486 SMP strange motherboard

[Shodan486]

Now what the hell is this??? :



I thought 486 SMP was possible on a multi-plane mainboards, not on the same PCB...

[Topcat]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

I used to have one that had 4 on a single board. it was an IBM iirc, which was proprietary. that one looks like a standard AT form factor, yes it's a unique one.

[pentium]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

I got an ASUS board which is also AT but has a daughter card that allows for either two Pentium Pro (pfft, they could do SMP in their sleep) or two Pentium (wait, the Socket 7 ones? YES!) processors.
Going way back to the 486 era, all there really was that could to SMP was OS/2, x86 Unix, or crap from Novell.

[Topcat]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

^
NT 3.x and NT4 could, and when it came out, most were still on their 486's.

[pentium]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

Didn't NT 4 come out late in the 486 lifespan?
That board does not even have PCI slot.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

I once worked on an old Compaq server that had three Cyrix 386 CPU's.
I dunno much about it. It just needed a PSU.
.

[Topcat]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

Didn't NT 4 come out late in the 486 lifespan?
That board does not even have PCI slot.

NT3.5 came out in 94, NT4 came out in 96. 486's were still commonplace then. You could still buy new 486 boards, FP RAM, and CPU's (mainly for the dx4 100MHz platform) up through about 97, then the socket 7 pentium and K5's really started taking hold and the beloved 486 began to rapidly disappear. NT3.x & 4 was designed on 486's. I never used 3.x, but I did run NT4 when it first came out. It was my first dual system, a dual Pentium classic 233MMX on a Tyan Tomcat AT motherboard with 128mb of EDO ram in it, all SCSI of course. It was a kick ass machine for the time. Soon after, I upgraded to an Abit BP6 running dual 300A @ 450/100. NT4 LOVED that thing! Then came the VP6 and dual coppermines with windows 2000.......ok, I'll quit with my stroll down memory lane!

[mockingbird]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

If they were going to go to the trouble to do SMP, why did they use the SX without the coprocessor and not the DX.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

Dual CPU doesn't necessarily mean SMP, some old stuff used ASMP.

Some were built to run some specific one-off OS that was proprietary to the board and vice versa.

[Krankshaft]

Re: 486 SMP strange motherboard

I remember Cyrix I was turned off them early on I had a 300 mhz CPU of theirs tried to play mp3s on it with Winamp (the first time I even attempted it actually it was the mid 90s I think so they were the new thing) and the CPU power shot up and they played like a tape recorder with a gummed up capstan (sluggishly). This was a fresh install OS out of the box PC. Never bought a Cyrix again.

The Intel at 200 Mhz with the same memory and mobo hardware could play the same mp3s without a fuss. I think this early experience biased me towards Intel.