.
The 286 platform rather is (was) comparable to the 386 platform tinstead of the 8086 platform.
It could be a serious workhorse that could run GUIs in color and high resolutions, but also run graphics adventures in 800x600 resolution.
Edit:
betaporter wrote on 2021-06-09, 03:32:
FAMICOMASTER wrote on 2021-06-09, 03:25:
Why? 640K ought to be enough for anyone.
I see what you did there.
Me, too. 😁
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//