🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov22.135356.1160@fasttech.com> zeke@fasttech.com (Bohdan Tashchuk) writes:
>In <1992Nov21.001602.3987@ichips.intel.com> markg@pdx820 (Mark Gonzales) writes:
>
>>The OverDrive CPU does not care if the original is in place or not.
>
>Well, this isn't quite true. The CPU doesn't care, but the motherboard might.
>
>Intel would *prefer* that you left the damn thing alone. They have tried their
>hardest to muddy the waters by having three different pinouts between DX, SX,
>and OverDrive. This makes it difficult to just swap in a new chip for an old.
>The idea being that if you can't swap then you'll leave the old one alone and
>not glut the market with these pulled chips.

If you look at the 487DX as an attempt to develop a chip which could be 
sold at the retail level as a "speed-up" component for 486SX systems, much 
like the 8087 and 287 used to be sold, leaving the 486SX in place does make 
some sense. It takes a fair amount of familiarity with circuit boards, 
sockets, etc. to wrestle a 486SX out of its socket without damaging the 
board around it ( even with the right tools ). For the level of customer 
likely to purchase this chip as an after-market speed-up, it makes sense 
that they can buy the chip and easily plug it into an empty socket without 
a lot of hassle. I shudder to think how many systems would be brought back 
to the store for repair, mangled in an attempt to extract the 486SX from its 
socket.

-- 
Dan Hildebrand                     email: danh@qnx.com
Quantum Software Systems, Ltd.     QUICS: danh  (613) 591-0934 (data)
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