OT: Pentium processor sizes

[Sean Caron]

There absolutely was a P5 Overdrive from Intel for 486 motherboards ... I
saw a few of them in the wild back in the day...


On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 5:51 PM, jwsmobile <jws at jwsss.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 7/10/2015 1:21 PM, Joe Giliberti wrote:
>
>> Hey. I'm sorry for the off topic post, but I couldn't think of another
>> forum to ask my question. I'm just looking for information as to whether
>> there are different sizes Pentium processor dependent upon whether the
>> processor is for a desktop or laptop. I want to see if I can give my old
>> Hewlett Packard OmniBook a little more juice.
>>
> I don't recall there being any different processors in the first Pentium.
> The big effort in power reduction was by a group who did a power reduction
> project with the Pentium 3.  Many of the laptops had full sized Pentiums
> with novel cooling to make them work in a portable laptop form factor.
>
> There were a series of projects where Intel did processors to upgrade
> previous families of chips with the newer technology.  For example a 486
> chip engineered to be happy with a 386 pin bus, but running at a higher
> clock, and similar upgrades for 486 systems. These were called "Overdrive"
> and were not power reduced as a goal of the product.
>
> The Pentium was a big enough step that I don't know of any such for the
> 486, where a Pentium could be stuffed in.  The BIOS became enough of a
> factor in making the Pentium go that it was necessary. Such dropins they
> had were all self contained that I mention in the previous paragraph.
>
> The next act for Pentium (and quoting from this article) was MMX added
> in.  Pentium II of course went to the infamous Slot 1 / 2 form factor.
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_microprocessors#32-bit_processors:_P5_microarchitecture
>
> If you look up the processor you have in your Omnibook, some of the
> Pentium P5's could be upgraded, but you had to be careful as some had
> issues of being interchanged.
>
> Thanks
> Jim
>