While on the subject of co-processors... What's the cross-compatibility like on those things? Can you use a regular 387 in a Weitek socket, and also, can you use a 487DLC along side a plain 386DX? I've been kinda thinking of filling the empty Weitek socket on my board, just for the hell of it, but I'm not sure what I can actually use in it.

At the CPU Collection link, it basically said that the Weitek chips were only used for expensive CAD/CAM apps. They were much less popular than the Intel 387s.

What games use a 387 though? I know of Falcon 3. Games from the 486 era that use a FPU probably shouldn't count because they'd be too slow anyway. A friend of mine from long ago bought a Cyrix 287 chip for Falcon 3. 😀

Yeah, the Weitek seems like it would be pretty much useless for most purposes, unless you really wanted to do CAD on a 386. What I'm interested in, though, is whether you can plug a common 387 into the Weitek socket and have it work. It looks like it'd fit physically, but were those sockets usually set up to allow that, or were they Weitek-only?

I think if your board has an EMC socket, you can plug in a Weitek or a 387.
See f.e. this for a simple MC-socket: http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/ps2/8580innen.jpg
And EMC with an another pin row around: http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pics/mb_chips_386.jpg
For Cyrix FasMath for the 386SX came in a SLCC package though.

elianda is right. sorry, i should have elaborated more originally.

I bought myself a 387 back in 1992 or 1993. I wasn't using it for games but was iterating chaotical systems on my 386. The programming language offered FPU support, so I decided to try. I was blown out of the water by amazement. Things speeded up by a factor of TEN. I never regretted that purchase.

FPU emulation is super slow. That's probably why the difference was so great. 😀

I had a little Linux-based PDA back around 2002 called a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. That has a 206 MHz StrongARM CPU which doesn't have a FPU. Somebody ported Quake over to it but without a FPU it was not playable. Doom (prboom) on the other hand was quite playable and I even got Timidity running software wavetable MIDI with it.

That's one of the catches to those nifty little embedded CPUs even today. They rarely have a FPU. It's just not needed for the application.

GL1zdA wrote:

Dual 386 computer existed in the form of the Compaq SystemPro, but it was only supported by Windows NT 3.1.

How about Novell Netware 3.x?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

GL1zdA wrote:

Dual 386 computer existed in the form of the Compaq SystemPro, but it was only supported by Windows NT 3.1.

How about Novell Netware 3.x?

Yes, probably, but I am mostly interested in running NT on early multiprocessor systems, thats why I was only writing about NT.

In high school, we had a "mini-supercomputer" (Sequent S27) that had eight 386/387 pairs. Ran a variant of UNIX called DYNIX.

It lives...

Compaq SystemPro?

Cool 😎

Cool, you should be able to run NT 3.1 with support for both CPUs on this machine. AFAIK it should offload some tasks to the second CPU (unlike most current systems, the 386 SystemPro is an asymetric SMP machine).

CompaQ SystemPro was dual 386 (and 486).

GL1zdA wrote:

Cool, you should be able to run NT 3.1 with support for both CPUs on this machine. AFAIK it should offload some tasks to the second CPU (unlike most current systems, the 386 SystemPro is an asymetric SMP machine).

Yea... this is as far as I have got. Having problems with my SCSI controller so have had to put NT3.1 ($10 NIB) on an IDE drive for now.

I've yet to properly run anything useful... or even try to bench the system under NT3.1, untilizing both CPU's.

Stojke wrote:

CompaQ SystemPro was dual 386 (and 486).

Yep... I only have one 486 board though from a Deskpro I have, the boards are transferrable between systems.

Didnt see your comment I commented from the first page 🤣

I have one CPU card for that system with 33MHz 386.

man duel 386 is even more useless then my duel P3's...I Love it!!
I recommend playing around with Netware, remember this was the main server OS at the time.
Plus the screensaver is a snake that gets longer depending on cpu load, add a 2nd cpu get a 2nd snake!! and that's just cool

chinny22 wrote:

Plus the screensaver is a snake that gets longer depending on cpu load, add a 2nd cpu get a 2nd snake!! and that's just cool

My snake is bigger than yours 🤣

Yep. Compaq did make a server with dual 386's that could be upgraded to dual 486's. I've been searching for a SystemPro for a long time. I was beginning to think there weren't any left. They were really expensive in their day and only businesses bought them. Many were probably leased and turned back in when they became obsolete and were either stripped for parts or scrapped by Compaq.