First post, by Jupiter-18
During my research on retro systems, I discovered a 486 CPU that seems a bit rare and very interesting! The IBM 486BL. Apparently it was developed by IBM to be a high-performance 486, but due to the licensing contract from Intel, they could only sell it as an integrated CPU on a motherboard, as was often the case in the 286-486 era. According to the Redhill CPU Guide, it was a really high performance 486, despite running at an external 25MHz (75MHz internal). It had a full 32-bit bus width, featured 16kb L1 cache, and the boards it was used on had a full 32-bit VLB I/O, onboard 16550 UART high-speed modem, and a high-speed 32-bit HDD controller. They also used 72-pin SIMMS in 4MB or 16MB sticks. I've really become interested in finding one, but I have no idea what boards it was used on. Can anyone help me with this? It came out in 1993, so what GPU would I want to use? With VLB in mind, I'd probably go for the old ET4000, but were there other options?