derSammler wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

There is no "487". The 486SX is identical except with FPU disabled. When a processor is inserted in the expansion socket, the soldered on processor is disabled.

There is. While you are correct that the SX had just the FPU disabled, they still made a 487 to go with it. The 487 was a full 486DX (which took over the system when inserted) but with one pin changed on the chip and the socket, so you can neither put a 486DX in a 487 socket, nor a 487 in a 486 socket.

I know, but in terms of silicon, it's nothing but a 486DX that's been rebadged with an extra pin. Pure marketing.

The 486SX itself was pure marketing too from what I remember - most of them were complete DX’s with the maths co pro disabled, I.e Intel took and extra step to make it an SX and create an extra market with the same product.

The SX was a good option for most people - not much used the maths co pro outside of CAD, etc.

Actually, no. Intel never produced any 486SX, just like they never produced any 60 MHz Pentiums. Those CPUs were rejects that did not run at full speed or in the case of the SX had a broken FPU. Since silicon was very expensive, CPUs were clocked down and/or faulty parts were disabled and then they were sold for a lower price. This is how it is still done today. Only highest specs CPUs are produced. Faulty ones are degraded. Sometimes, if demand for lower-end CPUs is high, even CPUs are degraded that are fully working.

derSammler wrote:

Actually, no. Intel never produced any 486SX, just like they never produced any 60 MHz Pentiums. Those CPUs were rejects that did not run at full speed or in the case of the SX had a broken FPU. Since silicon was very expensive, CPUs were clocked down and/or faulty parts were disabled and then they were sold for a lower price. This is how it is still done today. Only highest specs CPUs are produced. Faulty ones are degraded. Sometimes, if demand for lower-end CPUs is high, even CPUs are degraded that are fully working.

My understanding is that this was initially the case, but later on the SX CPU's were produced with no math co-processor.
Another thing I've read was that this was purely a marketing trick to try and get people to buy a 486 CPU (instead of AMD's 386DX-40, which came out around the same time).
Intel intentionally disabled the math co-processor which actually ended costing more than the equivalent DX CPU. However, because profit margins were so high and they didn't cost that much to produce, Intel could still sell the SX CPU's for cheaper than their DX counterparts.

That's not true from what I've read. In the first place, yes, SX chips were rejected DXs, but once the manufacturing process became more efficient, they still made SXs, because their core was much smaller, so they could produce more 486SXs in a row, making them cheaper to manufacture.

Recycling cpus with actually DEFECTIVE parts wasn't really a thing back in those days. A pentium 60 is not defective, it just can't reach the targetted speed of 66MHz. A 386SX isn't a defective 386DX either it's the same thing with less wires connected to it (making the motherboard cheaper to design and manufacture). Even the original celerons aren't rejected pentium IIs, they are just pentium II cores built with no cache (or with integrated cache for the mendocino ones) that's cheaper to produce than just the core itself with ultra fast SRAM chips on the same PCB.

With bigger SOI and less complex chips, the reject rate was probably much smaller than today, and there was probably not much to disable to "save" those chips.

Deksor wrote:

That's not true from what I've read. In the first place, yes, SX chips were rejected DXs, but once the manufacturing process became more efficient, they still made SXs, because their core was much smaller, so they could produce more 486SXs in a row, making them cheaper to manufacture.

Were they binned to SX due to FPU failure in testing or diverted from the DX line to fill a market segment? I've also heard that SXs were eventually produced without the FPU block like you said, but I wonder how long this would have been given the short time period before AMD and Cyrix began squeezing down the 486DX price points.

The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486SX) has some information on the 486SX and also links to this background piece: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/lies-damn-lies-and-wikipedia/ .

SCM-10 (boxed) arrived today. Got it mainly for MPU part.

Everything seems pretty intact.

But most importantly, have a great 2018 folks!

So nice; is that brand new?

appiah4 wrote:

So nice; is that brand new?

Was listed as new, but of course cannot say for sure. Inspected the card closely though - no dust or slot cover screw markings and such, disks / books sealed, shiny PCB..Guess if it was used it was briefly put on a test bench and then tucked away until this day.

IBM ThinkPad A31 - sadly not the A31p that was advertised. 1.6 GHz P4M, 16MB ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 graphics, 1GB RAM; needs some TLC and a good clean, but bar a flakey power port, it all seems to work fine.

This one is gonna need a little TLC (crossing fingers) 😵

Artex wrote:

This one is gonna need a little TLC (crossing fingers) :dead: […]
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This one is gonna need a little TLC (crossing fingers) 😵

YOU....you.... lucky creature!! 🤣

Very nice! Hope it works, what's the tlc? Bend pins? If that's the case they very rarely brake on a 486 cpu afaik so it shouldn't be a problem.

meljor wrote:

YOU....you.... lucky creature!! 🤣

Very nice! Hope it works, what's the tlc? Bend pins? If that's the case they very rarely brake on a 486 cpu afaik so it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, I don't even wanna show the other side. 🙁 This clearly came from a scrap lot years ago and the previous owner just jammed it into his Socket 3 motherboard without first straightening the pins. When I received it, I pulled it out of the board to clean it and snap some pix - 3 pins remained in the socket and 2 more we so loose that even touching them was enough to detach each . It also looks like he did a crappy job trying to solder one of the pins himself, and it literally just fell into my hands. This was the $1500 lot mentioned a while back and the seller never bothered to show the pin side of the processor - just a picture of it in the socket. Shame on me....but that's another story.

Artex wrote:

meljor wrote:

YOU....you.... lucky creature!! 🤣

Very nice! Hope it works, what's the tlc? Bend pins? If that's the case they very rarely brake on a 486 cpu afaik so it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, I don't even wanna show the other side. 🙁 This clearly came from a scrap lot years ago and the previous owner just jammed it into his Socket 3 motherboard without first straightening the pins. When I received it, I pulled it out of the board to clean it and snap some pix - 3 pins remained in the socket and 2 more we so loose that even touching them was enough to detach each . It also looks like he did a crappy job trying to solder one of the pins himself, and it literally just fell into my hands. This was the $1500 lot mentioned a while back and the seller never bothered to show the pin side of the processor - just a picture of it in the socket. Shame on me....but that's another story.

WOW! That's lame! 😵

I had to look up that ad and found it, the seller did show the Cyrix 133 in the system AND later on showed a boot screen of a working Cyrix. That is some very ugly business.... amazing people like that even exist. Can't you return the lot?

EDIT: looked again and at the very bottom there is: vends dans l'état, aucune réclamation Translated it means: Sold as is, no claim
That's just.......damn. Even I am pissed just when reading about it. I really hope someone can fix it for you or something.

KORG NS5R

meljor wrote:

WOW! That's lame! :dead: […]
Show full quote

Artex wrote:

meljor wrote:

YOU....you.... lucky creature!! 🤣

Very nice! Hope it works, what's the tlc? Bend pins? If that's the case they very rarely brake on a 486 cpu afaik so it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, I don't even wanna show the other side. 🙁 This clearly came from a scrap lot years ago and the previous owner just jammed it into his Socket 3 motherboard without first straightening the pins. When I received it, I pulled it out of the board to clean it and snap some pix - 3 pins remained in the socket and 2 more we so loose that even touching them was enough to detach each . It also looks like he did a crappy job trying to solder one of the pins himself, and it literally just fell into my hands. This was the $1500 lot mentioned a while back and the seller never bothered to show the pin side of the processor - just a picture of it in the socket. Shame on me....but that's another story.

WOW! That's lame! 😵

I had to look up that ad and found it, the seller did show the Cyrix 133 in the system AND later on showed a boot screen of a working Cyrix. That is some very ugly business.... amazing people like that even exist. Can't you return the lot?

EDIT: looked again and at the very bottom there is: vends dans l'état, aucune réclamation Translated it means: Sold as is, no claim
That's just.......damn. Even I am pissed just when reading about it. I really hope someone can fix it for you or something.

That disclaimer is not legally binding. If the lot is not as advertised (and it obviously isn't if it showed a boot screen for a damaged CPU) you can get a refund through eBay/Paypal.

debs3759 wrote:

That disclaimer is not legally binding. If the lot is not as advertised (and it obviously isn't if it showed a boot screen for a damaged CPU) you can get a refund through eBay/Paypal.

I'm definitely going to try and recoup some of the cost. We'll see...

Artex wrote:

meljor wrote:

YOU....you.... lucky creature!! 🤣

Very nice! Hope it works, what's the tlc? Bend pins? If that's the case they very rarely brake on a 486 cpu afaik so it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, I don't even wanna show the other side. 🙁 This clearly came from a scrap lot years ago and the previous owner just jammed it into his Socket 3 motherboard without first straightening the pins. When I received it, I pulled it out of the board to clean it and snap some pix - 3 pins remained in the socket and 2 more we so loose that even touching them was enough to detach each . It also looks like he did a crappy job trying to solder one of the pins himself, and it literally just fell into my hands. This was the $1500 lot mentioned a while back and the seller never bothered to show the pin side of the processor - just a picture of it in the socket. Shame on me....but that's another story.

Very shady... unfortunate to hear of this kind of behaviour. I hope you get some compensation whilst being able to repair the CPU.

Regardless how much the situation is resolved, I would still leave a negative comment so other people are warned of this... not saying i'll buy from them in future but if they try something similar, I sure know I would like to know of this before bidding on any auctions they have.

Been quite quiet of late with little to no acquisitions... apart from this: -

Need to do a RTC job on it, but after this... should be good to go!