HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Deskpro 386 is a line of
desktop computer A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...
s in
Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...
's Deskpro range of
IBM PC compatible An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...
s. Introduced in September 1986, the Deskpro 386 was the first personal computer to feature
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
's
32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...
80386 microprocessor. It also marks the first time that a major component of the
IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a ...
''de facto'' standard was updated by a company other than
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
; in this case, upgrading from the 80286 processor of the Personal Computer/AT. The initial models of the Deskpro 386 were developed by a team of 250 people, led by Gary Stimac. It was released to high praise in the technology press and widespread adoption in enterprise and scientific engineering. Compaq continued releasing updated models of the Deskpro 386 as newer revisions of the 386 chip were introduced by Intel.


Specifications

The Deskpro 386 line features the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus identical to that of the
IBM Personal Computer/AT The IBM Personal Computer AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 8 ...
. While the Personal Computer/AT has a 16-bit
Intel 80286 The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non- multiplexed address and data buses and also the f ...
microprocessor, the Deskpro 386 features
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
's 32-bit 80386 processor. The initial three models in the Deskpro 386 line—the Deskpro 386 Model 40, the Deskpro 386 Model 70, and the Deskpro 386 Model 130—differ only in the storage capacity of the included
hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
s and in the number of ISA expansion slots on their motherboards. The models otherwise all come with at least 1 MB of RAM and a 16-MHz
Intel 80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit computing, 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in ...
microprocessor. The Model 40 is equipped with a 40 MB ESDI hard drive and features six ISA expansion slots—three 8-bit slots and three 16-bit slots. The Models 70 and 130 are equipped with 70 MB and 130 MB ESDI hard drives, respectively; both feature five expansion slots—three 8-bit slots and two 16-bit slots. Externally, the design of the Deskpro 386's case is identical to that of its predecessors, the original 8088-equipped Deskpro and the 80286-equipped Deskpro 286. Each model of the Deskpro 386 features four 5.25-inch half-height drive bays, and all models are equipped stock with one 1.2-MB 5.25-inch floppy drive. The hard drives in the Models 40 and 70 are half-height units, while the Model 130's hard drive is a full-height unit. Instead of integrating memory on the motherboards, Compaq put the RAM chips on a daughtercard that plugs into a 32-bit bus slot on the motherboard. This slot is bespoke to the Deskpro 386 and allows the transfer of information to and from the bus in 32-bit
word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...
s. For the initial models, the daughtercard carries 1 MB of RAM stock, and can be expanded to take up to 2 MB (half of its RAM sockets are unpopulated). The daughtercard itself contains a slot that can hold a special "piggyback" card that carries 4 MB of RAM stock, upgradable up to 8 MB. The highest amount of RAM that Compaq offered in this daughtercard-and-piggyback-card arrangement on the initial release of the Deskpro 386 was 10 MB. Additional RAM may be installed as upgrade cards in any of the 16-bit ISA expansion slots—with the understanding that this imposes a speed bottleneck because of the ISA's 16-bit data path.


Development

The Deskpro 386 was developed in large part by Gary Stimac, Compaq's vice president of engineering and the company's fifth employee hired. Stimac led a team of people who eventually grew to 250 in the middle of 1986. Development of the Deskpro 386 was a close collaboration between Compaq, Intel, and
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
, who each signed a three-way
non-disclosure agreement A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), or secrecy agreement (SA), is a legal contract or part of a contract between at le ...
. The Deskpro 386 project officially commenced in March 1985, after Intel shared Compaq the first block diagram for the 80386 processor architecture. Stimac described this diagram as a listing of the 386's new and upgraded features, as well as a schedule of milestones for its development and eventual production runs. In June 1985, Intel delivered to Compaq detailed specifications of the 386, after which Compaq laid out a block diagram of future product lines to integrate the processor. Although the 80286 was available for some time before IBM's introduction of the
PC AT The IBM Personal Computer AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 802 ...
, other companies including Compaq believed they had to wait for IBM to set the standard before releasing in 1985 their own clones of it. Compaq was aware that by introducing the Deskpro 386 first, a future IBM product might be incompatible with and obsolete it. The company predicted that IBM would not greatly change the PC architecture as doing so would also orphan millions of real IBM PCs. ''PC'' wrote "Compaq's conclusion: IBM's DOS standard is now bigger than IBM". Microsoft was brought on board as a consultant for potential software compatibility issues with the plethora of
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
-based software on the market. As well, Compaq asked Microsoft what other
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
s they could provide that had better 32-bit support for the 386. By the time of the Deskpro's release, the most advanced operating system that Microsoft offered was
Xenix Xenix is a discontinued Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation. The first version was released in 1980, and Xenix was the most common Unix variant during the mid- to late-1980s. T ...
System V/286, which Compaq offered as an optional pack-in for selecting buyers. A 32-bit version for the 386 was promised in the first quarter of 1987. The Deskpro 386 had the full support of Microsoft head
Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...
. Gates recalled in 1997:
A big milestone n the history of the personal computer industrywas that the folks at
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
didn't trust the 386. They didn't think it would get done. So we encouraged Compaq to go ahead and just do a 386 machine. That was the first time people started to get a sense that it wasn't just IBM setting the standards, that this industry had a life of its own, and that companies like Compaq and Intel were in there doing new things that people should pay attention to.
Early prototypes of the Deskpro 386 were designed around the 12-MHz clock speed of the earliest production batches of the 80386 and so featured a 6-MHz bus clock. By the time the Deskpro 386 came out, yields of 16-MHz 386's had reached acceptable numbers, and so the bus clock was upgraded to 8 MHz. Regarding RAM, four different paths were taken by Stimac's team to determine the best memory configuration for both performance and cost. A static-column DRAM design was chosen as the winner, against pure page mode DRAM, traditional asynchronous DRAM, and DRAM backed with cache. On the
mass storage In computing, mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting and machine-readable fashion. In general, the term ''mass'' in ''mass storage'' is used to mean ''large'' in relation to contemporaneous hard disk drive ...
front, the use of
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
hard drives was considered early on but abandoned due to a performance penalty incurred with SCSI drive controllers over the ISA bus. They found a vendor of ESDI drives that were able to put the controller hardware onto the drive itself, leading to acceptable performance.


Release

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...
released the Deskpro 386 on September 9, 1986, concurrent with a formal announcement at a gala hosted at
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. Gates attended, as did Compaq president Rod Canion and chairman Ben Rosen. The Deskpro 386 was the first implementation of the 80386 processor in a computer system for sale to the public. The Model 40 retailed for US$6,499 (equivalent to $), the Model 70 for $7,299, and the Model 130 for $8,799 (equivalent to $). ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' wrote that, while relatively steep, the prices were set by Compaq "in the lower range of what industry analysts have been predicting such machines would cost". Journalists latched onto Compaq's status as a compatible maker revising a major component of the
IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a ...
''de facto'' standard, with ''
InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (''IW'') is an American information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a Web-only publication. Its parent company is International Data Group, and its sister pu ...
'' running the headline on the cover page of their September 15, 1986, issue: "Compaq Introduces 386 PC, Challenges IBM to Match It". In the article, Canion was quoted warning IBM that they had six months to respond with a 386-based machine of their own lest they lose serious market share, while also attempting to quash uncertainty over the Deskpro 386's potential incompatibilities that IBM might try to convey. IBM eventually released their first 386-based PC—the Personal System/2 Model 80—in July 1987, nearly a year after the Deskpro 386's release. According to ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', the release of the Deskpro 386 established Compaq as the leader of the personal computer industry and "hurt no company more—in prestige as well as dollars—than BM.


Sales

Despite overall sales of 386-based personal computers not ramping up until 1989, and many customers cautious about buying a computer in a market without an IBM product, Compaq had sold 25,000 units of the Deskpro 386 by February 1987. This was barely six months after its market introduction, which '' Dun's Business Month'' said represented "extraordinary acceptance" for an over-$6,500 computer based on a cutting-edge chip, with no operating system on the market natively supporting it yet. Journalist Laton McCartney wrote that the Deskpro 386 was popular among corporate executives and
financial analyst A financial analyst is a professional undertaking financial analysis for external or internal clients as a core feature of the job. Yankee Group and Dataquest had estimated at the Deskpro 386's announcement that Compaq would sell 35,000 to 70,000 units in 1987; during the second quarter of 1987, Compaq sold 90,000 units of the Deskpro 386, according to an industry analyst. While IBM cut Model 80 prices because of slow sales "Compaqs are selling like crazy", a dealer told ''InfoWorld'' in January 1988, with higher margins encouraging retailers to give them more shelf space. Compaq reported selling out of the Deskpro 386 by the end of 1987, and in January 1988 that it was unable to fulfill the backlog until mid-1988. That year the lineup generated the most revenue out of any Compaq's product, despite the older Deskpro 286 actually outselling the Deskpro 386 in terms of quantity. By the time Compaq and other clone makers introduced the
Extended Industry Standard Architecture The Extended Industry Standard Architecture (frequently known by the acronym EISA and pronounced "eee-suh") is a bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers. It was announced in September 1988 by a consortium of PC clone vendors (the Gang ...
in 1988, Compaq had 28% of the 386-based market compared to IBM's 16%.


Reception

The Deskpro 386 was warmly received by the technology press. In ''InfoWorld'', Stephen Satchell called it the "hottest IBM PC compatible now available. The Deskpro 386 is twice as fast as any AT-style machine we've tested, and its price is not out of line for such a powerful machine." Bill Howard and William Wong of ''
PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Mag ...
'' summarized: "Well-built and exceptionally PC compatible, the first 386-based PC is a screamer. It makes most ATs look like slugs." Tom Hill of ''
The Ottawa Citizen The ''Ottawa Citizen'' is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. History Established as the Bytown ''Packet'' in 1845 by William Harris, it was renamed the ''Citizen'' in 1851. The newspap ...
'' wrote that the result of its increased processing speed and fast hard drive "is a high-quality, quiet-running personal computer of unmatched performance and potential." Writing retrospectively in 2006, ''
PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online-only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tec ...
'' called the Deskpro 386 the second greatest personal computer of all time, behind the original
Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...
.


Later models

Compaq continued releasing updated models of the Deskpro 386 as newer revisions of the 386 chip were introduced by Intel. In 1987, the company released the Deskpro 386/20, based on the 20-MHz 386 and one of the first microcomputers to use that revision of the chip. It is the fastest IBM PC compatible that ''InfoWorld'' had reviewed up to that point, in November 1987. In 1988, the company released the Deskpro 386/25 and the Deskpro 386S—the former based on the 25-MHz 386 and the latter based on Intel's lower-cost Intel 80386SX, 386SX chip, which features a 16-bit data bus instead of a 32-bit one. The latter is the first personal computer based on the 386SX, while the former was described by ''InfoWorld'' as outperforming all systems reviewed up to that point, "and, like its 20-MHz predecessor, set
ing Ing, ING or ing may refer to: Art and media * '' ...ing'', a 2003 Korean film * i.n.g, a Taiwanese girl group * The Ing, a race of dark creatures in the 2004 video game '' Metroid Prime 2: Echoes'' * "Ing", the first song on The Roches' 199 ...
a new performance standard for 386 computers", albeit at a steep price of US$10,000. The Deskpro 386s version was available on June 20, 1988. One of the last entries in the Deskpro 386 line is the Deskpro 386n and Deskpro 386s/20n, which bear smaller, thinner cases (described by ''InfoWorld'' as "trimline") and 386SX processors. These Deskpros are intended for local-area networking and feature fewer expansion slots but were much lower-cost.


See also

* Apricot VX FT, the first computer system to ship with the
i486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Inte ...
processor, the successor to the 386 * Influence of the IBM PC on the personal computer market


References

{{Compaq Computer-related introductions in 1986 Deskpro 386 IBM PC compatibles