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The 386 chip

The 80386 was the first of the IA-32 (Intel Architecture, 32-bit) CPUs that include the 80486 and Penttium.

80386 [full-size] [pic source]

275,000 transistors; .97cm x .97cm = .38" x .38" [cite]

1954? John H Crawford born in Philadelphia [bio]
1975: Crawford graduates from Brown
1977: Crawford master's degree from U of North Carolina
1977: Crawford joins Intel [bio] [Intel 1978 pic]

[pic source] (music director for Crossroads Bible Church in San Jose: cite)

[pic source]
Riz Haq, Jan William (Willem) L. Prak, Gene Hill, Patrick/Pat process, John H Crawford, David/Dave Vannier

1982: Crawford leads 386-backup project [cite] More info: Gene Hill, Pat Gelsinger, Jim Slager (387)

"We were supposed to be a stopgap, quick-to-market product... As time went on we pretty much surpassed everyone's expectations-- which is easy to do when you're building up from zero."

1984: 18Apr: first GooJa rumor [1st 99 mentions]

1985: summer: prototype 386s circulated to IBM, MS, et al [cite]

286-delays make buyers wary [Gates-interview]

1985: 17Oct: 80386 chip debuts: up to 33MHz, 4 GB ram, 64 terabytes vm [cite] (renamed 'DX' in 1988 when SX added)

silicon gate CMOS process with 1.5micron linewidths, 10 mask layers, 1 polysilicon layer, 2 metal layers, 104mm2 die [cite]

1986: IBM suicidally rejects 386 for PS/2 series, favoring 286 [cite]

1986: Sep: Compaq debuts 1st 386 box (16MHz DeskPro 386) [info] [award] Gates takes credit [interview]

1986: Nov: Andy Tanenbaum [GooJa] rewrites Unix from scratch for 386, released by Prentice-Hall as $150 Minix [netnews]

1987: 16Jan: Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix

1987: Crawford and Gelsinger's 'Programming the 80386' [Amazon]

"still the best book I've ever seen on the x86 architecture" --Linus Torvalds, Feb 2001

1987: SCO Xenix 386
1987: Oct: Compaq Portable 386
1988: 16Jun: 80386 SX (24-bit address bus limits real memory to 16Mb) [cite]

1988: video: "Design and Development of the Intel 80386 Microprocessor" Gene Hill; University Video Communications [cite]

1989: SCO UNIX System V/386

1990: 22May: Windows 3.0, supports 386 [cite]

1990: Fred van Kempen adds Posix-compatibility to Minix [GooJa search]

1991: Jan: 21yo Linus Torvalds buys 33MHz 386sx PC w/40Mb drive to play 'Prince of Persia' (hardware prices dropping dramatically), begins hacking Linux in April [timeline]

Jan 1991 to Jul 1992: Dr Dobbs publishes series by William Jolitz on porting BSD to 386 [bib]

1991: 17Mar: William and Lynne Jolitz release version 0.0 of 386 port of BSD (386BSD released as free) [cite] more [Salon-2pg] [tech]

1991: 1st of AMD's AM386 clones [info] more

1991: 25Aug: Linus solicits os-suggestions from comp.os.minix [thread]

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months [...] Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

[...] It's mostly in C, but most people wouldn't call what I write C. It uses every conceivable feature of the 386 I could find, as it was also a project to teach me about the 386. As already mentioned, it uses a MMU, for both paging (not to disk yet) and segmentation. It's the segmentation that makes it REALLY 386 dependent (every task has a 64Mb segment for code & data - max 64 tasks in 4Gb. Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies). [...] Some of my "C"-files (specifically mm.c) are almost as much assembler as C. [...] Unlike minix, I also happen to LIKE interrupts, so interrupts are handled without trying to hide the reason behind them"

1991: Sep: Linux 0.01 (64kb)
1991: 05Oct: Linux 0.02, first use of name on netnews [comp.os.minix]

1991: 01Dec: Bill Jolitz splits from BSDI over open-source issues, destroying his work there [cite]

1991: Dec: Linux 0.11 now 'standalone'
1992: Jan: Linux 0.12 = 0.9 (12k lines?)
1992: BSDI releases beta of BSD/386 [cite]
1992: Mar: Linux 0.95
1992: 14Jul: 386BSD 0.1, eventually gets downloaded 250k times (18 month lag before 1.0, giving advantage to Linux)

1992: support of 386/BSD taken over by NetBSD [cite] FreeBSD project turns NetBSD into distro

1993: Dec: 386/BSD 1.0; FreeBSD 1.0 based on 386BSD
1994? OpenBSD spins off from NetBSD [cite]
1994: May: FreeBSD 1.1
1995: Jan: FreeBSD 2.0
1995: Mar: Linux kernel 1.2 [cite] (2Mb)

lecture slides

critique

Spanish

programming

reference, ditto

instruction set, ditto, ditto, overview

memory addressing

diagrams

protected mode

tutorial, ditto

BIOS

8086 family

table

analysis, overview

386 pix pdf manuals

nostalgia

frugal

Estonian

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