My most memorable retro CPUs:

AMD 486DX-40
Intel 486DX2-66
AMD 486DX4-133
Intel Pentium MMX

Intel Pentium 60.... IT CANT DIVIDE LOL!
Intel Pentium III 500.... IT KNOW WHERE U LIVE LOL!
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz....... IT BLOW UP LOL!

486 - If you grew up in the 90s, it's as ubiquitous as Saturday cartoons
Pentium 133/166 = Everyone had one
Celeron 300A - I have a soft spot for this model (especially paired with the Intel 440BX) as did many who decided to see what this overclocking business was all about
Pentium III (Katmai) - Pentium II SSE or Pentium II Marketing Edition
Athlon - Intel has some competition finally
Pentium III (coppermine) 1133 - The only way to make it more miserable is to pair it with the SDRAM version of Intel's i820
Pentium M

I've always loved the slot processors. and the Pentium pro.

I remember the dismal failure of the initial Pentium 4's... Sure it runs at 1.7ghz! but only has the performance of a 1ghz p3. So lets cancel the freaking awesome tualatins and focus on the nuclear furnaces that the p4 net-burst became... and rimms...

Pentium 75 - had this in my one of my older laptops; running Win98 on it felt like running XP on a Pentium II. Other than that, it was more than adequate for Win95 and WfWG 3.11 (which was what was installed on it before 98), as well as DOS games.

Celeron 300A - For any overclocking enthusiast who wanted a PII-450 but couldn't afford it, this was their bread and butter.

Socket A Athlons (non-XP/MP) - #2 pencil trick anyone?

Athlon 1400 - The final one using the Thunderbird core. I didn't own one but one of my friends did, and wow, this thing was like a furnace. It eventually died from overheating. Luckily the successive chips (XP/MP) ran cooler.

Pentium 4 1.6A (Northwood) - For all the enthusiasts who enjoyed overclocking it to 2.4GHz and beyond without having to pay the premium. Very overclockable chip without having to use any overly-fancy cooling, along with the 1.8A.

Pentium M - had this in one of my laptops; precursor to the Core microarchitecture. Wish I had a Socket 479 converter so I can use it in a 478 board, as I much prefer the performance and power consumption of these over an equivalent-clocked Pee4.

Intel P233MMX... one of the best damned processors ever made! 😀

I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly, so I'll just start typing what CPU's I think are worth having for me now.

01. Anything with "486" printed on top that fits into a 386DX socket - maximum 386! 😁
02. 486SX2-66 - maximum 486SX! 😜
03. 486DX-4 with 16kb wb cache - just because I think it's a nice chip
04. 5x86 - Either AMD or Cyrix, these were AMD's and Cyrix's answer to the all powerful Pentium
05. Pentium Overdrive for Socket 3 - Somewhat of a failure, but a VERY interesting chip
06. Pentium Socket 4 - THE very first Pentium ever made and quite a huge chip
07. Pentium 200 and 233mmx - the fastest of their kind
07a. Pentium Pro 200 1M
08. Pentium 266mmx - mobile chip for Socket 7
09. Any Cyrix MII low voltage
10. Rise and Winchip
11. K6-III, especially the 2.2v variant. They seem to be pretty hard to come by. Very compatible chip 😀
12. K6-(any)+
13. Deschutes 333 and 400 Unlocked Edition 😁
14. Deschutes 450, fastest Deschutes ever made
15. Katmai 600 (listed to pleeze swaaye 😜)
16. Cyrix III non-winchip version...why do they have to be so rare 🙁
17. Coppermine 1000 with IHS (also Celeron Coppermine with IHS)
18. Via C3 pre-Nehemiah and Nehemiah (I want a 1.4Ghz one! 😜)
19. Slot A Thunderbird...with suitable motherboard!
20. Tualatin, because they were so great
21. s423 1.3Ghz, because of their suckage
22. s423 2.0Ghz, because they such even more electricity
23. Thunderbird 1400B and 1400C
24. XP 2600+ 266Mhz fsb (yes I know there are mobiles that are faster)
25. XP 3200+
26. s754 Venice 2.2Ghz
27. s939 Venice 2.2+Ghz

Are you purely talking about PC's? I think it's highly dependent on what systems you used, and what your first computer experiences were.

You've got a bit of a compromise to make if you want 'retro' but still 'modern' feel. Anything prior to, say the later P2 or P3-450 is going to be pretty much dedicated to period software.

For me I would have to say that the Zilog Z80, MOS 6502 and Motorola 68000 are stand out processors as they were ubiquitous in all the home computers of my childhood.

In terms of PC's it has to be the 80286 and 486DX2 for me, as they powered the first PC I owned and the first machine I ever ran Linux on (way, way back in 1995/96), respectively. I had a 386SX between those, but it was nothing special for me (not because of the performance, but because it didn't represent a 'first' at anything).

My votes for memorable cpu's:

- k6/2+ and k6/3+ because of easy flexibility at the low end

- transputer because it sounded so cool. Never had one though, let alone a board full. I guess those nvidia processors are kind-of filling that niche in a way [sort of parallel processing addon board, I know the technology will be utterly different]. Can't remember the name - teflon or tetra or something.

Pretty much all the rest are only memorable because I had one or used one, and they worked, rather than because of any uniquely noteworthy attribute:

- 286 because the AT beat the shit out of the XT at work
- P100 because it was the first Pentium and could play quake
- k6/2 because of crappy via boards [the man-days I lost at work due to random lockups in the mid90s...]
- P3 866 cos its sooo much better than k6/2 400
- phenom x4 because finally multitasking in windows seems pretty smooth. Also it supports virtualization.

rfnagel wrote:

Intel P233MMX... one of the best damned processors ever made! 😀

I'd like to know more!

I do have one of these and I also have a mobile 266MMX, but haven't tested this one yet.

Any interesting trivia about this chip?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I'd like to know more! […]
Show full quote

rfnagel wrote:

Intel P233MMX... one of the best damned processors ever made! 😀

I'd like to know more!

I do have one of these and I also have a mobile 266MMX, but haven't tested this one yet.

Any interesting trivia about this chip?

Well, the P1-233mmx isn't particularly special, but I like it as it's Intel's very last Socket 7 CPU (for desktops anyway) before they abandoned Socket 7 for Slot 1. And it has a very good FPU that (clock for clock) even the K6+'s found hard to match.
It's also a very compatible chip, and it "just works" in virtually any Socket 7 board you throw it in 😉
And it runs relatively cool compared to contemporary chips made by AMD and especially Cyrix (though the later MII's were substantially cooler).

Btw, I also have one 266mmx Pentium which I also haven't tested yet (like a lot of other chips I have 😜).

Coolies!

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I do have one of these and I also have a mobile 266MMX, but haven't tested this one yet. Any interesting trivia about this chip?

I really have no trivia about it. Simply put, it was considered by many as one of the best and most stable processors of the time... no overheating problems, no other strange problems or incompatabilities, and such 😀

It would overclock rather nicely/smoothly to 263MHZ, and was still quite stable. Heh, I was regularly using an old P233MMX up until about 5 or 6 years ago 😀

Hehe, just remembered something else:

Back in 1996-97 or so I aquired one of the original prototypes of the Intel P233MMX from a lady who's husband worked in the R&D lab at Intel. She felt sorry for me at the time, as I was still on an old 486DX4-100 (that's the one that I've linked to previously here in the forums here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_486DX4-100.htm <grin>).

It was already built-up in a case, complete with hard drive, video card, RAM, CD-ROM and floppy drives; so's she boxed it up and shipped it to me 😀

I no longer have that old PC (I broke it down some time ago), but here it was back then (6 years ago, or so) -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwood … ad_38_Large.jpg 😀

Nice!

I have the plain Pentium 200 and the Pentium 233MMX. The MMX chips are heaps faster, also once you disable the Cache. I found this quite interesting and it shows that there is more to this chip than just MMX. They must have improved it in other areas as well.

Back in the day I had a Pentium 133 and I wasn't aware that the MMX are faster clock for clock, I thought they added MMX and that was it. My board wasn't compatible with MMX however and the Pentium 200 cost a fortune (I read in the internet that the Pentium 200 is a bit harder to find, because not many people bought this chip and went for a MMX instead).
I then upgraded my Voodoo to a Voodoo 2 only to realise that the CPU was holding the card back. So I then upgraded to a Pentium 3-300 which was the uber machine back in the days. It was brand spanking new I couldn’t believe the performance it offered.

But it didn’t last long, the next few years hardware just exploded and I checked myself out from playing with computers (3 years of Uni / drinking in the UK) 🤣

PS: Your story reminds of something. Somehow IT people are the nicest people you can meet!

PS PS: I wish we had digital cameras back in the day... Kids these days have it so much better 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

The MMX chips are heaps faster

That was one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post... that P233MMX would run circles around other (non-intel) processors that were a LOT faster. I remember when I built up my first AMD500 (I'm sure that I've prolly previously mentioned that PC elsehwere here in the forums... prolly in that 'big cases' thread). My P233MMX ran considerably faster in some respects than the AMD500 🤣!

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

PS: Your story reminds of something. Somehow IT people are the nicest people you can meet!

You betcha 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

PS PS: I wish we had digital cameras back in the day... Kids these days have it so much better 🤣

Hehe, quite true. MAN! Do I wish that I had some pics from back (mid 80's, or so) when I used to work at Milgo (later called Racal-Milgo, and then simply Racal)... 2400baud modems the size of a desktop PC, "drum" drives (the size of a small filing cabinet), and 14" floppy drivers 🤣! 😀

Totally OT, but I heard about this data migration company from New York a while ago.

Basically imagine yourself hording all this vintage hardware. And in 50 years nobody has this kind of hardware anymore, but there are important historical documents, which libraries and other bodies really really would like to migrate into more future proof formats.

So yea guys, keep collecting and in 50 years you might be able to profit immensely 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Totally OT, but I heard about this data migration company from New York a while ago.

Basically imagine yourself hording all this vintage hardware. And in 50 years nobody has this kind of hardware anymore, but there are important historical documents, which libraries and other bodies really really would like to migrate into more future proof formats.

So yea guys, keep collecting and in 50 years you might be able to profit immensely 🤣

For an example of the very thing you're talking about... and in a considerably shorter timeframe than 50 years, see the BBC Domesday Project, and the issues they have had/are having.

Fascinating, thanks for sharing!

Yup, a single year in computer history kinda counts for several years in other areas of history 😜
But I assume that's mostly because computer history is a very young history, compared to other areas of history.
For a painting, 20 years means hardly anything but in the computer world, 20 years is more like a couple generations.

rfnagel wrote:

I really have no trivia about it. Simply put, it was considered by many as one of the best and most stable processors of the tim […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I do have one of these and I also have a mobile 266MMX, but haven't tested this one yet. Any interesting trivia about this chip?

I really have no trivia about it. Simply put, it was considered by many as one of the best and most stable processors of the time... no overheating problems, no other strange problems or incompatabilities, and such 😀

It would overclock rather nicely/smoothly to 263MHZ, and was still quite stable. Heh, I was regularly using an old P233MMX up until about 5 or 6 years ago 😀

Hehe, just remembered something else:

Back in 1996-97 or so I aquired one of the original prototypes of the Intel P233MMX from a lady who's husband worked in the R&D lab at Intel. She felt sorry for me at the time, as I was still on an old 486DX4-100 (that's the one that I've linked to previously here in the forums here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_486DX4-100.htm <grin>).

It was already built-up in a case, complete with hard drive, video card, RAM, CD-ROM and floppy drives; so's she boxed it up and shipped it to me 😀

I no longer have that old PC (I broke it down some time ago), but here it was back then (6 years ago, or so) -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwood … ad_38_Large.jpg 😀

If you still have that CPU, it's probably an Engineering Sample, you should treasure it! 😉