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Is there a case to be made for the 386?

Even if most users of 80386 systems back in the day only ran DOS programs, one benefit of the 80386 was virtual 8086 mode, which was necessary to run EMM386.EXE. EMM386.EXE provided UMB support, which could provide more free memory for running DOS programs, and it also provide EMS support, if that was needed.

You could also run 32-bit applications on top of DOS using a DOS extender. In my first real software job back in 1988 we used the Phar Lap 386|DOS-Extender to develop a 32-bit protected mode application that ran on top of DOS. The application was basically a port of a workstation application that assumed 32-bit pointers and needed access to more than a MB of RAM to run well. Using a 32-bit DOS extender made the port much easier.
 
I picked up a Baby Gemini from Micronics 386DX+387 board about 10 years age. It came with 8-1Mx9 30pin simms installed. It's been my workhorse in imaging my software collection software for years. I've installed 1-360K DSDD floppy, 1-1.2M HD floppy, 1-720K floppy, 1-1.4M floppy and a CDROM drive. It was the capability to still connect to my win10 computer and transfer files to be saved on a USB flash drive.

I also use it to save and transfer sofeware from a TSR-80 computer through the RS-232 port.

It runs WFW 3.11 perfectly and can be fun to play a few old games from 1988... I do have it connected to a LED monitor @ 800x600 w/Speedstar PRO video card.

I'm always amazed at how well this thing works at almost 35 years old.

It also runs several software compilers for software I wrote in the early 90's and I still tweak. I could run them in later versions but a few things have issues and it easier in WFW 3.11 version.

I can run my old DOS software applications in my Win 11 computer using a program called vDOSplus.

386 was the start of modern computing and a must have IMHO.

framer
 
hunterjwizzard said:
How are you getting it to talk to windows 10?

This has been an ongoing problem for me.
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I have Windows shares working between Windows 10 and Win 3.11 on a 386/486/Pentium systems. You can only connect from Win10 towards Win3, though, due to the default protocols/security. (at least as far as I've gotten)
 
Chuck(G) said:
Personally, I'd love to see it run Windows 10... :)
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Per Wikipedia:

"Windows 95 was the only entry in the Windows 9x series to officially support the 386, requiring at least a 386DX, though a 486 or better was recommended; Windows 98 requires a 486DX or higher. In the Windows NT family, Windows NT 3.51 was the last version with 386 support."
 
I know that--I ran 3.51 on a 386 as well as that pile of garbage called Windows 95. However, if a 386 is Turing-complete, there's no good reason that it couldn't run Win 10--although it'll need a bunch of extra memory and be glacially slow.
 
From my viewpoint software and adoption in the 80s severely lagged behind hardware innovation in PC world, lagging is a bad word for it, it was a mouse chasing a bike. Intel leaped 4 generations in a decade, 486 was out, people were still writing and selling software for 8088.

It's probably due to that that people don't perceive 386 as a huge improvement that it was. It's was shown later, in the 90s when Linux and GNU and BSDs and XFree86 project matured enough, that i386DX PC was perfectly capable of being an "UNIX Workstation" back in the 80s but there was no competent vendor to utilize that.
 
Zare said:
...486 was out, people were still writing and selling software for 8088.


...probably due to that that people don't perceive 386 as a huge improvement that it was.
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The more-likely reason was that PCs were quite expensive at the time, and with so much money invested in a machine, people held onto the system (and thus the software to run on it) until prices started dropping in the early to mid-90s. I had a 286 and held off until the 486DX33 was out. I wasn't giving up on a system that I had over $3K in with hardware and software.
 
386 is my favorite DOS machine. I swapped some odd stuff to fellow on the west coast for a 386 board, CPU, and a multi function controller. Hope to find some spare time to get it up and running.
 
T-R-A said:
The more-likely reason was that PCs were quite expensive at the time, and with so much money invested in a machine, people held onto the system (and thus the software to run on it) until prices started dropping in the early to mid-90s. I had a 286 and held off until the 486DX33 was out. I wasn't giving up on a system that I had over $3K in with hardware and software.
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Absolutely, the prices were skyhigh and people held on their computers for years.
Good example is C64 too.
 
T-R-A said:
The more-likely reason was that PCs were quite expensive at the time, and with so much money invested in a machine, people held onto the system (and thus the software to run on it) until prices started dropping in the early to mid-90s. I had a 286 and held off until the 486DX33 was out. I wasn't giving up on a system that I had over $3K in with hardware and software.
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Ironically this is why the 386 is so burned into my memory. We didn't get ours until 1995 or so, but it was our "family computer" until probably 1999. Was weird going from a 386 with windows 3.11 directly to '98SE
 
I always thought the 386 was the CPU that "arrived" - something about moving to 32 bit was pretty awesome in my mind.

I also remember a huge speed difference in MS Office between the 16-bit and 32-bit versions (running under NT 3.51 on a 486/50 DX2) - it just felt and operated so much faster than the 16-bit equivalent on the same CPU.
 
I recall an Intel applications engineer in the early 1990s grumbling that "We gave you an advanced 32-bit cpu and you guys p*ss it away running DOS". Let's face it, initially, one of the biggest reasons for using a 80386 was the ability to provide EMS service.
 
I had the distinction of being the pawn sent to Microsoft by Compaq to ensure NT OS/2 would ship on the 386 processor. Compaq had a vested interest in having Microsoft's new OS run on their hardware. NT OS/2 was originally targeting the high performance RISC processors like the i860 and MIPS. Since only a few actual i860 and MIPS development platforms existed for the NT group, the 386 was used as the initial target for use by the team. Two events made my job easy:

1. During the development of the NT kernel, a critical design flaw of the i860 led to a meeting between Intel and Dave Cutler. Apparently the quote went something like: "You were *this* close to getting the CPU design right, but you blew it". That only left the MIPs as a viable RISC target.

2. IBM and Microsoft had a rift on the future development of OS/2. IBM took their ball and went home, Microsoft rechristened NT OS/2 as Windows NT. Windows 3.0 was in development but was still DOS based, leaving MS without a real 32 bit OS for the 386.

So, the 386 was pulled in as an officially supported platform for Windows NT and I didn't have to complete the VGA GDI driver. I do have a soft spot for the 386, especially my Compaq 386/20e that I wrote a great deal of code on. I have recreated that machine, but did replace the CPU with the Cyrix 486 upgrade to make it a little zippier while running NT.
 
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