@cr1901 I don't doubt it, but if so, that kind of illustrates why the 286 failed (in the marketplace, I mean). Intel and IBM didn't appreciate just how much the success of the original PC had locked in DOS as the business standard. That wasn't great, because DOS sucked six ways to Sunday, but it's just the way things were at that moment.

People had invested billions of dollars in DOS applications, they weren't going to give them up on a whim. Prying them off DOS was only ever going to be a long, gradual process. (Even Windows, which eventually did the job, didn't stop treating DOS apps as first-class citizens until Windows 2000.)

I agree that the 286 is a very interesting chip! And it probably would have done a lot better if had been dropped into a green-field scenario, rather than one where the 8088 had already conquered the world. The fundamental mistake came from the business side, which should have understood better the market they were trying to sell into.