[bcsco]

You go back before me then.

Not necessarily. I think the 8088 processors were out when I bought my 8086. Its real value was the education in MSDOS.

[Erasmus]

You are both probably right.

Speaking of the processor chips themselves, the 8086 was out first.

Then they designed the 8088, which had all the 8086 internals but was in a smaller package with fewer pins and a narrower external bus. This allowed designers to make a cheaper system overall, at the expense of a slower bus and thus lower performance.

The first IBM PC was basically a cookbook design from Intel’s literature, using the 8088.

[andyk]

Its real value was the education in MSDOS

I think it was my education in MSDOS that allowed me to transition to linux later in life without resistance, unlike some of my younger peers.