Quote:
Originally posted by ROSSCO_2004@20 March 2004 - 03:05
what i know about x86 is that the first few pc processors, i think by intel, were called 186, 286, 486 and then the next was going to be 586 but they didnt name it that and they started doing pentium with whatever many mhz in the name (pentium 133mhz for example). but all processors are based on the x86.
a friend told me they stopped calling them x86 because some guy had trademarked the name 586 thinking that intel would pay him lots of money for them to use the name but then intel didnt buy it so the guy was piseed (i would be too) and intel started the new naming system. This is what a friend told me but im not sure if it is right.
Intel named the successor to the 486 'Pentium' because they were fed up with rival chip manufacturers using the same names for their inferior CPUs, and they realised you can't copyright a number.