It's just that this board is ca. 1996 and PCI is actually from 1992 - meaning, that PCI logo, at least relative to the board's s […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-11, 13:34:
Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-11, 13:31:I didn't know ALDI made Socket 3 motherboards :P
Is it their own chipset, not just a relable?
I guess the cache might bring some […]
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I didn't know ALDI made Socket 3 motherboards 😜
Is it their own chipset, not just a relable?
I guess the cache might bring some advantage but non that might not be compensated by an otherwise less-than-optimal chipset.
Not so sure by the looks of it, but it might even have PCI local bus, what do you think?
*pokes
Yes yes This is definitely sarcasm.
It's just that this board is ca. 1996 and PCI is actually from 1992 - meaning, that PCI logo, at least relative to the board's size, is the largest one ever screaming at me, but from a time when PCI was truly NTWHA. 😉
OK, in all seriousness, I've asked uncle google and answered my own question: There was indeed an outfit in Hongkong by the name of ALD who designed this thing, including the chipset:
https://www.aldtech.com/products/chips/93c488/c488spec.pdf
And, while it well might be a top notch 486, I'm pretty sure it was never even intended to be a top performer.
All about it, compact, highly integrated single chip design and Cyrix CPU, says "Pentium era budget system".
It probably was optimized for price and stability, but PB cache was merely readily available back then and two chips much cheaper to realize than eight dip SRAMs.
There was a famous PC which really was sold by ALDI, in 1996.
That used the FIC PIO2 motherboard with VIA chipset and Cyrix 5x86:
http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/fic … motherboard.jpg
- not a top benchmark contender, but apparently very stable and affordable.