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actionfromafartoday at 9:54 AM1 replyview on HN

Windows 95 on a 386 CPU with enough RAM was alright. Not fast but very useable.

https://youtu.be/Pw2610paPYM?t=72

But most 386 didn't have 8+ megabytes, and some 386 had a 286 like data bus, making it even slower. (386SX)


Replies

badc0ffeetoday at 6:48 PM

On paper a 386sx is slower than a 386dx, and certainly is in terms of RAM access. But in practice you'd need some expensive hardware to fully take advantage of that speed, like EISA cards and a motherboard that supported them (or, MCA cards on one of the higher end IBM PS/2 models). The typical ISA cards of the era were limited to 8 MHz and 16 bits no matter what processor or motherboard you used.

The 386dx could also use a full 32-bit address space, whereas the 386sx had 24 address lines like the 286. But again, having more than 16 MB would have been expensive at the time.