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Re: Computer Products United

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On Wed, 2 Dec 2015, chriskeegan2014@gmail.com wrote:

> I've come to learn there are other fully compatible motherboards out 
> there based on the 80186. Well at least 1 to date.
>
I was thinking about this overnight (especially after I searched and found 
nothing about Computer Products United, though I'm not going to look 
through magazines myself), and if the add said "full compatible" or you 
read it from some third party, how do you know it's true?

The company wanted to sell computers and at the time "compatible" meant 
something else.  You have to look for reviews from the time, because even 
now, someone might just be repeating back what they read in the ad.

> Repeat a computer is not IBM compatible simply because it boots "a" 
> version of MS-DOS. If it booted PC-DOS then we may have a different 
> story.
>
No.

The only big difference I thought there was was that the "IBM PC" had 
BASIC in ROM, so the BASIC on the floppy disk was an incomplete version, 
taking advantage of what was in ROM.

The BIOS was in charge of dealing with interface, so what else in the OS 
needed "fixing" to deal with different hardware?  I gather there might 
have been some 8088 computers that didn't have a BIOS in ROM, so perhaps 
it wsa loaded from disk, and that might require a different arrangement.
But at the time, hardware wsa handled through the BIOS, so what mods would 
be needed?

> There were dozens of desktop computers (and handhelds, laptops maybe 
> even) that used the 80186. Most of them weren't truly compatible, but 
> that's not a function of the micro, rather the design, enhanced to 
> improve on IBMs original design, or not to infringe on copyrights.
>
But you may be looking at it wrong.  There were some features in the 80186 
that improved upon the 8086/8088, but they were relatively minor.  I 
suspect if you look closer, you'll find that the designers went with the 
80186 because of the peripheral hardware built into the "chip", and once 
they'd "broken" compatibility that way, they might as well improve on 
other things.  Or looked at another way, since they wanted better graphics 
and whatever, they decided "why not use the 80186", and get the simpler 
board layout because of the built in peripherals.

I think you'll find, if you actually look deeper, that nobody went to the 
80186 for the sake of a somewhat larger instruction set.

   Michael

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Computer Products United chriskeegan2014@gmail.com - 2015-11-15 20:54 -0800
  Re: Computer Products United Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-16 05:28 +0000
    Re: Computer Products United Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-11-16 09:59 +0000
      Re: Computer Products United Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-16 11:40 +0000
    Re: Computer Products United Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-11-16 11:35 -0500
      Re: Computer Products United Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-16 11:23 -0600
        Re: Computer Products United scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-16 17:27 +0000
        Re: Computer Products United Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-11-16 18:27 +0000
        Re: Computer Products United cb@elaine.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) - 2015-11-16 21:48 +0000
        Re: Computer Products United Freddy1 <something@something.com> - 2015-11-16 17:38 -0500
        Re: Computer Products United Anssi Saari <as@sci.fi> - 2015-11-18 19:52 +0200
        Re: Computer Products United Jan van den Broek <fortytwo@xs4all.nl> - 2015-12-07 21:26 +0100
      Re: Computer Products United Daiyu Hurst <daiyu.hurst@gmail.com> - 2015-11-27 12:29 -0800
        Re: Computer Products United chriskeegan2014@gmail.com - 2015-12-02 11:31 -0800
          Re: Computer Products United chriskeegan2014@gmail.com - 2015-12-02 11:34 -0800
            Re: Computer Products United Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-12-04 00:00 -0500
              Re: Computer Products United Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-12-04 20:56 +0000
                Re: Computer Products United Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-12-04 17:12 -0500
          Re: Computer Products United Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-12-02 18:44 -0500
          Re: Computer Products United Daiyu Hurst <daiyu.hurst@gmail.com> - 2015-12-05 17:29 -0800
            Re: Computer Products United Daiyu Hurst <daiyu.hurst@gmail.com> - 2015-12-05 17:29 -0800
            Re: Computer Products United "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-01-02 08:27 -0500
  Re: Computer Products United "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-16 17:02 +1100
  Re: Computer Products United Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-11-16 11:36 -0500
  Re: Computer Products United Daiyu Hurst <daiyu.hurst@gmail.com> - 2015-11-27 12:28 -0800

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