How'd you manage to get your hands on that bad boy?

That's a sweet piece of hardware too!

What? No FPU? meh

😜

Good job dude! Is it in working condition?

I was just reading about it on the net past week. That surely is exotic hardware. Although its legacy is also present in the AMD K6 and maybe the K7's that I run.

SavantStrike wrote:

How'd you manage to get your hands on that bad boy?

That's a sweet piece of hardware too!

Ebay. I'm surprised other VOGONers didn't see it and bid it up. I already received conformation that it shipped so it's safe to talk about it now.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem … em=300562071257

Tetrium wrote:

What? No FPU? meh

😜

Good job dude! Is it in working condition?

Haven't received it yet. Should be here by the middle of next week. Even if it doesn't work it will still make a nice wall hanger. When was last time anybody saw one for sale?

Oh, and there's a Chinese guy selling a PF100 for $850! 🙄

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEXGEN-NX586-PF-100-RARE-/260760946220

gerwin wrote:

I was just reading about it on the net past week. That surely is exotic hardware. Although its legacy is also present in the AMD K6 and maybe the K7's that I run.

The K6 was actually based on the nx686 that would have followed up the nx586 if Nexgen hadn't been bought out. AMD pretty much adapted the nx686 core to Socket 7 because it was mostly complete and their own K6 design was way behind schedule. Buying out Nexgen merely facilitated them getting a K6 to market faster. They really weren't much interested in anything else that was going on at Nexgen. The FPU for Nexgen chips is 80387 based which is why the floating point performance in the AMD K6 family of chips is so weak compared to Intel.

Fascinating! $48? You totally ripped off the seller. I should really scout eBay more often.

Now what would really be cool is if you ran the suite of benchmark programs and added these values to the Ultimate 486 Benchmark.

Again, awesome find for 2011.

feipoa wrote:

Fascinating! $48? You totally ripped off the seller. I should really scout eBay more often.

Now what would really be cool is if you ran the suite of benchmark programs and added these values to the Ultimate 486 Benchmark.

Again, awesome find for 2011.

Except it wouldn't qualify as the Ultimate 486 as the core is actually 386 based. The nx586 was highly optimized for the 386 instruction set and ran those instructions very fast because those were the instructions that were still the most commonly used at the time. 486 and Pentium exclusive instructions were emulated. You don't notice the emulation slowdown because of how fast it runs the 386 instructions and how few 486 and Pentium exclusive instructions were in use by most software at the time. The only way you would notice a slowdown was if you tried to run a program that was rich with 486 and Pentium instructions and the processor spent most of it's time in emulation mode. What was really nice was that in future revisions of the chip they could expand both the super fast core instruction set as well as the emulated instruction set as required to keep up with Intel even with slower, less complex designs. the nx586 actually identifies as a 386 by software that does a CPU check. Windows 95 won't install without a patch that tells it that the CPU is not a 386, but is really one that Windows can use. Linux is a real pain, though, as no modern distro still supports the 386 chip or recognizes the nx586 as not being a 386 limiting you to very old distros. I actually saw a developers note on one Linux site that said they were dropping nx586 support because they didn't think the chip was ever actually released!

Oh, and I forgot the obligatory picture of Dr. Weird to go with the title of this thread so here it is.

🤣

Windows 95 installs without problems on a 386 CPU, only the Win98 installer checks for a 486er.

elianda wrote:

Windows 95 installs without problems on a 386 CPU, only the Win98 installer checks for a 486er.

I always thought it was 95 that dropped 386 support, not that I plan to install 95 on this anyway. With only VL Bus and ISA slots, 95 and 98 would be pretty much a waste since most of the new technologies they support aren't available in cards that fit those slots.

Although... I do have here a ISA card with a PCMCIA slot. I suppose if I bought enough of those I could possibly add USB, Wi-Fi, ethernet, and maybe a few other things using PCMCIA cards if I can get them configured. 😳

48 dollars. Oh man. I think I'm the lucky one when I get like a nice 8 + shipping deal on a motherboard, but some of you Vogoners just seem to attract this stuff.

SavantStrike wrote:

48 dollars. Oh man. I think I'm the lucky one when I get like a nice 8 + shipping deal on a motherboard, but some of you Vogoners just seem to attract this stuff.

It's not attraction, you have to actively be seeking this stuff out and luck plays into it, too. I fully expected this one to go to $150 and possibly more so the final price came as a shock to me, as well. The seller and the other bidders apparently weren't aware of how rare these things are. If there had been someone more hardcore about collecting this stuff in there the price would have been much higher so this one obviously slipped under everyone's radar, which is where the luck comes in.

sliderider wrote:

SavantStrike wrote:

48 dollars. Oh man. I think I'm the lucky one when I get like a nice 8 + shipping deal on a motherboard, but some of you Vogoners just seem to attract this stuff.

It's not attraction, you have to actively be seeking this stuff out and luck plays into it, too. I fully expected this one to go to $150 and possibly more so the final price came as a shock to me, as well. The seller and the other bidders apparently weren't aware of how rare these things are. If there had been someone more hardcore about collecting this stuff in there the price would have been much higher so this one obviously slipped under everyone's radar, which is where the luck comes in. These things appear so rarely now that the search terms 'Nexgen' and 'nx586' probably aren't on many people's search notifications anymore.

I can't look and not want to buy, so I end up not looking very much 😜. I guess I can't expect it to fall from he sky any more (although it did at the turn of the century) 😜.

There was more variety too. Now there's really only two chip vendors, and really only two graphics card vendors. Not as much to get excited about, although there have been some interesting RISC architectures along the way.

Sliderider, you have indirectly raised an important question -- Are there PCMCIA PS/2 port mouse cards? Perhaps you could get a PCMCIA USB card, then a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, but that probably won't work in NT4.0, so what about a PCMCIA PS/2 port card?

Have you tested your ISA PCMCIA card? What have you tested it with (What OS, cards, and drivers)? What model ISA PCMCIA card do you have?

I wonder how well USB would work over ISA? Hmmm, there are some USB mouse hacks for NT4 I've briefly read about, I wonder if this will work. Sounds like an interesting project, but my project TO-DO list is becoming out of control!

sliderider wrote:

SavantStrike wrote:

48 dollars. Oh man. I think I'm the lucky one when I get like a nice 8 + shipping deal on a motherboard, but some of you Vogoners just seem to attract this stuff.

It's not attraction, you have to actively be seeking this stuff out and luck plays into it, too.

Yup, it's a bit of luck and a big chunk of browsing ebay. Using some good search terms can help, I've seen other nice stuff slipping under everyone's radar.
Often stuff is priced quite high but sometimes you can get good deals by knowing where to look and I think everyone here misses something, sometimes (correct me if I'm wrong and then tell me all yo'h secrets ;D ).

feipoa wrote:

Sliderider, you have indirectly raised an important question -- Are there PCMCIA PS/2 port mouse cards? Perhaps you could get a PCMCIA USB card, then a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, but that probably won't work in NT4.0, so what about a PCMCIA PS/2 port card?

Have you tested your ISA PCMCIA card? What have you tested it with (What OS, cards, and drivers)? What model ISA PCMCIA card do you have?

I wonder how well USB would work over ISA? Hmmm, there are some USB mouse hacks for NT4 I've briefly read about, I wonder if this will work. Sounds like an interesting project, but my project TO-DO list is becoming out of control!

The card I have is supposed to be made for an Orinoco Silver/Gold WiFi card, but it'll probably work with other cards. I don't have any PCMCIA cards to try in it at the moment.

Edit: Oooh wait. That's a lie. I have an original Apple Airport base station here somewhere and that has a Orinoco silver card inside it. I've never used it so i don't even know if it works and Orinoco silver sucks because the weak security they support is almost like leaving your network unprotected but it should be good just for testing purposes.

sliderider wrote:

feipoa wrote:

Sliderider, you have indirectly raised an important question -- Are there PCMCIA PS/2 port mouse cards? Perhaps you could get a PCMCIA USB card, then a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, but that probably won't work in NT4.0, so what about a PCMCIA PS/2 port card?

Have you tested your ISA PCMCIA card? What have you tested it with (What OS, cards, and drivers)? What model ISA PCMCIA card do you have?

I wonder how well USB would work over ISA? Hmmm, there are some USB mouse hacks for NT4 I've briefly read about, I wonder if this will work. Sounds like an interesting project, but my project TO-DO list is becoming out of control!

The card I have is supposed to be made for an Orinoco Silver/Gold WiFi card, but it'll probably work with other cards. I don't have any PCMCIA cards to try in it at the moment.

Edit: Oooh wait. That's a lie. I have an original Apple Airport base station here somewhere and that has a Orinoco silver card inside it. I've never used it so i don't even know if it works and Orinoco silver sucks because the weak security they support is almost like leaving your network unprotected but it should be good just for testing purposes.

What's the model number of your ISA to PCMCIA card? I've got one that sounds strikingly similar. I got it in a bunch of Orinoco stuff that was headed for the trash bin. From what I read, it should work with more than just Orinoco stuff as it's a ISA to PCMCIA bridge, not just a patch job for a wireless card.

Somewhere around here I have a 10/100 PCMCIA ethernet card. I may have to investigate playing with it in conjunction with my ISA card.

ISA&USB...magical if this worked!

Unrelated, how is everyone here stocked up on ISA 100MBit NIC's?

I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, which is pretty annoying.

It is a pretty slow network card. I did some speed tests once; it was about 5% faster than a 10 mBit 3Com EtherlinkIII. I tried to up the ISA bus with the BIOS dividers, but the speed didn't seem to increase.

I think the main purpose of the card is to allow connection to 100Mbit-only hubs.

What do you got? Are you donating?

SavantStrike wrote:

sliderider wrote:

feipoa wrote:

Sliderider, you have indirectly raised an important question -- Are there PCMCIA PS/2 port mouse cards? Perhaps you could get a PCMCIA USB card, then a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, but that probably won't work in NT4.0, so what about a PCMCIA PS/2 port card?

Have you tested your ISA PCMCIA card? What have you tested it with (What OS, cards, and drivers)? What model ISA PCMCIA card do you have?

I wonder how well USB would work over ISA? Hmmm, there are some USB mouse hacks for NT4 I've briefly read about, I wonder if this will work. Sounds like an interesting project, but my project TO-DO list is becoming out of control!

The card I have is supposed to be made for an Orinoco Silver/Gold WiFi card, but it'll probably work with other cards. I don't have any PCMCIA cards to try in it at the moment.

Edit: Oooh wait. That's a lie. I have an original Apple Airport base station here somewhere and that has a Orinoco silver card inside it. I've never used it so i don't even know if it works and Orinoco silver sucks because the weak security they support is almost like leaving your network unprotected but it should be good just for testing purposes.

What's the model number of your ISA to PCMCIA card? I've got one that sounds strikingly similar. I got it in a bunch of Orinoco stuff that was headed for the trash bin. From what I read, it should work with more than just Orinoco stuff as it's a ISA to PCMCIA bridge, not just a patch job for a wireless card.

Somewhere around here I have a 10/100 PCMCIA ethernet card. I may have to investigate playing with it in conjunction with my ISA card.

On the back of the card it says Model:ISAPC-00. In front of that are the letters LUC which I assume stands for Lucent. There's only one chip on the front of the card about the same size as a 386SX and that says VADEM VG-469.