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   Paolo Amoroso (amoroso@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 23:49:03 JST Paolo Amoroso

   As many others, I always wondered why Steve Jobs went with the 68K for NeXT workstations instead of the 386.

   The possible reasons discussed here are interesting. The product positioning and business ones make sense as much as the technical reasons.

   https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/28131/why-did-steve-jobs-choose-the-motorola-6803025-mhz-for-the-first-next-computer

   #NeXTCube #NeXTComputer #retrocomputing

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     hankg (hankg@friendica.myportal.social)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 23:49:03 JST hankg

     in reply to
     @amoroso I was going to ask if there were any major x86 based workstations of the 1980s and doing some searching found out at least Sun made one as early as 1988. It still seems like an outlier by dedicated workstation vendors. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun386i
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     Steve Lord (stevelord@bladerunner.social)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:29:58 JST Steve Lord

     in reply to

     • hankg
     • goatsarah

     @amoroso @goatsarah @hankg the 286 was so incredibly weak compared to what had been promised. The 386 fixed most of it but wasn't exactly enticing. At the time Motorola had a good track record and decent roadmap. Choosing Intel x86 in the late 80s/early 90s for anything other than a PC was a bit of a dice roll.

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     Paolo Amoroso (amoroso@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 01-Jan-2024 01:29:59 JST Paolo Amoroso

     • hankg
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah What were the main issues with the 386 in the context of workstations? Performance? Complexity?

     @hankg