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Some 80286 questions

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First post, by BlueSkullKey

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I see 80286 was available in PLCC/PGA/LCC packages. Any information about which of these were most common on generic clone motherboards (with a CPU socket)? In 1980s/in 1990s?
Also what could have been ratio of soldered on to socketed chips on those?
I've looked at motherboards for sale recently and most were using PLCC, few PGA ones I saw seemed to be for some PCs with non-standard cases, don't know about LCC....
And I usually see XT motherboards with socketed CPU, but 286/386/486 more often come with soldered on. Maybe just the selection I saw. Did it became more common in early 90s? As kid in late 90s/early 00s I've heard some people say that "all PCs before 486/Pentium came with soldered CPU" 😲

And what about 80287? 😀 How common was a coprocessor with a generic 80286 machine? What was timeline of 80287 6Mhz/12Mhz/XL/etc.? Which non-Intel variants were popular in what time (same question about CPUs btw 😀 )?

Reply 1 of 9, by root42

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You rise quite a lot of questions. And I think they are not straightforward to answer.

Well, except that the 80287 was rather the exception.

For your other question I think you would need to make a kind of statistic: either from ebay auctions and pictures, or by researching old PC magazines e.g.on google books. Would be a moderately interesting project I guess...

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Reply 2 of 9, by Jo22

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In the end, the 80286 was most common to be found in PLCC form.
The others were usually used in the ealy days, when they had clock rates below ~10MHz.
Harris made/makes 286es up to 25MHz. The 286 can natively talk to ISA bus.

8087/287 were expensive in the 80s, but became affordable/cheap in the 90s.
These math coprocessors were usually used for animation and CAD like programs and a few games (SimCity).
Windows 3.1 also apparently used a co processor, if available.

However, not all 287 chips ran at the same clock speed..
Early i287 would run on -say- at 2/3, while 287XLs and some clones at 3/2 (some also supported async mode)..

Edit: Also interesting (a classic) - Everything you always wanted to know about math coprocessors
Available at (among many other places) : http://www.cpu-collection.de/info/copro16a.txt

Last edited by Jo22 on 2018-10-03, 08:46. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 3 of 9, by stamasd

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As one datapoint, my current thread WysePC 286 WY-2200-01: the saga is about a 286 early clone which I got recently from ebay. It has a CLCC 80286-10 and it also came with a C80287-10 already installed; apparently these systems were sold with NPUs. It was a pretty high-end system in 1985. I have many 286 systems. Most have PLCC CPUs - I'd say about 80%. One or two have soldered CPUs IIRC. The one above, and a Biostar which I also bought recently, have the high-end CLCC chip.

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Reply 4 of 9, by Hamby

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Jo22 wrote:

These math coprocessors were usually used for animation and CAD like programs and a few games (SimCity).
Windows 3.1 also apparently used a co processor, if available.

You can run Win 3.1 on a 286? How about WFW 3.11?

Reply 5 of 9, by Koltoroc

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Hamby wrote:
Jo22 wrote:

These math coprocessors were usually used for animation and CAD like programs and a few games (SimCity).
Windows 3.1 also apparently used a co processor, if available.

You can run Win 3.1 on a 286? How about WFW 3.11?

3.1 yes, 3.11 no. Something in 3.11 uses 386 specific instructions.

Reply 7 of 9, by weldum

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Koltoroc wrote:
Hamby wrote:
Jo22 wrote:

These math coprocessors were usually used for animation and CAD like programs and a few games (SimCity).
Windows 3.1 also apparently used a co processor, if available.

You can run Win 3.1 on a 286? How about WFW 3.11?

3.1 yes, 3.11 no. Something in 3.11 uses 386 specific instructions.

these are 2 separate versions, Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the latter is more common.
if you need windows with networking, use windows for workgroups 3.1, or lan manager under dos. otherwise you should use standard windows 3.11.

windows for workgroups 3.11 drops support for 286 processors, has 32bit file access, 32bit networking, cache file (like pagefile in later windows versions) and has a 32bit tcp/ip stack that was the foundation for the tcp/ip stack found in Windows 95.

DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475

Reply 8 of 9, by Hamby

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weldum wrote:
these are 2 separate versions, Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the latter is more common. if you need windows with […]
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Koltoroc wrote:
Hamby wrote:

You can run Win 3.1 on a 286? How about WFW 3.11?

3.1 yes, 3.11 no. Something in 3.11 uses 386 specific instructions.

these are 2 separate versions, Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the latter is more common.
if you need windows with networking, use windows for workgroups 3.1, or lan manager under dos. otherwise you should use standard windows 3.11.

windows for workgroups 3.11 drops support for 286 processors, has 32bit file access, 32bit networking, cache file (like pagefile in later windows versions) and has a 32bit tcp/ip stack that was the foundation for the tcp/ip stack found in Windows 95.

I've never seen Windows for Workgroups 3.1, just 3.11... ?

Reply 9 of 9, by weldum

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Hamby wrote:
weldum wrote:
these are 2 separate versions, Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the latter is more common. if you need windows with […]
Show full quote
Koltoroc wrote:

3.1 yes, 3.11 no. Something in 3.11 uses 386 specific instructions.

these are 2 separate versions, Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, the latter is more common.
if you need windows with networking, use windows for workgroups 3.1, or lan manager under dos. otherwise you should use standard windows 3.11.

windows for workgroups 3.11 drops support for 286 processors, has 32bit file access, 32bit networking, cache file (like pagefile in later windows versions) and has a 32bit tcp/ip stack that was the foundation for the tcp/ip stack found in Windows 95.

I've never seen Windows for Workgroups 3.1, just 3.11... ?

i've used it, in winworldpc you can find more information, also in toastytech and, of course, wikipedia

it isn't very useful due to not supporting a tcp/ip stack, in that regard it's best to use lan manager or WFW3.11, also the networking capabilities are limited to 32bit mode and processors

DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475

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