Has anyone ever emulated a PC with the Emplant?

[CatHerder]

Noster wrote:
Hi

@Matt_H

> It's possible to upgrade a Commodore 386 bridgeboard to a 486, ...

HOW ? Facts, links, please...

Noster

Pretty simple actually. I sold two of these on eBay last year.

All you need to do is track down a Cyrix Cx486SRx² 25/50MHz chip


And shove it in your 386 Briodgeboard like so:


And the end result is you have a 486 SX50 bridgeboard that runs like a champ (32bit internal bus / 16bit external) and looks like this!



So... don't let anyone tell you it's impossible, because they don't know wth they are talking about.  :lol:

(I had one of these inside my A4000 back in the day along with a nice little Warp Engine -- I really wish I'd hung on to one of my 4000's but at the time $ for beer at University seemed more important).

[edit] Ya know... come to think of it, one of these was inside my 3000T, I don't think the Bridgeboard worked with my 4000's due to the limitation it put on the Zorro slots which blocked my Warp Engine's RAM from showing up. From memory the BridgeBoard put a limitation of 6MB to zorro slot expansions. [/edit]

If you REALLY want to find old chips like this, you need to talk to recycling plants such as Kin-Enterprises who could possibly start pulling old 486 and overdrive chips off motherboards before they heat and shred them. I'll ask a local PCB recycler here if they can keep an eye out for me if you guys are seriously interested in finding a few 486 overdrive chips for 386 computers.

[CatHerder]

whabang wrote:
486 OverDrive
486 OverDrive

Both are currently under 50 SEK (About 3£, 6€, 7$)...

That's the wrong king of chip though. Those are Intel Overdrive chips that allowed you to put up to a 200MHz MMX "Pentium" chip in your 486 (AMD made a similar chip that went up to 233MHz MMX but was flakey). What you'd need for a BridgeBoard would be a 386 Overdrive chip.

[CatHerder]

Effy wrote:
And what about these babies ??

- Kingston TurboChip 133 Intel 486 processor overdrive
Ebay

- Intel Pentium Overdrive CPU New in box 83MHz PODP5V83
Ebay

Nope, those are for 486 motherboards. If you're looking to "upgrade" a 386 bridgeboard, you need a 386 overdrive not a 486.

[CatHerder]

KD7HTH wrote:

whabang wrote:

No, look at the chips. Those are 486 CPUs designed to fit in 386-sockets.

TOUCHE' Whabang!!

Well, the image is all pretty and everything...  But, a DPR20DX66 is not a 386 form factor. It's a 486 form factor.

Look at the top and then Look at the bottom

This is what the form factor looks like for a 386 chip (bottom view of a Cyrix overdrive chip). It doesn't have pins/legs. It's more of a PLCC type of socket. You can instantly tell if a cpu is a 386 from the top because it has "fuzzy" sides.

And before anyone hollers "but some 386's have pins!" you're right - 386 DX chips have pins, but they don't have 17 across they have 14.

Of course... if you really want to see photos of what cpu is what, I recommend the CPU Museum for some superb pictures.


I think a Touche retraction is in order thanks. :lol:

[CatHerder]

Yeah I had the Cyrix one as well - it really did need a heatsink because it did run a lot hotter. I recall going step by step through every single cpu upgrade possible for bridgeboards. While it was a long time ago, and I do need to go look on the web to see if my info/opinions are correct in the matter, I do have the advantage of actually having tried everything that was available at the time to fall back on.

The Cyrix 25/50 was the fastest solution I found, and it was also slightly cheaper (if you can call $425 cheap for a 50 MHz 486SX "overdrive" chip lol). As far as I remember that was where the upgrades ended for 386 cpus. And besides, by that time 486 computers were actually way way faster than any emulation you could pull off in an Amiga.

Btw, didn't your Cyrix come with that large plastic clamp thing? Once you stuck it on the 386 it was scary trying to remove it.

[CatHerder]

Cyberus wrote:
@ CatHerder

But there are 486 bridgeboards available as well...

Not "Bridgeboards", but some other aftermarket Amiga PC emulator card right? I never heard of a 486 Bridgeboard (I used to work at a C= retailer back in the late 80's / early 90's). I say C= retailer and not Amiga retailer because we also sold thousands of CBM PC's as well as thousands of Amigas... Commodore Canada actually used to be able to boast that they were the largest clone manufacturer in Canada all through the 80's -- they sold more PC's than the other top 3 PC companies [IBM and Tandy and some 3rd company] combined.

Unless maybe C= had a prototype that I never heard of? Who made the 486 boards, any idea? I am curious now!