[geeks] The best things in the world

[der Mouse]

> The singular thing that caused the growth of *NIX systems to the
> point where they are today was the release of the 80386 chip. 

I disagree, actually.  That's probably one of the causes, but it's by
no means that simple.

> Before that Intel processor chips had two problems [...]

Even if true (you seem to be ignoring everything but the x86 family of
Intel chips)...so?  There were non-Intel processors.  Consider the 68k.
(Yes, it needed external MMU hardware in early versions.  This was not
an insuperable obstacle.)

The 386 would have made no bigger difference than the 68020 did without
the peecee clone industry building it into cheap mass-market machines.
(And the 68020 actually did make a difference; a number of early Unices
were for '020-based machines.  There were even a few for pre-'020 68k
machines, despite their having hardware problems that made that tough.)

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