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Clone meant, at least back in the day, that it was compatible with software written for the IBM XT. There were many clones with more ram, 3.5” disk drives, or better CPU (NEC V20) than the original IBM XT but they all ran MS DOS and WordPerfect and Accolade Test Drive and any other software you would expect so they were considered ‘XT clones’

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Sure. I remember that marketplace very well.

And until a couple of days ago, I never heard anyone mention an "XT clone" as being an emulated 80186 on an ESP32 with almost none of the IO or expansion capabilities of an XT.

That appears to be a new usement of the term; an invention, if you will, or a perversion if you won't.

(I can emulate an XT with my pocket supercomputer. It's fun to play with that kind of thing sometimes. But to call it a "clone" is going too far.)

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