I think it would be better for you to just use the 486SXL2-50 as a single clocked 40MHz chip instead. Since it has 8kb cache it should be faster than the DLC-40. The 486SXL2-50 runs with the clock doubler disabled by default. I used to own this chip, and I found the clock doubling feature to be troublesome. While it's fast when it works, good luck finding a 386 board that supports it properly. If you want to upgrade a 386, I recommend IBM 486DLC chips instead.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I think it would be better for you to just use the 486SXL2-50 as a single clocked 40MHz chip instead. Since it has 8kb cache it should be faster than the DLC-40. The 486SXL2-50 runs with the clock doubler disabled by default. I used to own this chip, and I found the clock doubling feature to be troublesome. While it's fast when it works, good luck finding a 386 board that supports it properly. If you want to upgrade a 386, I recommend IBM 486DLC chips instead.

I've never seen an IBM 486 that fits a 386 socket, only surface mounted to an IBM motherboard. Did they even make them in PGA132? I've only seen them in QFP packaging.

In the beginning the IBM SLC/DLC chips were only available with official IBM motherboards and upgrades, but I think in the last couple months of their life, IBM sold a whole bunch of them to upgrade companies. So while you can't get a PGA132 in a ceramic package, you certainly can get surface mount chips on adapter boards that fit into PGA132 sockets. The one I have is made by a Japanese company for PC98 systems, but you can also get them from American companies like Kingston. Some of them also have sockets for FPU, which is nice.

I opened it up and the motherboard has a 50mhz oscillator and no switches or jumpers for changing the speed so for now I'm stuck with 25mhz. The oscillator looks like it may be socketed(!) and it is tied down with a piece of zip tie. If I replace the 50mhz oscillator with an 80mhz one, will that change the motherboard speed to 40mhz?

Yes, but you will need to make some adjustments in the BIOS to keep things like ISA from running out of spec.

Yes, but you will need to make some adjustments in the BIOS to keep things like ISA from running out of spec.

Or if you feel adventurous, you could try leaving the ISA speed as-is. Many cards will work fine at the resulting 13.33mhz ISA speed (out of all my ISA cards, my Etherlink III is the only one that won't), and it would give you a nice little performance boost.

Well, it looks like oscillators are out of the question. The cheapest one I can find that looks like it fits is $45.

Maybe you are looking for the wrong thing?

http://www.reichelt.de/?ACTION=3;ARTICLE=13721;PROVID=2402

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

Maybe you are looking for the wrong thing?

http://www.reichelt.de/?ACTION=3;ARTICLE=13721;PROVID=2402

I was looking here

http://www.google.com/products?q=crystal+osci … hl=en&scoring=p

There's also someone on ebay selling a 50 lot for $180 but I can't spare $180 and will never use 50 of them.

Does that place have an English page? I don't think it would be worth it to ship from Germany to USA.

If you click on these google links there's no mention of $45.00 anymore.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

If you click on these google links there's no mention of $45.00 anymore.

Yeah but they have a minimum qty of 1000 pieces for $1400. 😳

Mouser should be in US?

www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Fox/F1100 ... NrSSbok%3d

The descriptions on those parts are a little vague unless you know what to look for... the standard 386 oscillator is actually called "DIP-14" size, even though it only has 4 pins, since it actually will fit in a DIP-14 socket using the outermost 4 pins.

So yeah, short version, the one h-a-l-9000 linked is the one you'd need.

Does anyone know how to tell by looking at the chip if a TX486DLC/E-40GA or TX486DLC-40BGA has 8KB or 1KB of L1 cache? Wiki mentions these Texas Instruments cpus come in either 1 KB or 8 KB configurations, whereas the ones marked as Cyrix are 1 KB.

I assume that the Intel 386DX-33 and Amd 386DX-40 are both L1 cacheless?

Neither of those two chips will have the 8kb cache. The "variation" that they speak of is called the "486SXL"

I have the TX486DLC/E chips and a Cyrix -33GP but neither of their L1 cache's show up in cachechk or speedsys. There is not an option in the motherboard to enable L1 cache. I have an ABIT FU340 rev.B. Do I need a specific motherboard which supports the L1 cache of these CPUS?

maybe you need a program to enable L1? My 486slc2 upgrade chip has a program that you need to run in autoexec for the 1kb L1 cache gets enabled...

What's the name of the program? Can you upload it or send a link?

Have you tested the workability of the program via Speedsys, cachechk, or with similarly minded applications?

yes it works fine... but it is not for use with a Cyrix -33GP cpu