z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode (opens in new tab)

I wonder how many of those are actually still out there. According to Wikipedia, Intel kept making replacement parts (386 and 486) until September 2007, but personally, I have never come across one in actual use. My own career in this field began with an internship in 2008. My day job includes working on a PLC runtime with a code base older than myself, originally written for DOS, but every industrial PC (or other x86 based embedded device) I have ever got to play around with had at the very least a Pentium class CPU in it.

As for the Windows 3.x based industrial equipment: Some industrial devices I have worked on in the past turned out to actually be ARM based, running Linux, but the software went a long way to convincingly fake old Windows style UI or emulate a DOS prompt. I was once tasked to extend such a UI library to faithfully reproduce Windows 98 style color gradient borders.

Only once have I seen an actual embedded 486SX with my own eyes, but not in active use anymore. Last year, someone dragged a dusty, old, weirdo Siemens telephony box to the the local Hackerspace. The box itself had a design language that screamed "Star Trek: Voyager". I found a UART, it was running "On Time RTOS-32" which, according to the German Wikipedia, was an RTOS with a Windows API compatible userspace, developed by a German company in 1996 and discontinued in 2023.

The Amiga was not character-based, it ran an accelerated framebuffer (with support for scanning out multiple resolutions and color depths on a single screen).

Ultimately that kind of question doesn't really matter. The only question that matters is "who will fix it when it breaks?" The Amiga system was a single machine running custom code written by one guy. If that guy dies or decides to quit maintaining it and it fails, hundreds of school kids are going to end up shivering or overheating for who knows how long. That's an unpleasant risk that may prove more costly than the $1.5mil it cost to replace it. The new system was written by a team, working at a company that specializes in this sort of thing, that has credentials proving it complies with relevant industry and safety standards, and a contract binding it to a term of service and support. That shit's worth its weight in gold to businesses and governments, even though it doesn't necessarily result in added functionality. So while it's fun to post "look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power" memes about old systems like that, there's a reason why these are done by teams working at institutional organizations. It helps defray the risk.

In the late 90s I was interning at a place, and one of the IT guys there was old, we're talking white beard. He thought Linux was an absolute joke, and told me that the future of IT belonged to Windows NT (though it should have belonged to OS/2). The reason why is because with Linux, there was "no ass to drag onto the carpet"—no one to sue when it breaks. With Windows, the largest and most successful software company of all time was backing it up, staking their entire business on customer satisfaction. Of course, he ended up being wrong about Linux, but only because companies (mainly Red Hat) stepped up to assume the risk for big clients. That's one of the major functions of business—to provide an arm for customers to twist.

And back in the 90s, before anybody knew anything about risk or "bus factor", that might've made sense. But it's no surprise that they paid a pretty penny for an actual support contract after decommissioning that system.