[aa-jv]

In that era (87/88'ish) I used Quarterdeck Desqview to provide multi-user capabilities on my (then) super-charged 486:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

It was possible to wire things up so that multiple users could connect to a separate Desqview instance and have their own local user context, albeit an MSDOS one .. it was quite functional as a multi-user system for a few years until I got on minix-list and heard about that little project Linus was working on, then decided to switch ..

I'm pretty sure there's a modern way to do this with a Linux system packed with video cards and multiple USB keyboard/mice accessories .. one of these days it'd be nice to do that, and get things caught up with how it used to be, SGI-wise ..

[brk]

There used to be a card you could plug into a PC ISA Bus that gave you a second workstation/interface. The main selling point was to allow 2 users to share a single PC for cost savings. IIRC, it only supported text displays, but for 99% of the use cases at the time that was plenty.

[BobbyTables2]

Nowadays it’s even easier.

Add a pair of video cards and USB cards, pass one of each to a VM.

Will feel like having 2-3 native PCs!

[nizmow]

Kind of a pointless nitpick, but you’d have been very lucky to own a 386 in 87-88, the 486 wouldn’t be mainstream until 1992 or so.

[whobre]

Actually it was released in 1989. People’s memories are a funny thing…