91–100 of 171 posts
The 486 and https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html changed everything. Suddenly, it was possible to imagine running advanced software on a PC, and not have to spend 25,000 USD on a workstation.
It was really the 386 that was the beginning of modern computing, since it had a mmu.
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The 486 SX was a fine chip, just no math copro. The 386 SX was a crap, 16 bit wide bus IIRC.
I can't remember, could you buy a math coprocessor for it? I know my 286 you could pair with a 287 next to it.. not sure if it really made a difference you could discern outside of hyper-specific uses though.
Very little, if any, “home” or small-business software would make use of a floating-point unit though (maybe some spreadsheet apps did?). The most common use for them was CAD/CAM, and those doing scientific modelling without a budget that would allow for less consumer-grade kit.
Linux kernel version 7.1 will drop support for 486: "Linux devs think even one second spent on 486 support is a second too many." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/04/linux-kernel-maintai...
That's really long compared to 1yr refresh cycles we have today with phones etc.
The 486 killer app was DOOM. It was butter-smooth at 20 fps if you also had a VLB graphic card. The 486 DX2 66MHz was the target platform for gaming during almost two years (1992-1994). That was an huge achievement back in the days to be at the top that long.
Doom was released end of '93. In 1992 most of us were in the 286 -> 386 upgrade wave and a 486-33 was easily at $2.5k+ ($5.5k in today's terms). The 486 DX2 66 was a good choice even 1994-1996.
I think it was 1994. It was a loaded 486 with the best 17" CRT monitor money could buy at the time. I think he spent over $7000.
My first computer was a 486sx 25Mhz [1] The rig (tower, monitor, etc.) cost around $3,000. We got the SX instead of the DX because it was $500 cheaper. And I wanted a 16bit sound card. (Note that this is in 1992 dollars. Today it would cost over $7,000) My parents didn't have a lot of money, but my great-grand father passed and they used some of the inheritance to buy the computer. I was instantly hooked. In hindsigh…
True for many, many of us, I suspect. My family bought a 286 in the early 90s and it cost something like $2000 CAD then, which is nearly $4000 now; but salaries were lower then, this would have been something like 5-6% of my single income family's yearly post-tax earnings for the year, and if you think about it as the % of "disposable" income it was probably more like 60% of it for the year.
Obviously it paid off in that it set me on the path for my career, hard to make any other investment as good as that, but who would have known that at the time? I'm glad that there were so many ads positioning computers as being educational and not just game machines; even though in reality I think it was learning about the computer to make the games work that taught me way more than any educational software ever did.
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The original Pentiums (socket 4, 60 or 66 MHz) had the infamous floating point division bug, had underwhelming perf for anything not FP bound (most things), ran hot, and were too expensive for what you got. A DX/4 100 was nearly always a more rational choice. Second gen Pentiums, starting with the 75 MHz, were great.
Idk if the 75 was really that great tho, mostly in that it had a 50Mhz FSB rather than 60 or 66Mhz like most other parts. Another factor for the later P1s being better IIRC was improved chipsets.
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Without fancy JS or CSS, sites can last decades easily
With JS and CSS sites can last decades easily.
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It was really the 386 that was the beginning of modern computing, since it had a mmu.
Except the 486 had hardware floating point, essential for technical work.
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Pentium is a bad processor? It's way faster than 486, especially on FP it's not even close.
The original Pentiums (socket 4, 60 or 66 MHz) had the infamous floating point division bug, had underwhelming perf for anything not FP bound (most things), ran hot, and were too expensive for what you got. A DX/4 100 was nearly always a more rational choice. Second gen Pentiums, starting with the 75 MHz, were great.
Now we have these amazing displays and graphics cards and there's literally no way to make my Mac have different window titlebars or anything. So boring
The 486 and https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html changed everything. Suddenly, it was possible to imagine running advanced software on a PC, and not have to spend 25,000 USD on a workstation.
https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/gnu/www/directory/all/rhide.html
:-)
And you could use VESA linear framebuffer above 256KB - this was a breakthrough back then :-))