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So what you're saying is that the 8086 was sort of stack based (like forth), and a given instruction just consumed the number of bytes off the stack it needed, then the assumption was the next thing on the stack was the next instruction?



The instruction bytes were in a queue, not a stack, so it's not really like Forth. It's the same as reading the bytes in order from memory except the queue improved performance by reading instructions when the bus was otherwise free.


Not stack based, as there's no storage for a stack (well, beyond the actual program stack in main memory). It's just a state machine.




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