Has anyone ever emulated a PC with the Emplant?

[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!

[spirantho]

Apologies for resurrecting an old(ish) thread, but here are some facts that may be useful.

CBM made 3 bridgeboards: the A2088 4.77MHz(too slow for anything other than Jumpman, and that would be pushing it), the A2286 10MHz (common - can run simple DOS stuff, and comes with a 1.2MB HD 5.25" disk drive), the A2386 16/20/25MHz (now we're talking. 386 power! Hard to get hold of...)
Elite Microsystems adapted this (386) bridgeboard and stuck a nice Cyrix 486SLC chip (33MHz) on it.  This is not a true 486! The 486SLC is a lower power chip as used in laptops at the time, it has 1KB of cache instead of 8KB and is really an pumped up 386. I suspect you may have to sell your soul these days to get one of these cards, I haven't seen one for a while (but I've not been looking!).
Vortex made 3 bridgeboards, the 386SX 25MHz (baseline model!), the 486SLC 25MHz (as above - NOT a true 486, but a 486SLC!) and the 486SLC2 50MHz (clock doubled SLC - not seen one of these).

Myself I have the 2286, the ECS 486 upgraded 2386 (which doesn't work - the dual port RAM doesn't work, so I need to take a soldering iron to it), and the GoldenGate 486SLC.
The Goldengate is a very good card but I don't know how fast it is compared to a real 386. It does have oodles of features, though, and is currently sitting in my A1500 MS-DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 for Workgroups, with a Soundblaster II, Cirrus Logic based ISA 1MB SVGA card, 3COM 3C509 NIC. It plays Jumpman very well. Also plays Powermonger, etc. etc. Note that the CPU is rated at 33MHz, it's the chipset that's rated at 25MHz, which is what the card runs at - proving the 486 version is just the 386 with a different chip.
The Elite 486 is like the 286 - it relies on Janus, which provides much less in the way of features (no serial port, hard disk partition emulation etc. etc.) but I think may be a little faster. Until I can get my bridgeboard working I can't comment more.

Apparently the ECS 486 (and A2386 I think) can run Win95, and the GoldenGate can also but only the floppy disk version; I can state now that the CD version of Win95 balks completely on the GG, but it would be slooow anyway.

As a further point, in my experience, the 486 Make-It upgrades which clip a 486SLC2 on a 386 do not work on the GG 486. They may work on the 386 version or the Elite but I can't be sure.

My advice - get a GoldenGate 486. Very good card, expandable to 16MB RAM (though I pumped my A2286 to 16MB too - it did require you to go get a cup of tea while waiting for the memory check to complete though), using SIMMS, unlike the Commodores which use ZIPs up to 8MB (unless you can find an adaptor, apparently). Also the CBM cards don't have as good video emulation, and the GG comes with a Monitor Master (automatic switchbox) and stuff too.

All this from memory and a little help from the Amiga Hardware Book.

(P.S. No, none of my bridgeboards are for sale. )

Cyberus wrote:
@ CatHerder

But there are 486 bridgeboards available as well...

If you got one of these 486 bridgeboards, then you would probably be able to use onr of the Cyrix/IBM 5x86 100MHz CPU's that gave Pentium class performance on a 486 board.

I ran one of these chips in a Commodore 486 for years, with 16MB RAM and a Gravis Ultrasound.  It was a very good machine.

If I remember correctly the IBM branded version came with a Blue heatsink attatched and the Cyrix had a Gren Heatsink.

-edit

Cyrix 5x86 100MHz

IBM 5x86 100MHz


I used the IBM branded version, but they are identical to the Cyrix ones.  IBM just manufactured them on behalf of Cyrix as they didn't have their own fab plant.

If this worked on a 486 Bridgeboard, then Windows 95 would run on it with no speed problems at all.

[spirantho]

Unfortunately not....

The 486s used on Bridgeboards were not really 486s, they were souped up 386s - totally different pin layout to a 486, and not socketed.

The only 486 I know of to be used on a 'Bridgeboard' were the mythical(?) Shuttle boards from around 1996 which claimed to use Pentiums as well - but they weren't true bridgeboards anyway as they didn't interface with the host machine.

All '486' bridgeboards I've ever heard of used the 486SLC, which is a 386 on steroids. IIRC the highest you can get a bridgeboard to is using the IBM Blue Lightning 386->486SLC4/75 upgrade, but good luck finding one. That would also probably not work on a 486SLC chip, only a 386SX.