The Computer Chronicles - Intel 386 - The Fast Lane (1987)

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/det...

[@cloviscareca]

I love this show. I watch it every week in order to keep updated with the latest technologies

[@1flynlow]

sometimes I have to tape it if i'm out of town for a Utah jazz game.

[@anonUK]

How do you watch KZbin videos on Mosaic? I keep getting error messages...

[@MirekFe]

@@anonUK You're using the wrong browser. You should be using _WorldWideWeb._

[@michaelwohl3551]

0

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

I downloaded this video using the cutting edge technology BBS or the Bulletin Board System without any problem. Eat your hearts out low tech guys!

[@ericn9vjg]

I'm sold. I'm going to buy one of those 386 PCs.

[@oubrioko]

Think I'll wait for the i486.

[@lorumipsum1129]

oubrioko to late, pentium is the future now.

[@oubrioko]

I might hold out a bit longer. There's rumors swirling of a possible _Pentium II_.

[@lorumipsum1129]

oubrioko great Scott!!! what if they made a pentium 3? proposterous.

[@Sython6]

And imagine if they put a pentium 3 in a game console.....Mind Blown!

[@RuruFIN]

Back in the day the performance leaps were insane between CPU generations. I use an i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz as my temporary PC right now, and still fully usable CPU even it's over 9 years old.

[@PointReflex]

I have a Pentium 4 @ 2.4Ghz (no HT) and it can give Windows 7 a run for it's money.

[@mrbrad4637]

I still use a 2011 ASUS ROG laptop with an i7 2670qm 2.2ghz to 3.1ghz boost.. 16gb RAM and it runs Windows 10 pro, office 2016 along with battlefield 4 all perfectly fine and its nearly a decade old

[@RuruFIN]

@@mrbrad4637 iPhone? I guess autocorrect got you? ;)

[@mrbrad4637]

@@RuruFIN ☺🤤 sure did

[@Kynareth6]

@@PointReflex That's a stretch. Pentium 4 is now horribly slow.

[@joevining2603]

That whole Mona Lisa thing at the end cracked me up. It was hilarious the way they just dropped that in there and then bang - 'that's it for this week' lol.

[@goddestv]

cant believe they actually put that in this episode, how is this even related to computers

[@joevining2603]

Because it was a computer analysis of the Mona Lisa and she was a computer researcher at Bell Labs?

[@goddestv]

but her comments on Leonardo being probably gay and the Mona Lisa a fantasy is not related to computers

[@RonJohn63]

@@goddestv shock value.

[@trevorhackett8826]

@@joevining2603 They used an MIT gayness algorithm to assess his art. Computationally expensive, but the 80386 processor from Intel made it possible.

[@CodyShell]

Glad to see UNIX guys haven't changed one bit in almost 40 years of computing lol

[@davidedgar7338]

Never will. We be like the guy in the bunker in independence day.

[@jean-huguesbouchard1045]

Could not agree more. Please note that he is using the keyboard only. Joke aside, a very impressive demo for the time although I don't like the fact that the two monitors don't match.

[@m9078jk3]

This was one of my favorite programs on television. I wish that there was a new Computer Chronicles show right now. Come on do it please.

[@oldtwins]

Have to agree here. Would love to see Stewart host a youtube show, getting the big wig top hats in to demonstrate their products and cut them off mid-sentence. Nobody can do it better than him.

[@PointReflex]

@Glen Young There is no such thing as "post PC era" in the same way there is no "post TV era" or "post radio era", mostly because some things are here to stay with us until we reach extinction and home computers are one of those things. Granted the cellphone market grew exponentialy over the past 25 years but that is just because it catched up with what computers could actually do 15 years prior. On top of that having AI asisted solutions for everything is a good way to rundown the intelligence of the end user.

[@oncomcombro7834]

agree!!! but.. still with the 80s style with the same music theme, fancy suit, glasses, hairstyle, and moustache

[@OpenGL4ever]

Well today you have plenty of YT channels doing that stuff.

[@Psythik]

GamersNesus and GamerMeld are unfortunately your best options right now.

[@wesbat9012]

I recently started work on a homebrew DOS game, turbo C and 32-bit Assembly, no libraries. It must be two decades since I compiled anything in 32-bit. This episode only increased my determination, and is one of my favourite episodes so far.

[@me67galaxylife]

So? Where did it go ?

[@herrbonk3635]

How did you get into 32-bit mode from 16-bit DOS? Did you use a "DOS-extender", or did you do it yourself?

[@OpenGL4ever]

Why don't you use the OpenWatcom C compiler? John Carmack from ID Software did use Watcom C for DOOM. It was shipped with DOS/4GW a DOS Extender that allows you to switch from Real Mode into Protected Mode.

[@karlimo4034]

Where is the game?

[@thepenultimateninja5797]

7:12 Jan asks if the speed of the 386 will obsolete the PC AT, and he says no, and that they will coexist for several years. The PC AT was discontinued in 1987, the same year this episode was broadcast. Just goes to show how rapidly things were changing back then.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

But there were AT compatibles from other manufacturers, and the PS/2 line did include 80286-based machines in its lineup for a while longer.

[@neozeed8139]

Then they introduced a $6,000 286 in the form of the PS/2 model 60

[@leonjones7120]

My parents bought me a Ambra Sprinta 386sx for my later studies. Maxed it out, 16 Meg ram (4x4 meg ), MSDOS 6.22, 387 Co Pro, PCTOOLS, Quarterdeck, two hard drives to 270 Meg, HP 500C printer, I did my degree using this.

[@raven4k998]

mine got me a Compaq Presario CDS 762 it have windows 3.11 excel and lotus 123 QuickBooks and all sorts of business crap on it including dos 6.22 and basic are you an excel genius to?

[@squaretrianglez]

Surprised I thought you used your brain. Lol. Just kidding.

[@squaretrianglez]

​@@raven4k998Nooo. O would not call them crap. Used quickbooks in my small business and was great.

[@abckirov1929]

Oh memories. My first PC was a 386SX-16, and was so impressed when I upgraded to a 386DX-40! But when i upgraded again to a 486DX-33, I remember being disappointed when a couple of games ran faster on the 386-40. Good times!

[@skyhawk21]

How about cyrix chips or via chips 586 and 686

[@abckirov1929]

@@skyhawk21 Never had a cyrix cpu. I did have a Cyrix 387 Math co-processor for my 386/40.

[@DarkCybrid]

The 33 was an upgrade to the 40? What did the release dates look like? Seems strange with that numbering system they used.

[@ianedmonds9191]

The SX was gimped by not having the Floating point part. IIRC it also had a 16 bit memory bus.

[@XenotypalTV]

@@ianedmonds9191 it indeed did have a limited memory bus

[@td1138]

The Intel 80386 was a true game changer, and not just because it was fast. By providing on-chip virtual memory management it single handedly eliminated all the problems with making use of extended memory (RAM above the 1MB line). In addition, its virtual 86 mode allowed Windows and OS/2 to create separate virtual machines in which to run DOS and 16-bit apps. It could also switch between real mode and protected mode with ease, something the 80286 was never designed to do. Contrary to the experts in the video, the 286 was instantly obsolete the day the 386 showed up.

[@Magnus_Loov]

But for the majority it wasn't a game changer. Yes, hardwarewize it would have been, but on the PC neither Windows 1 or 2 nor DOS could really use it in 32-bit protected mode. And the application support for it of course was just as bad. It wasn't until 1990 when Windows 3.0 was released that you could run in protected mode and do the switching into real-mode when needed, but with the caveat that no GUI programs could be run simultaneously in both real and protected mode among other things. Windows 3.0 was generally a buggy mess. And at that time, the 486 was already released a year earlier in 1989. Besides there were lots of legacy apps holding back the development for years. It wasn't until Windows 95 that support both in OS and programs for the 32-bit X86 CPU:s were realized on a large scale (ie more or less became the standard).

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@Magnus_Loov OS/2 did exist before Windows 3.0. And Windows NT did exist before Windows 95. The only drawback was that memory requirements were much higher an memory did cost a fortune.

[@Magnus_Loov]

@@OpenGL4ever OS/2 only supported 16-bit memory up until 1992, mainly due to 80286 support (large 80286 customer base for IBM). Windows NT wasn't released until 1993 so at the time of the video here NT didn't exist and OS/2 didn't support the 32-bit mode of the 386 just like Windows 2 didn't either. There may have been some fringe cases with some Pc-based Unix variants, like Minix or the like. But, as I wrote, "For the majority it wasn't a game changer" and not even that when both OS/2 supported 32-bit protected mode and when NT was released. OS/2:s hardware support was bad due to it being a more closed system than Windows (IBM wanted to support OS/2-hardware the first years). NT was almost never in a normal home users computer. But at that time the 486 (OS/2 in 1992 with 32-bit protected mode support) and Pentium (Windows NT in the summer of 1993) respectively had already been released anyway...

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@Magnus_Loov I was refering to your sentence "It wasn't until Windows 95 that support both in OS and programs for the 32-bit X86". And this is wrong, because OS/2 32 Bit and Windows NT existed before.

[@Magnus_Loov]

@@OpenGL4ever You cut out the last part of my sentence :"It wasn't until Windows 95 that support both in OS and programs for the 32-bit X86 CPU:s were realized on a large scale (ie more or less became the standard)." were realized on A LARGE SCALE (ie more or less became the standard). was the key point! Neither OS2 nor NT were the OS:s that became the standard for the masses Windows was and 95 was the version where everything finally worked. As I also wrote earlier you could probably find some earlier examples before both NT and OS/2 where it worked. But that would be for even less people!

[@RealWitblitz]

I had a 386 DX* 33Mhz in a mini tower, which I painted myself. And was the coolest rig in town :) Good times! (I had the DX, not SX, had to think about that one)

CaptainSlow the guy with dx had the fpu could run around your sx :p

[@raven4k998]

lol did you paint it red to make it go faster?

[@tetsujin_144]

​@ 386DX did not have an FPU integrated. You're thinking of the 486DX. The 386SX had a 16-bit data bus, which would have halved the speed of memory access compared to a 386DX (which, yes, would be a significant performance hit)

@@tetsujin_144 I stand corrected

[@mpiulg83]

@@tetsujin_144 I had a 486SX 40Mhz and used to envy my friend with the 386DX 33Mhz. His computer was much faster and he could play Doom 2 without crashes. Thanks to the FPU

[@Nick_R_]

I went from 8-bit Amstrad to 386sx-25. The bigger leap, in user experience, was then to a Pentium 75. Finally I could play Doom full screen! I still have the 386 & it's Motherboard, though the tower it was in has hosted an AMD K62-450 for many a year.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

"Finally, the power to do artificial intelligence!" What's funny is I also remember Intel's own marketing touted that it was a CPU finally fast enough to do voice recognition! A line Intel used for basically every new CPU all the way up to the Pentium 4. (When they were *FINALLY* fast enough to actually do real-time voice recognition without using 100% of the CPU, allowing programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking to be actually usable.)

[@supermasterPIK]

I remember DNS . You had to read it 200 pages of El Quixote to train it.

[@johnmadsen37]

I tried dragon software once. I woke up in the alley with my pants on backwards.

[@Psythik]

It took several seconds for that 386 to do a simple find and replace and they seriously thought that they'd have AI the very next year... XD

[@miodragradosavljevic8517]

I’m going to wait for about 10 years for MMX technology…

[@raven4k998]

why not do the math on your cpu and figure out how many calculations your cpu can do in one 20th a second I bet it makes the 80386 look like and old piece of crap

[@ducksonplays4190]

@@raven4k998 The 386DX-40 can do ~2,000,000 operations in a 20th of a second. A Ryzen 5 3400g budget CPU can do ~205,000,000 operations a 20th of a second.

[@Kynareth6]

@@ducksonplays4190 Where did you get this data from? According to my data, the 386DX-40 can do about a megaflops, while Ryzen 3400G can do about 200 gigaflops.

[@ducksonplays4190]

​@@Kynareth6 I wasn't using megaflops, just actual CPU instructions. I forgot to include that a decent amount of the instructions on a 386 take more than 1 clock cycle. Megaflops is million floating point operations per second, I am pretty sure that the number is just max possible and not actually max done, floating point is not used extremely often in some programs, by extremely often I mean extremely often for the time of a CPU.

[@ducksonplays4190]

@@Kynareth6 Oh, also, the 386DX-40 does not actually have a built in floating point unit.

[@gentuxable]

I'm impressed! Multi-monitor setup, Virtual machines and eBooks existed 29 years ago!

[@rty1955]

haha vm is nothing new. IBM mainframes had it since the 60s. I used it in the 70s

[@PointReflex]

@@rty1955 One thing is the IBM 360-ish Mainframe with Virtual Machine capabilities and another is an IBM PC (or compatible) with them. For the end users, specially the average joes and janes, that kind of capability came true around the mid/end 80's.

[@rty1955]

@@PointReflex its the concept of VMs that's not new. I had a special IBM PC xt/370 on my desk in 1983 that actually ran IBMs VM because I was a systems programmer on several IBM Mainframes and wrote hundreds of assembly apps and special modules. The xt/370 had a coax 3270 board and a modified motorola 68000 processor that allowed actual VM to run. VM sucked. (Still does) nothing like the raw power if a mainframe

[@richbiles230872]

Alan Turing theorised VM in the 1940s.

[@TomO-nx1bd]

It would be funny to go back in time and bring these guys a computer from 2020 and watch their reaction as they boot it up and sit through minutes of the screen saying "working on updates 35%...." while their Compaq already calculated 10 spreadsheets.

[@AltimaNEO]

Lol, that wasn't what I was expecting you to say

[@Kenneth_H_Olsen]

yea, new 8 core 64Bit . i9 . LGA1151 . 64GB ram . ITX . MSI military class :D

[@oncomcombro7834]

lol that's a good twist ending

[@jamessheppard4372]

Lol

[@LotsOfBologna2]

I swear guys, it's fast. It seriously seriously is. It just has to get ready. I'm not joking around. You just wait here a few more minutes... then I can finally show you how fast it is. Why are you all leaving???

[@MrPasqual1]

Love those comb-overs must have felt reassuring and comfy

[@ashleymadison9380]

I got one in Highschool and it had a TURBO button on. I don't know what that button did, but DAMN, it was awesome. 24-pin dot matrix printer too.

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

I remember watching this while I was in high school. I had no idea the adventures I was going to have with this processor during the 90's.

[@migueld2456]

Would you care to elaborate? I'd love to hear.

[@demorcef]

​@@migueld2456 Long walks across the North bridge, riding the ISA bus, sunsets as the monitor turned off....

[@migueld2456]

😂

[@leonjones7120]

My first PC was an Ambra 80386sx at 25 MHz. I maxed it out and fitted all I could to update its performance. Its a blast from the past! I had it for 10 years and got my degree with it.

[@raven4k998]

mine was a Compaq Presario CDS 762 the very first Pentium system Compaq made and sold it had 8 megs ram Pentium 60 mhz cpu and yeah it was a blast from the past to anytime I find out how amazed someone is at how much I know about Microsoft excel when I don't gloat about that boring software

[@squaretrianglez]

Started out with ibm xt compatible with nec v20. I would boast to my friends how much faster it was to to 8088 4.77mhz

[@awuma]

Excellent video explaining the 386 revolution as it happened. The Compaq Deskpro 386 was the most crucial computer after the original IBM PC. The main reason for its importance was well understood by the Compaq sales guy here... its compatibilty, especially hardware-wise, by using the AT's "ISA" bus. That caused the whole compatibles industry to follow suit, and IBM's PS/2 architecture was essentially a failure because IBM made the technically superior Micro Channel Architecture proprietary. Too bad that Sun's wonderful SunOS Unix eventually ran only on their own hardware... thereby ceding to Microsoft dominance of the PC market with Windows. And they only produced the 386i for one year (1988), despite it being loved by stockbrokers. Greatest might-have-been in computer history! (I had two of these 386i's, running for about ten years). In the end, the "killer 386 app" was Linux. Xenix was a weak proprietary Unix, and SunOS Unix ran only on the Sun 386i (and on Sun's SPARC; the M68020-based workstations were dropped along with the 386-based ones). Some years later Sun came out with x86 based workstations again running Solaris Unix, and by the time Solaris was available for standard PC's based on x86, Linux had taken over.

[@raven4k998]

are you standing in line to get that raw speed?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@OpenGL4ever]

The Compaq Desktop 386 was extensively used to test Windows NT and Windows 3.0. That's also the reason, why Windows NT and Windows 3.0 do usually have drivers for the Compaq Desktop 386 out of the box.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

In 1987, Compaq brought out a 32-bit PC. In 1988, IBM brought out OS/2, a 16-bit OS. I think Linux was indeed the first proper 32-bit OS for 386-based Microsoft-compatible machines. It came out in 1991 or so, while Microsoft’s Windows NT wasn’t ready until 1993.

[@repawnd1]

still not convinced that i need to upgrade to a 386, although finding and replacing words quicker could be helpful

[@Not-TheOne]

I'm holding out for the gen, I've seen leaked info, the "486" is going to be a beast!

[@unnamedchannel1237]

The high school I went to was still using 486 computers throught to 2001 possibly longer As that’s when I left. And there was only one computer lab.

[@Maskddingo]

I was coding C on an IBM PS/2 Model 25 in our high school computer lab in 1998. I believe those had 8088s! Your school had a luxury computer!

[@jeroenschuuring6060]

Nah, an 8088 will do Just fine.

[@Caseytify]

P

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

I downloaded this video using the cutting edge technology BBS or the Bulletin Board System without any problem. And it took me only about 5 days to do it. Eat your hearts out low tech guys!

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

@Andrew Tarrant Yes it really was but it was the cutting edge technology many years ago during the dawn of civilization, err... computer age. LOL!

[@InFiniTosEntertainment]

A 386! A spectacle of graphics and sound!

[@4jp]

Strongbad reference.

[@raven4k998]

meh I skipped the 386 and got the first Pentium baby a Pentium 60 mhz Compaq Presario CDS 762 now that was a power house system!!!!

[@Waltkat]

I feel old watching this. I remember doing some work at the Intel fab in Livermore, CA where they were manufacturing the 386 chips. I was working for Varian Associates and Intel had some of their PVD machines in their production line. One cassette of 25 wafers was worth thousands of dollars so it was stressful work. There was no room for errors so when I turned the machine back over to Intel, it HAD to be perfect. Exciting times. Good times. I still have a couple of 386 computers, so I should dig them out and play some games. Just for old times sake.

[@BaudBand]

That's because it was a business platform. The home/gamer platforms were generally Atari, Amiga/Commodore, etc. Home machines focused on graphics, sound, smaller size, lower price - but the PC was all about processing power. I'd say that started to change in the early 90s - especially when VGA became normal and sound cards became popular.

[@Phenom98]

Yes. And it all ended for pretty much everyone else that wasn't running Windows or Intel CPUs by 1995 when pentiums and 3D GPUs saved the day and kick-started the PC masterrace!

[@Nick_R_]

Depends on the market. In the USA, the Apple II, in it's various guises, was the home (and school) computing phenomenon.

[@bastardtubeuser]

28:13 i almost spat my tea out !. best funny ending ive seen on the show.

[@nyccollin]

bastardtubeuser Mona Lisa smiles now. Mandela Effect.

[@Lidar957]

Whahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahaaaaaaa!!!! Thats what she said

[@bitwize]

For behold! A 386! A spectacle of graphics and sound.

[@ObligedTester]

Thank you very much for uploading this. Very interesting!

[@gszikora2000]

I am both amazed at how far computers have come in 35 years, but also impressed with what they were able to do with the tech they had at the time.

[@fnglert]

Man, that 80386 sounds like the real deal. I wish I could afford one.

[@skyhawk21]

Go buy a Texas Instruments expensive calculator, it has a 386 in it

[@AemonAlgiz]

The search and replace really highlights how much faster our modern machines are. Simply mind blowing.

[@procactus9109]

That is just crapnlazy programming

[@elksalmon84]

Because it's scrolling whole text on screen and rendering it. It takes 99% of CPU time. If done in memory even 80386 would make in a second or two.

[@squaretrianglez]

Yeah did it without a graphics accelerator.

[@squaretrianglez]

Still productivity is same. 😂

[@PropagatorNET]

"...and I can still bring up applications such as Lotus 123, simultaneously....................... ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................" "...and there it is!"

[@mikeall7012]

Finding out how Gary died is one of the most unexpected things, after watching him on this show. Guy really was a troubled soul.

[@ricarleite]

He died after being punched in the head by a Hell's Angels because he entered the wrong bar wearing a Harley Davidson jacket. He went home, with a blood clot in his head, sat down and died.

[@ktxed]

@@ricarleite also got screwed by gates beforehand

[@vamwolf]

@@ktxed nope. Gates recommended Gary to ibm first. .

[@ReasonBeing25]

​@@vamwolf according to Gates so take the claim with a grain of salt

[@Big_Tex]

I bought my first Wintel machine 5 years later in 1992 - and it still had a 386sx! CompuAdd notebook. (Right about $2000 with 4 mb RAM and 40 MB HDD.). One day the battery erupted in fire as I was using it! Got a replacement lol.

[@xagon2012]

I remember the days when everyone had a 386 or 486 and some poor souls still had a 286. I used to play Civilization 1 with my cousin on his PC for hours.

[@randywatson8347]

Lol 80286 users get confronted with dos4gw.exe

[@creounity]

10:55 Eric Schmidt was working for Sun back then

[@xnonsuchx]

Wow! The Intel guy couldn't even explain "Protected Mode" well on his own.

[@Maskddingo]

Indeed. That was brutal. Jan had to step in to help him out!

[@alexandriaoccasional-corte1346]

Well, that's Intel for ya.

[@JerikkaBenton]

"It's the whole thing. The computer!" ROFL🤣

[@OpenGL4ever]

That's the problem with sending a guy from the marketing department and not an engineer.

[@captainkeyboard1007]

I had a wish for a microcomputer with an Intel 386 microprocessor, either a CompuAdd, or a Dell computer. It was an idea that I have been toying with since 1988. Now I have a Dell Inspiron with an Intel i7 Core microprocessor. Now I am living high above the hog. This show is right up my niche.

[@raven4k998]

I challenge you to a speed off get and run multithreaded test on your i7 and lets hear what she can do in cinebench r23 mine gets 23889 on a run what do you get I am curious what an i7 does for that test if your up for it you can get it off the Microsoft store app for free

[@captainkeyboard1007]

@@raven4k998 A "speed-off" challenge would be impossible. I do not own a computer tablet. But I own and use a desktop microcomputer on which I do all of my keyboarding. I do typewriting service with business productivity programs as basic typewriting tasks. Incidentally, fast keyboarding speed does not represent nor guarantee accuracy. Fast keyboarders are subject to be disemployed and laid off just like any other worker. Thank you for tapping or typing to me.

[@TheJuggtron]

The 386 was so good we still make software compatible with it...

[@mypronounismaster4450]

I wonder if the Intel folks are sitting around watching this and remembering the good ole days now that Ryzen is.... Ryzen.

[@common_c3nts]

Im going to go with the 386.

[@arcticfox04]

There more likely having ptsd. The AM386 they held in the courts trying to stop the chip from coming out. They ended up having to give AMD a license to make x86 chip from there own designs. This was due to there greed and trying to force a monopoly.

[@pulsar01z]

@@common_c3nts Watch out there's rumors about the 486 comming out next year.

[@gamingtonight1526]

@@common_c3nts Got the $40,000 in today's money for one?

[@WardCo]

Flat address space that worked correctly, V86 mode, 375K transistors! 386 changed the world. (486 still my favorite though; more polished). Nothing as revolutionary in the x86 world came again until the Pentium.

[@zrobeast]

Well, that story regarding the Mona Lisa was one way to end an episode.

[@Maskddingo]

What? Two portraits the guy painted had similar structure. One was him and the other was a female. Obviously gay.

[@richbiles230872]

@@Maskddingo I'm artist and I do produce similar work but I'm not gay, well maybe not or am I? God, I'm not sure. Maybe it's a sign...

[@andywolan]

15:08 - We had a Zenith keyboard at a pc in college hooked-up for a Pentium-class PC. I recall the clicking sound that it made like it does in the video as the user types with said keyboard.

[@AshtonCoolman]

In 1987 my dad bought a Turbo XT(8088-2) 8Mhz computer with an ATI EGA Wonder video card, no hard drive, 2x 5.25" floppy drives, and no sound card. I think he spent around $5000 for the computer, EGA monitor, and a printer. To this day I think he got ripped off and we could have grown up with a 286 or 286 for that money.

[@tron3entertainment]

I spent almost $5,900 on my first 486/33 EISA bus in late 1990. 4 MB RAM, 14" SVGA, 1 MB video ram, and a whopping 200MB HD. "That's not a PC, that's a sever. What are you going to do with that?" "Anything I want."

[@jeffreyjoseph8930]

This is why alot of people waited for the "right time" to buy their first computer...if you decided to take the plunge with a $1000 or $2000 purchase, you risked missing out on the next model the following month that would cost half as much and delivered twice as much performance. There was no way to avoid this agony...except by settling for a cheap "pre-owned" computer, and trying to stay satisfied with it. This was alot like opting for a used car over a new car -- as soon as you drive a new car off the dealer's lot you just took a 30 or 40 percent loss.

[@davideck2331]

This was my very first computer right around 1988. It was an AST 386. Got it really cheap because it kind of "fell of the truck" at that time. With PC-Link providing my dial-up connection for ten cents per minute (SERIOUSLY), I was living at the cutting edge of technology at that time. Unfortunately, that never happened again, but oh well.

[@OpenGL4ever]

My time of living at the cutting edge of technology was when I bought one of the first Pentium 2 CPUs with 266 MHz clockspeed (codename Klamath) in the first week it was available. Man, I can tell you I've never paid that much money for a CPU since then. It was an excellent machine until a few months later when the Deschutes appeared with significantly less heat issues and 333MHz clock speed. Lesson learned.

[@gamingtonight1526]

SVGA graphics, soundblaster sound card and a highly intensive game like Doom is what they needed the 386 for.

[@procactus9109]

Doom runs at 320x240, it's just standard VGA

[@procactus9109]

Oops. 320x200 I ment... I do t have an edit option

[@randywatson8347]

1987 to 1993, only 6 years in between.

[@BryonLape]

These old programs really make me miss BYTE magazine.

[@schmootheonly]

My dad would only upgrade from our Tandy 1000 when his work would offload their old PCs for free so I had a 386 through most of the mid 90s, didn’t realize how old they really were (1980s seemed ages away as a kid)

[@realityvanguard2052]

I love the surprise ending where they segue from the first Let's play video to claims of Da Vinci being gay.

[@user-tx4kd3bj6x]

Me and my two brothers and sister and parents were rocking the =Commodore 64= during these years. Oh, and the Atari 2600 and Sega master system. 😎😄

[@nickpalance3622]

Atari 800XL. My cousins had the Vic-20 and C64 (seeing the VIC-20 before seeing the C64 led my the 800XL and hey I was one of those who had an Atari 5200 and I even loved it). But yeah the 8bit computers (Apple ][‘s and such too) were all anyone needed. This show , with everyone wearing a suit and tie, was aimed at the corporate users. “Personal” , as I now see it, meant someone with an office (corner office maybe?) could have their own computer and not rely on sharing a mainframe (or a mini) with the rest of the office. The 8Bits were all about “home computer” and NOT taking work home with you. Work harder to earn more money to buy more coke to work harder … Reagan years! All I needed was a simple word processor for grade school work so my hand wouldn’t cramp hand writing essays. And easily change wording and flow of thoughts. Simple home budgets. And game (Archon, EA’s “construction set”’ titles, Activision’s Hacker, Spy vs Spy, the Datasoft releases). $5000-6000 vs $500-600. Nuff said.

[@hurricaneomega]

22:13 I don't know why it amazes me that I can type that exact command into a modern Linux system like a Raspberry Pi and get the same result over three decades later

[@RonJohn63]

It should *depress* you that commands which were designed because the keys on teleprinters were so hard press (and thus they needed to minimize keystrokes) are still around.

[@Nookerdog777]

@@RonJohn63 why? no reason to change them for the sake of changing them imo

[@RonJohn63]

@@Nookerdog777 "mv" is a *terrible* name to give the "rename" command, and "cat" is just as terrible for "type". A competent OS would have a CLI that has full-word commands (like DELETE) but with the intelligence to know what you mean if you just typed DEL. (Such a competent OS existed 40 years ago, and is named OpenVMS.)

[@Nookerdog777]

@@RonJohn63 mv is move. How can it get any simpler than that? Maybe I'm just biased my dad worked for Bell Labs on Unix when I was growing up and I've always developed for Linux platforms haha.

[@RonJohn63]

@@Nookerdog777 the computer serves the man, not vice versa.

[@firstnamelastname3558]

Gary Kildall was a great IT man.

[@raven4k998]

shame he's gone now😭

[@EGOS42]

Whoah, I wasn't expecting to see pre-Google Eric Schmidt on here.

[@johnsimon8457]

Wikipedia says the 386 was launched October 1985 and this (from the enthusiast press, even)was released January 1987 and only then Compaq is getting around to shipping 386 systems. Compare to today when review sites get ahold of "Engineering Samples" months ahead of release. A different time. They should have had an older system to do a file find + replace bakeoff.

[@normanvaliao]

I could only dream having this type of computer before. My parents couldn't afford it. Here in my country (Philippines) only the rich can afford to buy it way back in 1987. Now, because there are a lot of choices in computers and brands, prices has already came down where I can now afford to buy at least a mid range laptop or desktop. Everybody can now afford to have a Smart Phone and a laptop.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Economies of scale and all that. Amazing how these things got so much cheaper as tine went on.

[@eldjmasterfreddy3094]

Here: Mov EAX,EBX...Inc ECX...JNZ here ... Real Mode to Protected Mode. Wow great memories. I remember my first Packard Bell 386 sx in 1992.

[@igotstaknow]

In the 80s I bought a Zenith Heathkit 8088 transportable with 10 meg hard drive with two, not one, 5.25 floppy drives! After Heathkit sent a missing part to me the kit worked with no problems. It had a 9" green screen and weighed 50 pounds.

[@ZombieRodeo]

I missed the 386.... I went from a 286 straight to a 486 DX2-66

[@beakt]

8:41 Ha, he had no idea. The PS/2 was on its way, with OS/2, all geared for the new enhanced protected mode of the 80386.

[@tremorist]

Still feel sorry for Gary. If he was still alive he would be among the big players.

[@Daehawk]

+tremorist Ya was totally not fair. One little decision cost him everything including his life. He was a nice guy through and through.

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

+Daehawk what happened ?

[@Daehawk]

AirScholar He had a IBM meeting but it was him and his wife's anniversary and promised her a flight so he went to that instead. He got to the meeting late and that started a downhill with IBM being asses and MS moving in. Didn't help he priced CPM at $240 while MS priced DOS at $40. Years later he got in a bar fight and got killed after losing his wife and suffering depression and losing his company. He was top of the world once. Had it all.

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

***** CPM sold only 250,000 copies. I guess a lot for back then. IBM decided to sell CPM for a lot more then MS DOS. Their reasoning ... who knows. CPM was the most popular personal computer operating system then while MS DOS was unknown. I almost bought one as a a kid. IBM messed up the PC market. They created a monster. The world should know that Bill Gates cheated out a professor that actually wrote DOS. Just before the meeting he bought it from a professor for $50k. Not telling him that he was bidding for with IBM. Windows after Windows 98 was derived from DEC's operating system. Bill Gates has yet to create anything innovative.

[@JaredConnell]

+AirScholar you can't really steal anything for $50k especially when the creator agreed to it and Microsoft's IBM deal was far from a sure thing.

[@jeffyp2483]

i remember seeing Leading Edge ads in magazines. i like the 'lotus 123 work-a-like word processor'

[@SuperNova-py1ec]

I liked the virtual 386 applications. That was forward thinking. Everything is virtual now😄

[@FortyTwoAnswerToEverything]

I had that Leading Edge model in the beginning when I was growing up. No HDD, just the base 512kb and dual 5.25 model. I was so poor that during that time, the 386 was just coming out while I was still using the 8088

[@iso1600]

These are the people that changed our world. I was busy playing with my micromachines. Should have got their signatures.

[@eugrus]

19:14 first time I've heard about VP/ix: very impressive virtualization for 1987!

[@OpenGL4ever]

It was possibly via the Virtual 8086 mode of the 386.

[@moow950]

Oh wow! Need to get a 386 now!

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

Kildall RIP

[@fungooloo12]

ahh the good ole days. The days when I stood out in my class in the early 80's because I knew how to program and nobody else had a clue nor did they have a computer. Now I am just a nobody in a world of nobody's.....

[@Joeyboots80]

My Tandy 1000 still works just fine. I'll wait to upgrade.

[@cobaltblue1975]

LMAO! @12:12 Damn Jan, you didn't have to cut that boy like that. The struggle in his answer was real!

[@supermasterPIK]

Had the 386 the longest lifespan ? remember that were common until 1993, when the 486 was more affordable (486 was released in 1989).

[@ibazulic]

Actually, the lifespan of a 386 is still ongoing. Modern x86-64 processors are based essentially on 386 technology, with extensions. This is not true for earlier processors, 286 and 8086/8088 are a totally different architecture even though even the newest processors are still backward compatible with those 16 bit CPUs. The 386 was really a quantum leap forward and concepts that it introduced are still used today.

[@miodragradosavljevic8517]

Ivan Bažulić last one (pure 386) was produced in 2007.

[@germansnowman]

tone167 I think the 6502 beats the Z80 by a year.

[@AltimaNEO]

My friend still had a 386dx desktop in 1997. That thing was a beast.

[@supermasterPIK]

@@AltimaNEO Still in 1997, Pentium 120 or 133 (the most top technology at the time) was VERY expensive for home users. Only in 2001/2002 computers for school or home users were more affordable. That explains why still people was using that CPU with windows 3.1

[@PanDownTiltLeft]

386 allowed for true preemptive multitasking and was a game changer for micros to be able to run a real OS like Unix.

[@8o86]

not really. you can do preemptive multitasking basically with anything that has a timer tick. the original PC was perfectly capable of that and XENIX and PC-IX used it

[@PanDownTiltLeft]

@@8o86 indeed. It was really hardware implemented memory protection that enabled true preemptive multitasking where you had a protected kernel and a single application did not bring down the entire system

[@sinhaankur]

My Dad still has 386 back from 1990

[@MF175mp]

I pulled my dad's 286 from '87 out of the scrap pile, still fires up

[@RonJohn63]

16:11 When the computer can finally do it's tasks Fast Enough, people find more work for it to do.

[@raven4k998]

oh I can find more work for it to do🤣

[@jpadicecoffee9812]

The day when I got excited about Intel's CPU has long been over for 15 years. They solved the issue of speed in a CPU while reigning in heat. But it's up to Intel to bring something new. .

[@zzzxtreme]

i miss working in a computer store

[@wlanman99]

Things to take note of in this episode was "A.I." and Virtual machine (VM). Most folks dont realize that those techs were not invented "Today". Also notice that Windows was at 2.0 back then and not very popular.

[@8BitNaptime]

I miss these simple times...

[@andywolan]

Interesting to see a segment where they interview with Gary Kildall.

[@FDCAFOK]

Can wait for the 486 chip to come out. Oh those were the good old days.

[@PointReflex]

Specially when Mainboard manofacturers start to add more sockets for those juicy L2 Caches :D

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@PointReflex A Mainboard with a VLB Slot is the way to go.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

The 486 had built-in floating point. Then Intel got the bright idea of getting some extra revenue out of 486 chips that had defective floating-point units, that would have been rejected, by selling them as “486SX” chips. Machines with these had an extra empty socket where you could put in a “487SX”, which was a variant of a full-function 486 that disabled the defective onboard 486SX and became your replacement CPU.

[@johnpro2847]

I watch it to see how far we have advanced since these times..also the IBM formal look added a bit of gravitas to the show which I liked..now IT guys look more like beatniks !!

[@Maisiewuppp]

Thank goodness!

[@okaro6595]

"1200 baud modem". The misuse of the term baud is so eighties. Bell 212A standard transmitted 1200 bps but it was 600 baud as it coded two bits to a signal element. In the 90s people had learned it and nobody used the term baud.

[@andymate2006]

Wow. I need to update to the Intel 386 right now. My computer just can’t keep up with the modern software.

[@GaryCameron]

Now Linus can finally get to work and start writing a real OS that can take advantage of it.

[@raven4k998]

makes you wonder how many calculations can your cpu do in 1 20th of a second🤔🤔

[@GaryCameron]

@@raven4k998 Using one core or all 32 of them? Is it cheating to use the GPU?

[@resle]

ah, my first machine - an AMD 386, 40mhz: it was 1992 and still 486s were mostly unaffordable. And yet, just 3 years later I could afford a Pentium 90mhz at the same price I paid for that 386. Good times (?)

[@5dimensional]

I still have my 386 somewhere.....

[@jvolstad]

My first 386 was a 386sx.

[@megabojan1993]

When I was born (1987) the 386 was born :) So I'm a 386 CPU generation, damn I feel old :(

[@Thirsty_Fox]

I was, too. We really got to see and live an exciting time, though! I still use a keyboard from 1987 (Model M) sometimes.

[@megabojan1993]

senecadream Those things were built to last. My keyboard from 2002 works just as the day I bought it. :) It has the Windows 98 Logo on the Win Button :)

[@Thirsty_Fox]

MegaBojan1993 It's great because it's one of the few computer parts that's still useful on modern kit, even 20-30 years later. Windows key is a bit too advanced for me... maybe in a few years I'll be ready :p

[@megabojan1993]

senecadream I never used the win key until I installed Windows 7 in 2011. Now I use that key regularly for searching purposes. I have all my files indexed, and all I have to do is type the name of the file in the RUN field, and voila.... windows finds the file for me in a matter of seconds :) Pretty neat, aint it? :)

[@Thirsty_Fox]

MegaBojan1993 Not all of us have a $15,000 computer, you know! Must be nice to be the king...

[@markan667]

Jen is awesome, would be a great interigator

[@FabianoMaiaFranco]

Vou assistindo esses vídeos e lembrando, cheio de saudosismo, quando isso tudo ainda era novidade para mim, rs. Nessa época, nos idos de 86/87, eu ainda programava em computadores 8 bits, como os prológica cp 500, sistemas 600 e 700, tudo baseado nos zilog z80/z80a, rs. Incríveis 8/16 k de ram. Vim a conhecer o xt, já "antigo", em 88/89, e contato com o 286 apenas em 1990 (ano em que ganhei de presente da minha mãe, com muita dificuldade, um xt e uma impressora epson ap 2000 - uma versão aprimorada da lx 810 na época. - Manhê, amo a senhora! Muito obrigado eternamente!). Máquinas como o 386 ainda era uma realidade distante pelo seu alto preço no Brasil, na época. Pude usar um 386 pela primeira vez em 92 (quase 6 anos depois deste vídeo). Bem, foi tudo muito bom, época deliciosa da minha vida. Tudo o que aprendi continua me ajudando hoje, nesse mundo "novo" do "tudo automático, pero no mucho..." ;D

[@raven4k998]

early days of virtual machine gotta love this stuff in it's baby steps

[@ЕрденЖумабеков-щ4и]

"... All the writers were saying 1986 would be the year of AI. Well it didn't turn out that way. AI products have generally been a dissapointment. And the stock prices of AI companies fell to three year low." 24:52 Well it was (and maybe, still is) a bit too early for this to soar.

[@YoungGarrett]

2023 here and I think that's STILL the case!

[@oldtwinsna8347]

The kind of AI they were talking about were expert systems, which had a reliance on storage capabilities to which increased and became more affordable. It was all about AI on your personal computer box, very little with how much of that runs in what we call the cloud today.

[@ma_er233]

27:00 “the torches even flicker!”😂

[@robertromero8692]

I remember watching this episode when it first aired.

[@i.george2321]

i dont.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

Did KZbin buffer much back then?

[@robertromero8692]

@@unnamedchannel1237 TVs had no buffer.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

@@robertromero8692 So no youtube?

[@robertromero8692]

@@unnamedchannel1237 You must be rather young to wonder if there was KZbin in 1987.

[@maniacaudiophile]

I just finally got my first set of 386 and 387dx

[@gheffz]

Thank you!!!

[@musiclabmn]

All those 80’s business types always look so crabby and serious. They also have glasses that could ignite your pants from the sun if you weren’t careful

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

I'm going to Fry's to get the latest Computer Shopper !

[@louistournas120]

There is actually a Xeon processor now with 36 real cores and it supports HT, so you will see 72 cores in Windows. I think it runs at 2.8 GHz. It has 45 MB L2 cache. Imagine putting 2 of these CPUs in a server.