Re: Argosy HD-363N -- UPDATE

At 2/13/05 02:34 AM  Sunday, Tim Hill wrote:
>The R2881 is an RDC 2800 series RISC cpu that emulates the 80186 CPU (a
>real-mode only x86 processor, roughly between an 8086 and an 80286).

From: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80186/
Year: 1982

Intel 80186 microprocessor, sometimes called i186, is an enhanced version
of Intel 8086 16-bit processor. Being completely object code compatible
with the 8086, the 80186 integrated many system components into one chip,
added 7 new instructions, and added new operand types to three existing
8086 instructions. With the exception of integrated components, the Intel
80186 microprocessor is not very different from the 8086, and, because of
this, the 80186 may be considered as an embedded version of 8086. The 80186
didn't even have its own version of co-processor and worked with Intel
8087. Although the Intel 80186 was not widely used in the computers as the
8086 and 80286 did, it was successful in embedded processor market. In
fact, the processor was so successful, that many different versions of the
processor were introduced over last 20 years - 80C186 (new features),
80186EA, 80186EB, etc. At this time (November 2004) some of these versions
are still in production.

More about the architecture here:
http://www.cpu-world.com/Arch/80186.html
I very briefly programmed one of these as a hobby for a while in the early
'80s. I think I even hacked on a C code generator for it. Reading this
over, I'm pretty sure Tim is right. Nothing current from M/S would run on
this base.

It seems a lot of embedded & RTOS (real time) systems are available for
these chips. And they're cheap, which is what you want for a low-cost
appliance.

Michael

http://home.cogeco.ca/~michaelwagner/personal-page.htm
"All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die" Sheryl Crow