Path: utzoo!yunexus!maccs!cs4g6ag From: cs4g6ag@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Stephen M. Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Is the XT dead? Message-ID: <2521B71C.18217@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> Date: 28 Sep 89 06:15:56 GMT Article-I.D.: maccs.2521B71C.18217 References: <1989Sep27.104957.24581@cs.dal.ca> Reply-To: cs4g6ag@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Stephen M. Dunn) Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Lines: 108 John Wright/Dr. Pat Lane writes: $Are 8086/8088-based machines obsolete? Nearly so? How long have they got? It depends on what you plan to do with them. If you're just typing three-page letters all day, an XT will do the job. If you're doing anything heavier (spreadsheets, graphics, programming), they're painfully slow. $I don't see many ads for or hear much about XT's in the magasines lately. $Many people are saying that since XT's can't run OS/2 or certain DOS $programs today, that soon they won't be able to run most new software $and as such represent a bad investment at any price. There's a very good reason why they can't run OS/2: it's written for the 286, which is a superset of the 8086/8088. XTs can run almost all DOS programs these days, other than the obvious Windows/286 and /386 (although that's not quite true - you _can_ run them in 8086 mode) and Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 (requires a 286 or higher). As for being a bad investment - I'll get to that later. $Others say that's just industry hype and a machine that does what you $want today will still be able to do so as long as it holds together... $"and who needs OS/2 anyway". I don't need OS/2, although multitasking sure would be nice ... there may well be some people out there, however, for whom OS/2 is nearly essential. If you buy an XT, you'll still be able to run almost all of the software that's out there today, and a large percentage of the software that's coming out in the future. One note about future software, especially that with graphical user interfaces: As the typical user's machine becomes more powerful, the software is adapting to eat up more processing time (Parkinson's law? :-) This is especially true of graphical programs, which require fairly heavy computation. So although you may be able to run such software on your XT, you'll find that it will get painfully slow to run new releases of many programs as time goes on. $Others say it doesn't matter what you buy, its going to be obsolete $before you get it out of the box...well, sooner than you think, anyway. $But that doesn't really help you decide what to buy now. To a certain extent, whatever you buy is obsolete - but this depends on your definition of obsolete. If you want the leading edge of 8086-compatible technology, well, you'll have to wait until 486-based machines come out, and even then the 586 will likely be coming onto the scene not too long after that. But you don't necessarily need a machine that uses technology no older than a couple of months. I'm making do with a 12 MHz 286 and, although higher speed would be nice, I'm not particularly suffering. But it does depend on what you're doing. If I was using AutoCad, for example, I would likely want a faster machine quite desperately. $Certainly XTs are cheap. An XT is half the price of a 286 which is $half the price of a 386 (roughly of course). One dealer told me that $they don't like selling XTs anymore because there's no profit in them. Not where I come from ... the price difference between the system I have (12 MHz 286, 640K, monographics card, 44 Mb 25 ms hard disk ... at least when I bought it, I've added since) and a 10 MHz 8088 system with similar features would have been around $600-700 Canadian, and that was last year; the system price (including monitor) was about $2400. For the motherboard, perhaps the "doubling" rule is appropriate, but once you've added your hard disk, graphics card, EMS board, or whatever, you'll find the price of the motherboard doesn't make up _that_ much of the total system cost. $Suppose you have relatively light duty tasks that, today, would be served $adequately by XTs and don't anticipate your basic tasks changing a great $deal, and you need several such machines, what do you buy if you want to $invest wisely? Where's the "smart" money going! If you're absolutely sure your tasks won't need higher performance in the future, I guess you might want to go with XTs and save some money. However, tasks seem to continually grow in complexity and required CPU power, so it may well be near-sighted to buy all XTs. $Ancillary question: How far behind the 8086 is the 80286? People have $been calling it a brain-damaged dead-end since the day it was released. $There is certainly software around that runs on 386's but not 286's. The 8086 was released in 1976 or 1977, the 286 a few years later. The 286, in addition to having memory protection and job-switching support for advanced (or at least semi-advanced) operating systems, also executes many instructions more efficiently than the 8086/8088, giving usually around twice the performance fora given clock speed (of course,the performacne you get depends on the type of tasks you're doing). There is software that requires a 286 or better, and software that requires a 386 or better; hwoever, almost all mainstream software will run on an 8086/8088 (with the exception of 1-2-3 R3). As for whether or not the 8086/8088 (or, for that matter, the entire family) is brain-damaged, I'm not going to comment; that's a matter in which people tend to be highly opinionated, and that tends to lead to net.bandwidth-wasting flame wars. If you're really interested and don't believe me, try posting a question like "Is the 8086 itself, or the 8086 family as a whole, brain-damaged?" to comp.arch and see what happens. Or better yet, trust me. It gets ugly ina hurry. -- Stephen M. Dunn cs4g6ag@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca **********************************************************************= "\nI'm only an undergraduate!!!\n"; "VM is like an orgasm: the less you have to fake, the better." - S.C.