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I had the Maxis game El-fish, and the part of the game where you'd breed fish was almost unplayable on a 486SX because the SX lacked a math coprocessor. I wante

I had the Maxis game El-fish, and the part of the game where you'd breed fish was almost unplayable on a 486SX because the SX lacked a math coprocessor. I wanted a math coprocessor, but as a kid in pre-internet times, I had no clue how to get one. Maybe I'll try playing in dosbox and see what I was missing out on.

h2odragon 3y ago
Technically, you had one on the 486SX, it was just disabled. Probably* As I recall the "co-processor" slot on those boards was another CPU slot, with an extra pin; and when filled it took over and disabled the original CPU. Edit: later 486SX may not have had FPU: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12109/were-there-486sx-revisions-without-an-fpu-on-the-die https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12109/wer...
- achairapart 3y ago
  I read many times that 486SXs were rebranded 486DXs with a defective co-processor unit, don't really know if it was rumors or just plain fiction.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    Seems perfectly plausible. CPU binning has been being done for years. Made an 8-core chip, but one core is faulty? Disable some cores and sell it as a 6- or 4-core chip. Chip won't run at the frequency expected? Sell it as a lower-spec CPU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_...
  - acdha 3y ago
    There is some discussion here: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/lies-damn-lies-and-wikipedia/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/lies-damn-lies-and-wikipedia/ My guess is that if there’s any truth to it that was early on before the process was fine-tuned. It’s hard to believe Intel would have tolerated a process producing that many errors since they could use the same die space to make more smaller chips.
  - bcx5k15 3y ago
    probably intel used to sell cheap core solos back in the core duo days, which were just duos where one of the cores was faulty so they disabled it. Same with the F model (no iGPU) chips today. People have done teardowns and found that more often than not its there on the die, just disabled because its faulty.
MBCook 3y ago
I loved that game. But you should have tried breeding on a 33 MHz 386SX. I think I had to let it run overnight. My next computer was a Pentium 133. The difference in fish breeding was mind blowing.

h2odragon 3y ago

Technically, you had one on the 486SX, it was just disabled. Probably* As I recall the "co-processor" slot on those boards was another CPU slot, with an extra pin; and when filled it took over and disabled the original CPU. Edit: later 486SX may not have had FPU: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12109/were-there-486sx-revisions-without-an-fpu-on-the-die https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12109/wer...

achairapart 3y ago
I read many times that 486SXs were rebranded 486DXs with a defective co-processor unit, don't really know if it was rumors or just plain fiction.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  Seems perfectly plausible. CPU binning has been being done for years. Made an 8-core chip, but one core is faulty? Disable some cores and sell it as a 6- or 4-core chip. Chip won't run at the frequency expected? Sell it as a lower-spec CPU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_...
- acdha 3y ago
  There is some discussion here: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/lies-damn-lies-and-wikipedia/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/lies-damn-lies-and-wikipedia/ My guess is that if there’s any truth to it that was early on before the process was fine-tuned. It’s hard to believe Intel would have tolerated a process producing that many errors since they could use the same die space to make more smaller chips.
- bcx5k15 3y ago
  probably intel used to sell cheap core solos back in the core duo days, which were just duos where one of the cores was faulty so they disabled it. Same with the F model (no iGPU) chips today. People have done teardowns and found that more often than not its there on the die, just disabled because its faulty.

MBCook 3y ago

I loved that game. But you should have tried breeding on a 33 MHz 386SX. I think I had to let it run overnight. My next computer was a Pentium 133. The difference in fish breeding was mind blowing.