>>The Intel 80386 was the real game-changer, not the 486, which was really an optimized derivative. Apparently introduced around '85-'86.
>
>Yep, SCO Unix on a 386 with somewhere around 25 Wyse terminals and (OMG) COBOL - worked good. Though, in my mind, the 286 was the game changer. It was the first CPU fast enough to make a productive workstation on a LAN. At that point it really made sense to start deploying serious business apps on PCs.

Part of that memory was that non-MS-DOS like Xenix used the 286 as a real 16-Bit CPU like the 68xx from Motorola,
whereas DOS used it as an 8-Bit CPU on steroids with crutches (remember EMS window?).

The 386 brought to DOS the memory extenders, allowing linaer adressing of larger chunks,
making non-Win DOS more than workable until NT was stable.
OS/2 in text mode was a nice environment for a programmer, but users were another issue.
I never liked W95, W98 or the last hurrah ;-)

regards

thomas