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80386 Multiplication and Division

nand2mario.github.io

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Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#21

Post by vardump »

deaddodo wrote: post #20
Aardwolf wrote: post #19

> It would go on to run Windows 3.0, Windows 95, early Linux That feels like a stretch :) Maybe it indeed ran on it, but Pentium was available when Windows 95 was released and it was probably far more likely to be sold along with such new Pentium multimedia machines, than someone getting it for their old 386. But Windows 3.11 was its exact match!

Windows 95 was Microsoft's biggest commercial hit at that point. Selling 40m copies in its first year. There's no doubt that it went in to upgrade plenty of 386s/486s until the owners upgraded their hardware.

You needed at least 12 MB RAM to run Windows 95 smoothly. There were plenty of 8 MB systems that really really struggled. Even booting up was a swap fest.

I remember immediately upgrading to 12 MB. 8 MB was painful.

Not all 386 class systems could be upgraded to 12 MB or more.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#22

Post by EvanAnderson »

vardump wrote: post #21
deaddodo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 95 was Microsoft's biggest commercial hit at that point. Selling 40m copies in its first year. There's no doubt that it went in to upgrade plenty of 386s/486s until the owners upgraded their hardware.

You needed at least 12 MB RAM to run Windows 95 smoothly. There were plenty of 8 MB systems that really really struggled. Even booting up was a swap fest. I remember immediately upgrading to 12 MB. 8 MB was painful. Not all 386 class systems could be upgraded to 12 MB or more.

I did a ton of upgrades from 3.1 to Windows 95 in late 1996 and early 1997 on 386 and 486 machines with 4MB of RAM. I still have a "mark" from the tedium. Some of the machines didn't have a large enough hard drive to store a copy of the setup files (the "CAB files") so until the company issued me a ZIP drive I had to do "the floppy shuffle" with 20-ish disks.

It ran like crap with 4MB of RAM but it did run. Opening anything much resulted in paging.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#23

Post by Guestmodinfo »

bsaul wrote: post #4

Is there a rational explanation on why there seems to be a HN article answering the weirdest questions i had in my mind just a few days ago ? Only yesterday i wondered how did CPU performed division. I didn't ask or type anything about it. It was just in my mind. And now this. Are we part of a collective mind ? Do social networks algorithms shape society that deeply that we all end up having about the same random tho…

I may have the answer. This website nand2mario and something like this article was here on HN a while ago. Maybe a month or two months ago. So maybe then you were busy and didn't read it fully but your mind caught it somehow from HN or coworkers/friends and now when you are relaxed you can register the stuff nicely. Typing 80386 in the search doesn't gets me that exact post.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#25

Post by bsaul »

aidos wrote: post #5
bsaul wrote: post #4

Is there a rational explanation on why there seems to be a HN article answering the weirdest questions i had in my mind just a few days ago ? Only yesterday i wondered how did CPU performed division. I didn't ask or type anything about it. It was just in my mind. And now this. Are we part of a collective mind ? Do social networks algorithms shape society that deeply that we all end up having about the same random tho…

Not sure if it has a name but often there’s a trend of “one thing leads to another” related articles on the HN front page. Yesterday there was something similar that might have planted a seed in your mind like it did for other people. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735133

I definitely noticed this trend of article chaining, bu it must have been something else in this case, because i have absolutely 0 memory of seing that post yesterday. Actually, i think my thought came from an instagram video in my feed of a guy showing human division algorithm using sticks on a whiteboard.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#26

Post by nand2mario »

Aardwolf wrote: post #19

> It would go on to run Windows 3.0, Windows 95, early Linux That feels like a stretch :) Maybe it indeed ran on it, but Pentium was available when Windows 95 was released and it was probably far more likely to be sold along with such new Pentium multimedia machines, than someone getting it for their old 386. But Windows 3.11 was its exact match!

I was just trying to give a bit of historical context, but apparrently need to be more precise next time! 386 is the beginning of 32 bit. But it's mainly the pentium and 486 that ran Windows 95.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#27

Post by LeFantome »

Aardwolf wrote: post #19

> It would go on to run Windows 3.0, Windows 95, early Linux That feels like a stretch :) Maybe it indeed ran on it, but Pentium was available when Windows 95 was released and it was probably far more likely to be sold along with such new Pentium multimedia machines, than someone getting it for their old 386. But Windows 3.11 was its exact match!

As somebody that was around at the time, this is not at all a stretch.

First, Linux was created FOR the 386. Linus Torvalds had one and wanted to unlock its power.

As you say, Windows 3.0 is certainly no stretch.

That leaves only Windows 95. The minimum spec at launch was a 386 with 4 MB of RAM. Realistically, you needed 8 MB to do anything.

Here is an article from 1993 saying that manufactures are beginning to drop the 386 from their product lines. That is, this is when people stopped being able to buy 386 machines brand new.

https://books.google.com/books/about/InfoWorld.html?id=2zsEA...

The 486 was the dominant chip in 1993 but there were still a lot of 386 machines being sold to that point when.

When Windows 95 shipped, people would certainly have been trying to run it on those machines.

When Windows 95 was released, people famously lined up to buy it like they were getting tickets to a rock concert. It was not just sold with new hardware. Back then, it was normal for people to pay money to buy a new operating system to run on hardware they already owned.

Of course Windows 95 certainly helped sell Pentiums. Pentium would have dominated new sales but a typical PC in service in 1995 would have been a 486 and there were still plenty of 386 machines in use.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#28

Post by vardump »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #22
vardump wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You needed at least 12 MB RAM to run Windows 95 smoothly. There were plenty of 8 MB systems that really really struggled. Even booting up was a swap fest. I remember immediately upgrading to 12 MB. 8 MB was painful. Not all 386 class systems could be upgraded to 12 MB or more.

I did a ton of upgrades from 3.1 to Windows 95 in late 1996 and early 1997 on 386 and 486 machines with 4MB of RAM. I still have a "mark" from the tedium. Some of the machines didn't have a large enough hard drive to store a copy of the setup files (the "CAB files") so until the company issued me a ZIP drive I had to do "the floppy shuffle" with 20-ish disks. It ran like crap with 4MB of RAM but it did run. Opening a…

Your mileage may vary. I remember 4 MB booting, but being absolutely useless.

8 MB was still swapping all the time, you couldn't really run much beyond some simple software.

12 MB was finally enough to do something productive, but definitely nothing luxurious.

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#29

Post by saltcured »

Aardwolf wrote: post #19

> It would go on to run Windows 3.0, Windows 95, early Linux That feels like a stretch :) Maybe it indeed ran on it, but Pentium was available when Windows 95 was released and it was probably far more likely to be sold along with such new Pentium multimedia machines, than someone getting it for their old 386. But Windows 3.11 was its exact match!

A lot of (older than me) enthusiasts I knew got an MSDN subscription even though they weren't really developing apps for Windows. This gave them a steady stream of OS releases on CD-ROMs, officially for testing their fictional apps. So, they were often upgrading one or more systems many times rather than buying new machines with a bundled new OS.

Personally, yeah, I had Windows 3.0/3.11 on a 386. I think I may have also put an early Windows NT (beta?) release on it, borrowing someone's MSDN discs. Not sure I had got value from it except seeing the "pipes" software OpenGL screensaver. Around '93-94, I started using Linux, and after that it was mostly upgrading hardware in my Linux Box(en) of Theseus.

I remember my college roommate blowing his budget upgrading to a 180 MHz Pentium Pro, and he put Windows 95 on it. I think that was the first time I heard the "Start me up!" sound from an actual computer instead of a TV ad.

After that, I only encountered later Windows versions if they were shipped on a laptop I got for work, before I wiped it to install Linux. Or eventually when I got an install image to put Windows in a VM. (First under VMware, later under Linux qemu+kvm.)

Re: 80386 Multiplication and Division

#30

Post by jecel »

csmantle wrote: post #9
rep_lodsb wrote: post #8

The 80186 and NEC Vxx chips - and of course also the 286 - could already do mul/div in one cycle per bit (+ some overhead for the microcode). What they didn't have was the early-out optimization. The three-operand form of IMUL also already existed on those processors. >This wasn't just an incremental upgrade—it was the foundation that would carry the PC architecture for decades to come. AI?

> AI? Probably not; this point is well justified by both theory and practice. Supporting suitably larger operands is indeed what naturally comes following the increase of computation demands. One point I do differ from the author is that register width don't necessarily correlate with the size of address space. Even 8bit machines can address a large space by splitting apart the logical address and using multiple regi…

The naming of processor sizes is the subject of debate. I call a "pure 8 bit processor" one that has 8 bits for both data and addresses. Like the Kenbak-1. But these are so rare and educational rather than practical that it is very reasonable to call hybrid 8 bit / 16 bit processors just "8 bit".

This use of sloppy terms shouldn't make us forget that they are using an address extension trick, just like all those 16 bit processors that wanted to go beyond 64KB (for byte addressed such as the PDP-11, Z8000 or 8086) or 128KB (for word addressed, like the Xerox Alto's modified Data General Nova model).

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