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Your input requested: Scope of the Pentium subforum

"If you don't wanna read about such modern PCs then chose one of the other 179 subforums. And if somebody loves Pentium 1 so much that he peeks in here i doubt they would be heartbroken to also see posts about a Pentium-II..."

OTOH, as we have all seen, here and elsewhere, there are those who would complain if they were given free money.

Just sayin'. ;-)
 
novoiperkele said:
How about you name the subforum "Modern Pc:s" or "Modern classics"?
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Then you start the whole debate of what counts as "modern"...

IMHO, a "modern" PC is one capable of running currently supported operating systems and software. Today in most cases that means at least a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64.
 
KC9UDX said:
It could be modern vintage, or, vintage modern.
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"The new shit", "HAL 9000", "radical, modern, bran-new, newborn, rising, untested, sunrise, red-hot, spic-and-span, young, current, virgin, hot, brand-new, new-sprung, untried, parvenu, recent, revolutionary, unused, novel, refreshing, age, spick-and-span, parvenue, newfound, fresh"
 
Punched cards are great for data but programs should live on these.

640px-IBM402plugboard.Shrigley.wireside.jpg
 
I tend to agree with those who have said the split should be based on software rather than hardware. The DOS+VGA suggestion was a good one. I also think the presence of ISA slots that can run Sound Blaster cards would be another good dividing line (and yes, if you have one of those Core2 industrial boards with an ISA slot then you should be able to ask here, because you probably have the same DOS problem that you'd have on a Pentium 1 anyway.)

In other words, I don't think you can figure out where to draw the line until you know why you are visiting the forum. If, like me you are interested in DOS games and the hardware that ran them, then there's a split at the 386 where protected mode games start to run, and it goes until ISA slots disappear and Sound Blaster cards had to be emulated, with varying levels of success.

So my suggestion is along the lines of three PC forums:

  • PC (8088 to 286)
  • PC (ISA; 386+)
  • PC (PCI/AGP)
 
Malvineous said:
PC (8088 to 286)
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I think the PC/XT machines shouldn't just be lumped together with the 286. Early PCs were very specific in that a lot of things weren't standardized yet. Both in terms of hardware, but also in terms of software. 286 standardized a lot of things, such as CMOS configuration, real-time clock, second PIT, second DMA controller, IDE harddisks etc.
I'd rather lump 286 in with 386+, because they're far more similar than 286 machines are to PC/XT class machines.
I also think most activity on this forum is concentrated around the PC/XT era hardware.
 
Scali said:
... I'd rather lump 286 in with 386+ ...
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I think the break should be between 286 and 386. That is where the software eco-system changed the most. I actually ran 32-bit software (standalone stuff, UNIX, etc.) on 386's from the very beginning. For most people a 286 machine was just a faster machine to run DOS. I suspect most people eventually upgraded to a 386 so they could run Windows 3.x.
 
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Scali said:
I think the PC/XT machines shouldn't just be lumped together with the 286. Early PCs were very specific in that a lot of things weren't standardized yet. Both in terms of hardware, but also in terms of software. 286 standardized a lot of things, such as CMOS configuration, real-time clock, second PIT, second DMA controller, IDE harddisks etc.
I'd rather lump 286 in with 386+, because they're far more similar than 286 machines are to PC/XT class machines.
I also think most activity on this forum is concentrated around the PC/XT era hardware.
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But regardless of those significant hardware architecture changes in the AT, most people continued to use 286s as little more than fast 8088s until the advent of software which was specifically designed to take advantage of the 386+ platform to "break the 640K barrier" and offer multitasking.

And there were some PCs which had an 80286 CPU but were XT-class machines, such as the Tandy 1000 TX, TL series, and RLX. How would you classify those?
 
I'd lump 5150 through 80486 together. Why not? They are even supposed to be fully compatible.
 
vwestlife said:
But regardless of those significant hardware architecture changes in the AT, most people continued to use 286s as little more than fast 8088s until the advent of software which was specifically designed to take advantage of the 386+ platform to "break the 640K barrier" and offer multitasking.
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I was thinking in the context of this forum specifically, where a lot of questions are like: "Which VGA card is compatible with my 5150?".
On a 286+, you simply don't get these kinds of questions, because every VGA card you can find will just work in them.

vwestlife said:
And there were some PCs which had an 80286 CPU but were XT-class machines, such as the Tandy 1000 TX, TL series, and RLX. How would you classify those?
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Tandy is Tandy, already has a separate section. I don't consider Tandy to be PC, same goes for PCjr or Philips :YES for example. They are "PC-ish", but very unique in certain ways, where only people familiar with Tandy will be able to answer your questions.
 
Uniballer said:
I think the break should be between 286 and 386. That is where the software eco-system changed the most. I actually ran 32-bit software (standalone stuff, UNIX, etc.) on 386's from the very beginning. For most people a 286 machine was just a faster machine to run DOS. I suspect most people eventually upgraded to a 386 so they could run Windows 3.x.
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I disagree. Most people only used a 386 as a faster/bigger 286, since 32-bit software didn't really become commonplace until around 1992, when 486 had become mainstream.
The 286 is rather unique, but not relevant enough to warrant a section for itself. Therefore if you're going to lump it in with another category, I think 386 is a better fit than 8088.
I see a 386 as a 286 that can run 32-bit code (and that part is pretty obvious, so I don't expect a lot of confusion there). 286 and 386 share the same 16-bit ISA bus, they share IDE controllers, they share AT-compatible chipsets, and most of them even use the same 30-pin SIMM memory modules, for example.

As for PC/XT class machines. I bet most people who have only used a 286+, have no idea how to even configure such a machine, and probably have never seen the kind of HDD interface that they use... or know about low-level formatting, interleaving or whatever. It's just a completely different kind of machine.
 
Scali said:
I can easily prove that this is not the case :)
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You can prove they aren't supposed to be? ;)

That was always the selling point of all the clones and everything IBM produced. They were all "PC compatible".
 
Scali said:
As for PC/XT class machines. I bet most people who have only used a 286+, have no idea how to even configure such a machine, and probably have never seen the kind of HDD interface that they use... or know about low-level formatting, interleaving or whatever. It's just a completely different kind of machine.
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OK, so make one category for PC and PC/XT and their clones, and put all AT and clones in a second one, up to Pentium. Put Pentium and up in a third.

Incidentally, I was still using PC/XT style components in my AT-clone right up until I switched to Amiga in 1995. And I wasn't the only one. I knew lots of guys who went from PC/XT to AT and brought along all their ISA cards and disk drives.
 
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