Haha! Loved the crawling CPUs :D Very interesting video, Peter, just as usual! I don't know if I told already, but you run the best retro CPU channel on RU-vid. I'm a big fan. Thank you very much.
Not a single processor was dropped in this video. Love the stop motion for the processors going into the sockets! Glad to see more love for these 386 upgrade processors. Some of them are shockingly fast. I've got a 486SLC running at 50MHz that's just blowing me away with how fast it is on the SX platform. For example, it gets 26.3 on 3DBench, 6.3 on PCPlayer 320, and 11.3 in DOOM on max with a Tseng 4000 ISA card. Gotta get my DX motherboard out...
Back in the day I spent ages debating with myself about getting one of these to upgrade my 386 machine, but I dithered on it so long that it became cheap enough to buy a cheap 486 motherboard and processer, so I did that! Still, I do know that these devices were a boon in particular to businesses with a large inventory of computers, because rolling out a processor upgrade made a lot of financial sense compared to replacing a lot of fairly new computers.
I bought one of these CPUs on eBay yesterday for an IBM PS/2 Model 70 that only has a 20Mhz bus. I'm gambling but if it works, I should be able to get it to 40Mhz. Thank you for this tutorial! Also, that was fantastic stop motion camera work on the assembly.
Excellent video! I had no idea about that config utility or needing one in the first place, so I learned a lot from this. :) By the way, the footage where the CPUs walk to their sockets.. That's pure gold. Two thumbs up from me!
Production efforts are ever increasing, now we have stop motion animation, next up CGI...? 😉 Have to say the sound effect at 8:58 freaked me out a bit, wearing headphones it sounded like something heavy was sliding down the roof 😮
Man I recently got this exact cpu to upgrade an old IBM 386. Unfortunately the IBM got lost in transit, so now I just have the cpu to look at. Oh and thanks to you I now know how I would have configured it lmao 😂
Can't get enough of this channel and its coverage of historic CPUs from years gone by - :) The editing, video quality and attention to detail is exceptional. Thanks for your efforts.
I'd love to get one of these CPUs some day. I have an early AST 386/20 that I'd love to get a bit more speed on, and a clock doubled CPU seems like a good path!
Moin moin, aus eigener Erfahrung weiß ich das hinter jedem Video eine Menge an Arbeit steckt. Und die hat sich auch bei diesem Video aus meiner Sicht wieder absolut gelohnt. So detailliert und gut erklärt das keine Fragen offen bleiben. Wenn ich das könnte, würde ich das genau so machen 😀 Ich habe auch dieses Video wieder gespannt bis zur letzten Sekunde geschaut👍 Liebe Grüße aus Weyhe (bei Bremen)
Vielen lieben dank für Dein Lob und Danke für die Spende!!! Hab mir auch mal Deinen Kanal angesehen und finde Deine Videos gut. Bin schon gespannt was von Dir noch so kommt. LG, Peter
Mir geht es wie Dir. Würde auch gerne was über Homecomputer und Telespiele machen, aber an die Qualität von Peter und Necroware ist schlecht heranzukommen. Die haben ihren Standardaufbau und folgen ihren Scripten. Klar, das kam bei beiden auch nicht von jetzt auf gleich, aber man muss dazu sehr organisiert sein und gleichzeitig auch noch echte Begeisterung für ein Thema vermitteln können.
I just missed an eBay sale for a Cyrix 486SXL2-50! I guess they are in-demand because it had sold by the time I got the notification for my saved search. I wanted to try sticking it on top of a 386 upgrade card for 286 CPU's because I think the crazy idea of stacking vintage CPU accelerators is awesome! Plus a 486 IBM PC-AT... without a motherboard swap? Super-cool!!
Was it one complete with a 386 board from Germany? In that case it was me who bought it ;-) I've been hunting these things for years! I'm sure you'll find one some day. They a lot less rare than the IBM Blue Lightning or the Cyrix Drx2 upgrades..
3 года назад
Very good video and tutorial on the cyrix program! Have you tried to overclock it? 66Mhz would be cool if it could do that reliably. Would love to see that tested in the next video.
Just making sure: 12:35 - L1 cache is slower than an SSD? Thanks for these clips, it's nice to watch someone who knows what they're doing working on the systems I cut my teeth on.
by the time 486SXL2-50 came out, 1994, you could of upgraded your whole motherboard/CPU combo to a 486SX25 at the same cost, maybe even 486SX-33 or AMD 486DX-33.
I love the CPU's crawling over the motherboard to nestle all comfy in their sockets. It was very cute and made me smile. Keep up the good work, I love your video's. I got into computers in the 90's and haven't stopped. Your 386 and 486 videos bring back a lot memories for me.
This is a great video. Trying to compare numbers to some older video's shows how much better this cpu can be. Even to a DLC 40mhz. There is a 66mhz version as well, and the IBM Blue Lightning with its clock tripling and 16k cache also existed, but the Blue Thunder was limited to a 16 bit bus I think...
In early 90s I owned computer retail buisness. Those cpu were rare as hens teeth. Most people were disappointed with the improvements of cyrix 486dlc. Consequently though, including me expected this TI chip to perform like an intel dx33. Lots of frustration getting these cpus. I think to overheating under performing dlc killed this chips prospects. It really did what the DLC had promised. It turned your 386DX machine, into a genuine 486DX-33 competitor :) But I couldn't ever directly source them, and they were always at above recommended price too. But happy days! It's especially great to see doom running on one again. I used doom to show people I sold the fastest 386 in the world :). Well except for BL anyways. ANY CHANCE OF SHOWDOWN BETWEEN TI486SXL2-50 AND BLUE LIGHTENING? I'd moved on by time BL became available in UK. I'd love to see how they compare!
nice video as usual! When I saw the plot at 15:23 at first I thought there was something wrong with those percentages, but then I noticed the log scale...
Top Sache deine Videos, Als junger Mann hatte ich das auch gehabt,vieles steht heute noch rum als Leichen. Bin damals immer los gerannt wenn eine neue CPU raus kam, heute bin ich 52, danke für deine Videos! Das weckt Erinnerungen.
Hi, ich finde es toll wie viel Arbeit und Liebe du in deine Videos steckst. Ich finde bei diesem hat man wirklich eine Weiterentwicklung bemerkt. Mir haben die verschiedenen Kameraeinstellungen und das Stopmotion gut gefallen. Viele Grüße aus dem Silicon Saxony.
What an awesome video, my friend! I've always been intrigued by these SXL chips. From what I read, apparently the production of these particular CPUs really angered Cyrix, as the DLC spec--as you mentioned--called for 1kb of L1 cache. I really wonder why these things are so hard to configure. I love that mainboard you were using and it appears to have a late enough chipset that you'd think it'd be plug-and-play, but it's so dang cumbersome! Thank you for demonstrating how to activate these features properly and even showing all of the various benchmarks throughout the process and how things change! Funny enough, I actually bought an SXL years ago and misread the description and now I've got a PGA 168 version haha! But I love these PGA 132 ones and the SXL2 is a thing of beauty! Thank you for all that you do and thank you for another awesome video! And, as well, thank you for sharing this with us--it's such a neat CPU and not something you see anywhere else!
DUDE! This is awesome. Videos like this really illustrate how much work firmware does now n days on newer motherboards/cpus/ram. Imagine upgrading your CPU or RAM or something like that in a modern computer and having to run commands for it to be in spec LOL
A pure delight to watch👍 I could never fathom out the bench marking reports in the pc mags at the time but CPU Galaxy explains it with such elegant simplicity. Brilliant work⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The shiny newness is just dazzling. Last time I handled boards with those chips (despite them being still new-ish at the time) they were absolute filth bombs.
Another great video. Answered many questions. Saves me time :) I have a few more now: 1) If you do not use clock doubling can this "Overclock" to 50Mhz? 2) As your motherboard can also take 486 chips, how this compares to the 168pin version of this chip? I expect this to be configured automatically then perform the same? Waiting for the next video now :)
Great vid, as usual!👍 Loved the walking chips CPU and fpu, time lapse, stuttering shoot move chip repeatedly. Edit stop frame animation grabbed that from comments earlier.
Great video, as usual! The upgrade chips are very interesting to me, really cool to see one of the fastest here. Good job figuring out the clock doubling detail! Although you had some nice euro music while playing Doom, I could hear the sound effects of the doors opening in my head. haha! Thanks for another one!
Nice, very satisfying to see that thing actually run right in the end! I assume there must have been some TI tooling available at the time, though? Either way, cool that the Cyrix tooling can be used as a substitute, even though the labels there are incorrect for what some of the bits actually do for the TI chip.
Great video 👌 Now it just needs a little overclock to 66MHz 😅 I'm also messing with 386/486 board/PC that I got recently, had a i386DX33, installed an Am386DX-25 to test if it worked and managed an overclock to 40MHz, like a solid 60% increase in performance and very stable. Now it has a 486DX2-66 overclocked to 80MHz and plan to install 16MB of RAM instead of 8MB, a Cirrus Logic GD5424 VLB instead of a Tseng ET4000AX ISA and 256KB cache instead of 128KB. Keep up the good work 💪
Nice video! I have quite some FPUs in my collection but in contrast to CPU there are not many good internet sites which describe them. I am especially interested in the transistor count. Thanks in advance!!!
Oh how I hated anything with SLC on it or any variation of it. Through your videos and others. I found a few things out that I didn't know when they came out. I first started into computers in 91 (mostly 92) and anything non Intel (at least for x86) seemed to suck. Well except for the 486dlc-40. Loved those things. I wish I had some of the really strange motherboard / processors that came out. Like I remember one that was a 386 75mhz processor soldered to a board itself with a small garbage fan. I think it was a 386. Anyway it wan faster than all out with dos and windows 3.1. But it only lasted a few weeks before it was locking up and such. Thus, we had to go out to the customers and just replace the whole thing out. This was before the internet hit too. So not like you could just go online and see if you was missing a setting or software for it. Like I was with a 586 nextgen processor that sucked in windows 95 but worked great in win 3.1.
Always found the SXL2 to be a strange little chip, never really wanted one, but shall definitely take note of this information if I ever have to work with one. The 25MHz bus always put me off. It doesn't seem to affect things too badly here, presumably having VLB is a large part of why.
I loved the stop motion. Was that a PS/2 keyboard? I thought those came with the switch to ATX. Also, the lengths of the bars in the bar graphs at the end looked really suspicious. The numbers matched the percentages you read, but the graphs just didn't look right.
it was an PS2 Keyboard but with adapter to 5pin DIN. Yeah, the bars are in LOG scale. otherwise I could not show small and big figures nicely in one chart.
There were basically 3 different x86 CPU manufacturers in the 386 era and later: Intel, AMD, and Cyrix. Nearly everything that wasn't branded by one of these (such as TI or ST Thompson) were rebadged Cyrix parts (IBM originally built some licensed Intel parts, then switched to building licensed Cyrix parts). There were a few other also-rans that were mostly either very niche or just unsuccessful (NexGen, which later became part of AMD, IDT's Centaur, Transmeta) but basically it was one of these three until Cyrix collapsed and various IP components were sold off (NatSemi and then AMD got the MediaGX/Geode, VIA got the general x86 CPU line and merged it with Centaur bits for future products). Kind of disappointing but explains why the Cyrix software runs on these chips.
Why a 486SXL 50mhz with a 487 coprocessor is slower than a 486DX 33mhz? I would expect it to be close to 486DX2 in the system information computing index.
5:42 As far as I know, TI never designed x86 CPU's. All TI x86 CPU's are from Cyrix. Basically rebadged Cyrix CPU's. TI was a production partner for Cyrix and a x86 license holder. The same thing happened with IBM x86 CPU's. At most they would apply small modifications, like the increased L1 cache on this CPU.
which is the best cpu you recommend to upgrade an Intel Inboard 386/pc is a board? It has a 32MHz crystal and a 386 DX running as 16MHz by default. I like to get the max out of an XT computer. The intel inboard does wonders for an XT but I was wondering how to push it to the limit! There are tons of mods online but it requires transcomputer models which are impossible to find. I don’t mind swapping the crystal and from what I researched the intel inboard does run stable at 40MHz crystal which means a 20MHz 486 could be used. The socket is 132 I believe. I appreciate your help so much! Your videos are the best!
My 386sx needs CHS specification in the bios for the HDD. Can I also use the SD to IDE adaptor used in this video, or is there another solution available?
I think by adding Cryrix 487 you effectively disabled TI486SXL2, this is the reason why it recognizes Cyrix? It's operating similar to Intel 487 or not?
Wondering if it's gaining more from being on that strange 386/486 VLB board, compared to one that only has a 386 capability - and how DO you control cache in a 386 socket that was never designed for implementing CPU cache coherency - always thought it demanded a snooping utility to check for DMA controller activity
It would be interesting to compare CPU's at the same core speed but differing bus speeds. i.e. AM5x86 @ 4 x 25MHz AM5x86 @ 3 x 33MHz AM486-120 @ 2 x 50MHz (same core as AM5x86 apparently)
Wait, intel dx-33 still scores better than this TI in SysInfo, even after all tweaks applied. Is that how it suppose to be, is this cpu so slow by design?
15:29 IDKFA + IDDQD :) I always find the Doom benchmark the most interesting because as kid I had a 386DX40 until 1997. Doom was unplayable and I've never heard of overclocking. Now I wish somebody would build a kickass overclocked 386 (with a common real Intel- or AMD-CPU, no rare Cyrix chips) just to prove it was playable. I wonder how high a 386DX40 would have to be clocked to reach 20 FPS in Doom ... even though that frequency would be completely unrealistic and unreachable. 100 Mhz? *haha*
I wish somebody would reverse engineer and clone the Weitek Abacus. Or even better, put a modern clone of the Weitek Abacus inside a modern clone of the 486 or 487. Making a modern 486-compatible CPU with a built-in 487 and a built-in Weitek Abacus, using modern technology and architectural improvements, would be pretty epic. Though if somebody wanted to be really ballsy, they could even try to make it Pentium-compatible as well.
I did upgrade my 386 dx40 to cyrix dlc40 but its about 20% faster and warcraft 1 still runs slow (( Is it possible to play in comfort in wc1 on 386 on a steroids ?
@@CPUGalaxy which is the best cpu you recommend to upgrade an Intel Inboard 386/pc is a board? It has a 32MHz crystal and a 386 DX running as 16MHz by default. I like to get the max out of an XT computer. The intel inboard does wonders for an XT but I was wondering how to push it to the limit! There are tons of mods online but it requires transcomputer models which are impossible to find. I don’t mind swapping the crystal and from what I researched the intel inboard does run stable at 40MHz crystal which means a 20MHz 486 could be used. The socket is 132 I believe. I appreciate your help so much! Your videos are the best!
