Comment by indymike

Back in the day, the 8087 and 80287 were supported by quite a bit of software (spreadsheets, statistics, etc...). First dev job I had (was 15 at the time), I had to recalc our accountants 1-2-3 models because I had a 80287 in my AT clone... and that resulted in a "hell yes" a year later when I asked for a 386 + 387. I put on the write up on why I needed it was a) it would compile faster and when needed I b) could recalc financial models faster. That model took maybe 5 minutes with the 287 and maybe 40 sec on the 386+387 setup... I suspect the generous 4mb of RAM was more important... I never really understood why people wouldn't shell out the extra couple hundred bucks on the math coprocessors, they really sped things up provided that software supported them.