emacs and tab stops

[tano]

Hello,
I used to run emacs always in fundamental mode, because I do not
like automatic indentation, so I put a line in my .emacs file
like (setq auto-mode-alist nil) to leave my tab stop every 8 chars.
However with new versions of emacs seems that things are changed.
Even if I run fundamental mode, tab stops does not follow the standard
indentation every 8 chars, but goes in the first char after a space
on the previous line, for example.
How can I set up things so that it work as I want?
The previous answer talk me about setting tab stops, but
looking at the tab stop variable all seems to be set correctly,
every 8 chars, but however I do not get what I want..
Thanks,
tano