8086 on an 8088 motherboard

[carlos12]

Sorry if it is a quite silly question. I recently bought via eBay an 8086 10 Mhz processor. I would like to put it on my PS/2 Model 30 but, as I read elsewhere, that would do nothing as the clock speed of the board would continue to work at 8 Mhz.

So my question is: can I put this processor on a Turbo XT 8088 10Mhz motherboard? (if possible, without smoke, burning or exploding anything... ;-) Thanks.

 

[Timo W.]

No. Since a 8088 has an external 8-bit bus, while a 8086 uses 16-bit. They are not compatible.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

FWIW, you probably wouldn't let the magic smoke out if you put an 8086 into an 8088 socket, their pinouts are *very similar*, but yeah, it won't work. (The main difference between the two pinout-wise is A8-A15 are only outputs on the 8088, while on the 8086 those same pins are AD8-AD15, multiplexing between address and data lines like AD0-AD7 do on both.)

 

[Chuck(G)]

You could undoubtedly design a "shim" to allow an 8086 to work in an 8088 socket, but you'd just be doing the work of the 8088 BIU and not gaining anything.