Retro Friday: The Intel 286 CPU

I think it’s safe to say that out of all CPUs considered vintage, the Intel 80286 will be the one missed the least – if at all.

A PC with a 286 CPU was a bit of an odd duck for most computer hobbyists of the time as there was no real reason to own one. Yes, the performance per clock cycle was double that of the 8086/8088 and yes, it could address up to 16MB of RAM (although you’d be hard pressed to find anyone would that amount of RAM back then; it’s roughly the equivalent of someone having 32GB of RAM today), but again, there was no good solid reason to own one.

For two years from 1982 to 1984, the 286 was the fastest consumer Intel desktop processor you could buy, but when the 386 came on the scene on 1985, oh yes, PC enthusiasts jumped on that. The reason? 32-bit. The 386 was the big improvement PC guys were waiting for, and it worked great (at least in the DX versions).

Left in the 386’s wake was the poor 286. The “best” version could eke out a 25MHz clock speed, but that didn’t matter for much since it was permanently stuck in the 16-bit world. For all intents and purposes, the 286 was a “fast 8086”.

As a standalone computer, a 286-powered PC could do basic computing tasks like run WordPerfect for DOS, play a few games here and there, and run Windows 3.1 very slowly in Standard Mode only (Enhanced Mode required a 386 CPU) – assuming you had at least 1MB of RAM.

Anything that required actual server duty, such as running a BBS, was an exercise in patience on a 286. Yes, you could get it to work, but the moment a user connected to the system wanted to “shell out” to a door game, pff.. forget about it. Eventually after waiting something in the neighborhood of 30 seconds to a full minute the door game would actually start – and bear in mind this was only with a single user connected to the system on dial-up modem.

Is there any good use for a 286, even as a retro PC?

As said above the 286 is a “fast 8086”, so for really old games it’s good for that. However it doesn’t have the panache, if you will, of a real 8086 or 8088 PC. From a collector’s perspective the 286 is not desirable and I don’t believe it ever will be.

If you’re a collector of vintage computers, the 286 is one you can skip. :)