1. Forum
  2. Fidonet
  3. ALT.FOLKLORE.COMPUTERS

  • Intel 386 Processor Came Out 40 Years Ago

    From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Sun Oct 19 21:37:03 2025
    Intel finally added a linear address space to its first 32-bit x86
    processor in 1985 <https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/intel-386-at-40>. This was the point where all the old segmentation crap could start
    going away, though it took a while for backward-compatibility reasons.

    This was the CPU that was in Linus Torvald?s PC at University -- the
    one he developed the first version of Linux on.

    This was also the CPU that allowed Microsoft to create a version of
    Windows that people found genuinely useful: its ?virtual-86? mode
    allowed users to run multiple DOS programs at once, without their
    having to be modified in any way to support multitasking, and Windows
    2.1 (aka ?Windows/386?) took full advantage of this.

    It was all handled by the protected-mode hardware offering a virtual ?real-mode? environment for software that knew nothing about protected
    mode--in fact, it could offer multiple such environments running
    concurrently, isolated from each other so a crash in one would not
    affect the rest. Finally: a reason to buy Microsoft Windows, without
    having to wait for developers to come out with actual software that
    took advantage of Windows!

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Peter Flass@3:633/10 to All on Sun Oct 19 14:57:26 2025
    On 10/19/25 14:37, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    Intel finally added a linear address space to its first 32-bit x86
    processor in 1985 <https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/intel-386-at-40>. This was the point where all the old segmentation crap could start
    going away, though it took a while for backward-compatibility reasons.

    This was the CPU that was in Linus Torvald?s PC at University -- the
    one he developed the first version of Linux on.

    This was also the CPU that allowed Microsoft to create a version of
    Windows that people found genuinely useful: its ?virtual-86? mode
    allowed users to run multiple DOS programs at once, without their
    having to be modified in any way to support multitasking, and Windows
    2.1 (aka ?Windows/386?) took full advantage of this.

    It was all handled by the protected-mode hardware offering a virtual ?real-mode? environment for software that knew nothing about protected mode--in fact, it could offer multiple such environments running concurrently, isolated from each other so a crash in one would not
    affect the rest. Finally: a reason to buy Microsoft Windows, without
    having to wait for developers to come out with actual software that
    took advantage of Windows!

    I always thought they screwed up the naming. "Segmented mode" and
    "linear mode", or something else for the second. To me "real" and
    "protected" made no sense.


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Mon Oct 20 01:52:17 2025
    On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 14:57:26 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

    I always thought they screwed up the naming. "Segmented mode" and
    "linear mode", or something else for the second. To me "real" and
    "protected" made no sense.

    The two are orthogonal.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)