24 Jan
2013
24 Jan
'13
12:45 p.m.
Nope,I remember running this software, it was from the above-board peopleI think it was
called above486 and it would re-enable the math coprocessor.
in previous versions of the above board (386) you needed the hardware version.
this is history, it wasnt a blown fuse or anything, the cpu's were shipped with
thecopro but disabled, and they found a way to enable it.
I do remember something about how it only worked for certain cpusso thats why I thought it
might have only applied to AMD and not intel.
He may be talking about the AMD second-sourced 486SX, which may have
had a different method of disabling the FPU. My recollection is that
the 486SX was, in fact, the same die as the 486DX (FPU and all) with
a fuse blown that disabled the FPU. That could have been based on
faulty rumor, but it's certainly in line with modern manufacturing
practice of GPUs and multicore CPUs, where the lower core-count
devices are the same dice with faulty units disabled (or, if the
market for the cheaper chips is strong enough, potentially non-faulty
units, but that's less frequent than the overclocking crowd seems to
think).
- Dave
debacle,
there was software thatcould
completely restore functionality.I think it was called above-board,
NOPE.
which had hardware as well as software,but on
many SX type systems it
was just software Actually if I remember correctly it was the 486SX CPUs
made by AMD
We are talking INTEL.