9 ms·
The suggestion in the article was simply that his 386 was a crappy early one that may also be slightly defective seems plausible. IIRC the 387 was a full 386 p
by jandrese 3y ago
The suggestion in the article was simply that his 386 was a crappy early one that may also be slightly defective seems plausible. IIRC the 387 was a full 386 plus the floating point logic, and when you installed it the coprocessor took over most of the processing and the 386 was reduced to being a data broker.
- _ihaque 3y agoI believe the 387 was an actual coprocessor; the _487_ may be what you're thinking of -- the 487SX contained a whole 486DX inside and just disabled the host processor [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X87#80487 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X87#80487
- ForOldHack 3y agoI would concur: The 386sx was just 16 bit. The 387sx was for that 16 bit processor. The 486sx was no math co-processor, and the 487 was a whole 486 DX, i.e. the vacancy slot, brought to you by Intel Marketing.
- scruffyherder 3y agoThe 487 was the “full” replacement chip upgrade. I still don’t know why the addition of the math coprocessor helped so much
- lproven 3y agoNope, as I commented above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275340