Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!husc6!hscfvax!pavlov From: pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Intel 386SX chip & its applications Message-ID: <587@hscfvax.harvard.edu> Date: 27 Jun 88 14:57:24 GMT References: <206900116@prism> <234@belltec.UUCP> Organization: Health Sciences Computing Facility, Harvard University Lines: 14 In article <234@belltec.UUCP>, jim@belltec.UUCP (Mr. Jim's Own Logon) writes: > > The 386SX (formerly leaked as the P9) is not a 286 compatible at all. > > This still raises the question: why design a new machine around the > 386SX? A system cost is based on (in order of most $ to least) the memory, > the hard disk, the chassis and power supply, the controllers,monitor, and > keyboard, the support logic, and finally the CPU. So what if you can save > $100 on the CPU, it is a small percentage of the system cost. And you are > going to settle for 60% of the performance? Not me. > The difference is that you begin with an 80286 machine design (even tho the cpu chips are not pin-compatible) rather than with an 80386 machine. greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny