Intel 80186

The 80186 is a microprocessor that was developed by Intel circa 1982. The 80186 was an improvement on the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. As with the 8086, it had a 16-bit external bus and was also available as the Intel 80188, with an 8-bit external data bus. The initial clock rate of the 80186 and 80188 was 6 MHz. They were generally used as embedded processors. They were not used in many personal computers, but there were some notable exceptions. One was the Mindset, a very advanced computer for the time. Another was the original Gateway Handbook, a small subnotebook computer. A third was Compis, a Swedish school computer. And yet a fourth was the Tandy 2000 desktop, a somewhat PC-compatible workstation featuring particularly sharp graphics for its day.

One major function of the 80186/80188 series was to reduce the number of chips required by including features such as a DMA controller, interrupt controller, timers, and chip select logic.

New instructions were introduced as follows:

ENTER	Make stack frame for procedure parameters
LEAVE	High-level procedure exit
PUSHA	Push all general registers
POPA	Pop all general registers
BOUND	Check array index against bounds
IMUL	Signed (integer) multiply
INS	Input from port to string
OUTS	Output string to port

References

nl:80186 (processor)