Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014)
by bombcar on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @01:58PM
(#26728451)
The HP Palmtop ran a 186 chip - not sure if it used any of the 186 specific instructions.
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The extra instructions were mostly fine, the NEC V20/V30 implemented them too, the 186 had built-in peripheral functions like timers and the interrupt controller that were different to those in a PC.
You couldn't use the array bound check instruction as it used the interrupt used by the PC BIOS for Print Screen.
That is a hilarious limitation. I can just see someone building a test program to try it out and wondering why his printer is suddenly spitting out screenshots.