*** Darryl Gregorash wrote in a message to Peter Magnusson:
 PM>> 8086 isn't a PC processor ;-)
 SM>> Sure it is.  It just wasn't seen all that often.
 PM> It isn't a IBM-PC processor, that was what I meant.
 PM> Never been sold in IBM-PCs.
 PM> Don't think its opcodes are compatible with other 80x86es.
DG> Sorry.. these are wrong and wrong, respectively.
DG> There were many 8086-based machines, but were not popular
DG> relative to the 88 systems because they required 16-bit
DG> interface cards in a day when the 16-bit interface card was
Negative; they required that the motherboard be designed to support it; 
before the 286, most manufacturers didn't want to go to the extra expense of 
designing the more complex boards that this required, when they could get 
nearly the same performance with the 8088.
Even today, I can take an 8-bit card that used to be in a PC or XT, and it'll 
work in my Pentium-compatible system.  A few months ago, I had an old 
full-length 8-bit CGA card on a Pentium board, to run a CGA adapter.  This 
would not work if 16-bit (or higher) CPUs *required* 16-bit (or higher) 
ds.
DG> The ***ONLY*** difference between the 8086 and the 8088 is
DG> the width of the data bus, the former having a 16-bit data
DG> bus width, the latter an 8-bit bus width. They certainly do
DG> use the same opcodes.
Not quite the only difference; the prefetch queue is also a different size.
--Scott.
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