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Ken Shirriff

The 8086 was designed to be backward compatible with the 8080 through a conversion program called CONV86, so it inherited the Datapoint features. The 8086 was extended to the modern x86 architecture used in most laptops and servers today.

6 comments
Ken Shirriff

So that's how the modern x86 architecture developed from an obscure desktop computer called the Datapoint 2200. For lots of details and a close look at the instruction sets, see my blog post: righto.com/2023/08/datapoint-t

Jyrgen N

@kenshirriff I read your earlier (but in substance identical) account of the Datapoint/Intel history a while ago. It is mind-blowing how the design decisions of a rather obscure intelligent terminal in 1970 still shape a large part of computing today, more than 50 years later β€” and probably for decades to come. No one could have ever imagined that at the time, and I even have a hard time grasping it now. Thanks a lot for sharing this!

Gerard van Oel

@kenshirriff @schotanus I have never worked on it but in the mid 80’s, Neddata, the IT part of Nedlloyd Shipping Company had one small but important system running on a Datapoint. The rest was working on IBM mainframe(s)and something new called DEC. We had one PC, for 125 it-emplyees. πŸ˜‚

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