"General info
The IIT DLC is the mathematical co-processor for 386/486 hybrid processors such as the Cyrix Cx486 DLC/SLC and Texas Instruments TX486DLC."

It is a 387 FPU. Or rather, a compatible one made to accompany a 486DLC.

derSammler wrote:

It is a 387 FPU. Or rather, a compatible one made to accompany a 486DLC.

So... should it not really be installed there by the 386DX..?

Miphee wrote:

"General info
The IIT DLC is the mathematical co-processor for 386/486 hybrid processors such as the Cyrix Cx486 DLC/SLC and Texas Instruments TX486DLC."

So it does not really belong there..?

It's compatible, so while it's originally meant for a 486DLC, it will work fine with a 386DX as well.

It's a working pair.

Ok cool.

Now I guess I’ll decide which is best to keep, if this setup or a different one I have with a 386SX but also 40Mhz... Motherboard is different though, it’s M396F V2.6 that does not seem to be PC Chips.

If it's an M396F it should be PC chips (or one of their alternate names). What's written on the chipset?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

If it's an M396F it should be PC chips (or one of their alternate names). What's written on the chipset?

Maybe it’s a rebranded pc chips then, seems to be this same one but a slightly higher version number...

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/forcom-m396f.html

Personally I'd keep the DX40, the SX is practically crippled by its 16-bit bus.

Definitely not a PCChips m396f, mine has 4 simm slots and hosts a 386sx class CPU, and there is no LIF socket such as this in it.

You can see here how mine looks like : SARC RC2016A8 chipset on PCChips M396F

Deksor wrote:

Definitely not a PCChips m396f, mine has 4 simm slots and hosts a 386sx class CPU, and there is no LIF socket such as this in it.

You can see here how mine looks like : SARC RC2016A8 chipset on PCChips M396F

I think they all have the same origin. Mine has a different branding on the chipset (see next post) but still...

Anonymous Coward wrote:

If it's an M396F it should be PC chips (or one of their alternate names). What's written on the chipset?

Wait you have two mobos ? I thought just had the one in your first post ^^

Well then your 386SX is the same as mine, PCChips is known to rebrand chipsets, they kept doing that up to the pentium 3 era at least. Mine must just have the original chipset not rebranded for some reasons. Knowing which chipset they use can be useful for many reasons : troubleshooting (if you know what they used, then it's easier to find the pinout or the chipset if you have some issues with the mobo), finding better bioses (other mobos might use the same chipset which may have better bioses)

Edit ah well maybe I don't have the original chipset name either.

Deksor wrote:

Wait you have two mobos ? I thought just had the one in your first post ^^

Well then your 386SX is the same as mine, PCChips is known to rebrand chipsets, they kept doing that up to the pentium 3 era at least. Mine must just have the original chipset not rebranded for some reasons. Knowing which chipset they use can be useful for many reasons : troubleshooting (if you know what they used, then it's easier to find the pinout or the chipset if you have some issues with the mobo), finding better bioses (other mobos might use the same chipset which may have better bioses)

Edit ah well maybe I don't have the original chipset name either.

Yes, I have two, started asking about the one in the OP, but then questioned which to keep and we started talking about the SX board. Seeing which males more sense to keep and which to sell off

Well if you want the fastest of the two, the one with the DX is definitely the better choice. You have a DX40 on it which is much faster than the 386SX40 on your other board. Furthermore, your DX has eight simm slots which means that you can easily install 8MB of ram on it whereas you need to find rare 4MB Simms for the 386SX board to reach that amount.

Deksor wrote:

Well if you want the fastest of the two, the one with the DX is definitely the better choice. You have a DX40 on it which is much faster than the 386SX40 on your other board. Furthermore, your DX has eight simm slots which means that you can easily install 8MB of ram on it whereas you need to find rare 4MB Simms for the 386SX board to reach that amount.

Yes, true. Also has cache.

Not sure I understand the “4MB simms to get 8MB”. Wouldn’t you with 4 x 2MB ones..?

These don't exist as far as I know or if they do they're also quite rare. The most common are 256kb and 1MB sticks.
Then it's 4MB, then maybe 16MB.

2 MB SIMMs do exist, but they are uncommon.