Pity the poor 286 folk

[Seth J. Bradley]

In article <2577 at swlabs.UUCP> jack at swlabs.UUCP (Jack Bonn) writes:
>In article <9695 at ico.ISC.COM> rcd at ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:
>What ever happened to the 386 that would plug into a 286 socket?  I remember
>seeing a description of it in the literature, yet the 386SX seems to have
>none of the qualities of the 80288 as it was called.  Is there another chip
>waiting in the wings (or has its wings been clipped)?  I suppose that a
>daughter board would probably do the trick, but my guess it would cost as
>much as a 80386 mother board.  Any further info?

The 386SX is available, but as yet is in short supply.
While it is compatible with the 286 architecture, it
does require a few logic chips to interface it to the
bus.  My guess is you'll see boards with a 386SX (with
a socket for a 387SX) and a few logic chips that will
pug into a short slot just for power.  A cable will
then connect this board to the 286 socket on the motherboard.
I'm not making any guarantees, but this arangement should
cost much less than a 386 adapter board or motherboard.
The disadvantages are you are stuck with a 16 bit data path
and the processor will run no faster than your system clock.
But if you are running UNIX, you can upgrade to the 386 version
which will run 2-3 times faster even at the same clock speed!
-- 
Seth J. Bradley     UUCP: uunet!lll-winken!dalek!sjb
		Internet: lll-winken.llnl.gov!dalek!sjb