Has anyone ever emulated a PC with the Emplant?

[pjhutch]

I've been proven wrong. I was only thinking about Intel chips and completely forgot about Overdrive and Citrix chips. Sorry. Good luck with project!

[whabang]

486 OverDrive
486 OverDrive

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

[Cyberus]

But I need a bridgeboard first!

[FastRobPlus]

I've long known about the 486 overdrive upgrade path, but that's still too slow for any modern use.

One thing I've considered is adding an computer-on-a-card like this one:
586 upgrade
It plugs into an ISA slot (just to anchor - does not need to be an active slot) and it's basicly a full PC motherboard in an 8-bit ISA card form factor.  It's primary use is to upgrade a hopelessly outdated PC and using the existing floppy, power supply, and monitor...

My thinking is that if you had a big-box Amiga with a scan doubler, a PS/2 mouse adapter, and a PS/2 keyboard adapter, you could encase the 586 ISA card in the Amiga, and use a K-V-M switchbox to allow sharing of the same keyboard, mouse and monitor.

There would be no "bridging", but you'd have your Amiga and a modern-ish PC in one box.

Has anybody done this?

[Cyberus]

I've looked into SBCs before actually...
It wouldn't be a bad idea, but I'd like a bridgeboard ideally

[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.

[Effy]

And what about these babies ??

- Kingston TurboChip 133 Intel 486 processor overdrive
Ebay

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

[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.

[whabang]

CatHerder wrote:
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.

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

[K7HTH]

whabang wrote:

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

TOUCHE' Whabang!!

[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:

[Jeff]

The Evergreen one that works with the Bridgeboard is a Model 300 "Rev to 486".  I bought mine on a closeout for about $30.00. It tripled the clockspeed as I remember.  Sadly I sold all of my BB stuff years ago, it was still too slow.

Look Here for links to pictures; http://homepage3.nifty.com/sandy55/Interposer/386_upgrade.html

The Cyrix one I still have somewhere, I think it was a Cx486SRX2 25/50. Both of these just stick on top of the 386 chip. They didn't really seem like they would stay but I never had any problems except heat.

Now you guys are making me wish I still had my Bridgeboard :-).

Jeff
 

[whabang]

CatHerder wrote:

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:

Bloody hell! :-x
That's what one gets for not counting pins! :lol:

Anyway. I know about CPU-museum it's a great site. THIS is the CPU it thought it was BTW. I haven't seen one of those for years. :-D

[Cyberus]

@ CatHerder

But there are 486 bridgeboards available as well...

[whabang]

Funny fact: Cyrix's 486s were identical to their 386s, except for the larger cache.

[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.