How (and why) to Ramble on your goat sideways
03-07-2012, 12:30 PM
Boost Pope
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I actually went through a few different processors on that 486 motherboard. I had a DX2 at one point, and then I bought one of those "almost a Pentium in a 486 footprint" chips when I started using Windows 3.1. It wasn't an AMD part, I wanna say it was a TI chip, which would have made it a Cyrix designed 5x86-style core.
Does anybody actually "upgrade" CPUs on an existing motherboard anymore? It used to be really commonplace- a lot of hybrid CPUs were developed to put new cores into an old footprint, lots of them even sat on a little daughterboard which had its own power regulators and clock multipliers, sometimes even their own little BIOS chipsets. Wasn't exclusively an x86 thing, either. I remember lots of processor upgrade modules for Apple IIs and Amigas.
Haven't seen that sort of thing in years. I wonder why the paradigm shifted?
Does anybody actually "upgrade" CPUs on an existing motherboard anymore? It used to be really commonplace- a lot of hybrid CPUs were developed to put new cores into an old footprint, lots of them even sat on a little daughterboard which had its own power regulators and clock multipliers, sometimes even their own little BIOS chipsets. Wasn't exclusively an x86 thing, either. I remember lots of processor upgrade modules for Apple IIs and Amigas.
Haven't seen that sort of thing in years. I wonder why the paradigm shifted?
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03-07-2012, 12:58 PM
Seems like significant jumps in speed typically involve changes to mobo/cpu architecture, not just pushing the clock speed higher.
I haven't done a CPU swap in 5 years, probably, and that was only to eek a couple more years out of an aging computer.
I haven't done a CPU swap in 5 years, probably, and that was only to eek a couple more years out of an aging computer.
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03-07-2012, 01:07 PM
Man, I remember my old 8086 with fondness. Jumped to a...286(?), then a 486. I still think the 386's were crap.
As for chip upgrades: At one point, motherboards were substantially more expensive relative to the cost of the PC than they are now (And a good bit more expensive than most low-end CPUs!). As a result, it was economically feasible for a manufacturer to put out a (relatively) cheap chip that was backwards compatible.
Now? Motherboards are typically much less than the price of a chip. My gaming PC is a great example - $80 paid for the mobo, $220ish paid for the CPU.
A manufacturer actually did put out some kind of a backwards compatible daughterboard for the A64 awhile back however, IIRC. (Edit) Asrock board IIRC, NF3 chipset.
As for chip upgrades: At one point, motherboards were substantially more expensive relative to the cost of the PC than they are now (And a good bit more expensive than most low-end CPUs!). As a result, it was economically feasible for a manufacturer to put out a (relatively) cheap chip that was backwards compatible.
Now? Motherboards are typically much less than the price of a chip. My gaming PC is a great example - $80 paid for the mobo, $220ish paid for the CPU.
A manufacturer actually did put out some kind of a backwards compatible daughterboard for the A64 awhile back however, IIRC. (Edit) Asrock board IIRC, NF3 chipset.
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03-07-2012, 04:28 PM
yep, I smack the mirrors off my truck every couple months and the process is a pain the first couple times you do it. I don't have to remove the door speakers though, just the cards.
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03-07-2012, 04:42 PM
Boost Pope
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Haha, no I have a working copy of DOSbox, thanks.
I've actually managed to shed the vast majority of my "old" computers over the years. The only machines that I'm still clinging to are a C64, an A-500, and a CDTV.
I've never really hoarded x86 machines, I tend to use them until they're used up, and then part ways with them unceremoniously. The only ones that I've ever really hung onto were my first x86 machine (A Tandy 1000HX) and a PS/2 model 50 that somebody gave me, primarily because both of those machines represented both major leaps forward in the industry as well as object lessons in how to destroy your own company by totally ignoring well-entrenched industry standards.
And I got rid of those machines years ago.
Seems like these days, you don't even hear about people upgrading motherboards much anymore, it's more common to just ditch the entire machine and buy another one for $400.
But processor upgrades weren't merely about clock speed. Most of the ones that I remember tended to incorporate the microarchitecture of a newer CPU into the form-factor of an older one.
The Cyrix 5x86, for instance, not only had an internal clock multiplier, but also incorporated a lot of architectural features from the 6x86 core. The only real bottleneck was the 486-style memory bus.
Of course, that's not much of a bottleneck compared to how RAM was typically added to machines in the '286 era. Anybody remember these?
Oh, yeah.
In AmigaLand, nobody had the money to design hybrid CPUs, the more common approach there was to take an actual 68020/030 microprocessor and stick it on a daughterboard which could then plug into the machine's 68000 processor socket. Of course, since so much of the A/'s software (particularly the games) was hard-coded in assembly and ran outside of the OS, a lot of it tended not to work on newer processors. Thus, these cards typically had a socket for you to plug the old processor into and a physical switch you could flip to select between the two CPUs.
I've actually managed to shed the vast majority of my "old" computers over the years. The only machines that I'm still clinging to are a C64, an A-500, and a CDTV.
I've never really hoarded x86 machines, I tend to use them until they're used up, and then part ways with them unceremoniously. The only ones that I've ever really hung onto were my first x86 machine (A Tandy 1000HX) and a PS/2 model 50 that somebody gave me, primarily because both of those machines represented both major leaps forward in the industry as well as object lessons in how to destroy your own company by totally ignoring well-entrenched industry standards.
And I got rid of those machines years ago.
But processor upgrades weren't merely about clock speed. Most of the ones that I remember tended to incorporate the microarchitecture of a newer CPU into the form-factor of an older one.
The Cyrix 5x86, for instance, not only had an internal clock multiplier, but also incorporated a lot of architectural features from the 6x86 core. The only real bottleneck was the 486-style memory bus.
Of course, that's not much of a bottleneck compared to how RAM was typically added to machines in the '286 era. Anybody remember these?
Oh, yeah.
In AmigaLand, nobody had the money to design hybrid CPUs, the more common approach there was to take an actual 68020/030 microprocessor and stick it on a daughterboard which could then plug into the machine's 68000 processor socket. Of course, since so much of the A/'s software (particularly the games) was hard-coded in assembly and ran outside of the OS, a lot of it tended not to work on newer processors. Thus, these cards typically had a socket for you to plug the old processor into and a physical switch you could flip to select between the two CPUs.
Last edited by Joe Perez; 03-07-2012 at 05:31 PM.
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