Re: xt?

[jghasler@win.bright.net]

Greg Vence writes: 
> The minimum Linux requirement is a 386.  If you have some kind of upgrade
> chip/package to allow the XT to use a 386, then yes.  Else, no.  I
> believe one reason is its a 32-bit "PROTECTED" mode OS.  I don't believe
> that the 286 chip has that feature available.

The XT used an 8088.  Its feature was a 10M hard drive.  You are thinking
of the AT, which had an 80286.  The 80286 had support for multitasking,
including protected mode.  The big feature of the AT was going to be its
multitasking OS.  It took until 1995 for Microsoft to finish the OS they
promised to have ready by the time IBM released the AT, so everyone ran the
AT in its 8088 emulation mode (except a few hackers who ran Unix on it).

It would probably not be a huge project to get Linux running on the 80286,
but why bother?
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