On Jan 24, 2013, at 1:42 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
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.
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