This is sort of a silly question, but theoretically, If a person had some sort of a "high-end" DOS machine such as a 486 or an early Pentium, would they be able to use a 386 upgrade card to "downgrade" the machine to a speed suitable for playing older, more speed-sensitive games (such as the original Wing Commander)? I'm just wondering, that's all. 🤣
Hmm.. It could work with a pre 586 computer.
It must have a real ISA-Bus (without PCI-ISA bridge).
I think the CPU on the mainboard must be removed, too.
I've never even heard of cards like that before.
I would think that a 486 or early Pentium equipped with a Turbo button would be a much better idea.
I share that opinion.
Those upgrade cards were rare and expensive.
They took over the bus, thus making the mainboard to some kind of backplane.
There were also even rarer 386SX upgrade boards that could be inserted into the 286 socket.
wrote:would they be able to use a 386 upgrade card to "downgrade" the machine to a speed suitable for playing older, more speed-sensitive games (such as the original Wing Commander)?
In order to slow a machine down to run wing commander 1, all you have to do is disable first level cache. A P3 without first level has just the right speed to do it. Actually, if you want to scale the performance, you need to change the RAM speed via bus clock. CPU Speed is a minor influence once that L1 cache is out.
