🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug20.195630.5993@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> wjc@guardian.austin.ibm.com (Bill Collum) writes:
>I have been shopping around for 486/EISA system for the past week
>or so (primarily inteneded for OS/2 development work). Some of the 
>vendors I have encountered have claimed that
>their EISA systems will be "upgradeable" to the 586/P5 processor
>sometime next spring. I had thought that the 586 was to be a
>completely different chip architecture, and that compatibility
>with existing motherboards would therefore be unlikely. What is
>the net.opinion on this subject? Will it be possible to upgrade a 486
>system to a 586, or is this just vendor hype? Please post
>responses to the net, as I guarantee that you will have trouble
>reaching me via E-mail.
>

This is pure speculation, but it seems to me that any upgrade path
would be via a plug-in daughtercard rather than a pin-compatible
replacement that you could plug into a 486 socket.  A number of
motherboards are built with the CPU and cache on a small daughtercard
that plugs into a special slot on the motherboard.  This makes it easy
to upgrade the CPU by a simple card swap.  So it should be
theoretically possible to upgrade this type of system to a P5, though
I wouldn't count on these systems to perform as well as one that was
designed around the P5 from the ground up.

Paul


-- 
Niven's Law #14:   There exist minds that think as well as you do, but
                   differently.
Niven's Corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you're talking to isn't
                   necessarily one of them.