[exsf0859]

Cool hack! Also interesting that the performance is no better, presumably due to the lack of cache.

The first answer on this forum post has what is probably the correct explanation for why the 8088 was chosen:

It was available, had a second source, and was not owned by a competitor.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/16912/did...

Although ease-of-translation from 8080-based CP/M code was a benefit of choosing the 8086, this was just a nice-to-have, not a deciding factor.

[ok123456]

All the bus/memory timings are the same with this guy's hack. So it's not a big surprise that 10 print "hello world!" :print "!" : goto 10 doesn't have any perceived performance difference. Maybe if you made a purely arithmetic benchmark in assembly that could be done all within a few registers, like Fibonacci, you might see some difference.

[guenthert]

> Also interesting that the performance is no better, presumably due to the lack of cache.

Here an (emulated) MC68000 is pressed into serving an 8bit bus.

The 68k (using its native 16bit bus) is faster (even if not by much) than a 8086.