News Chip collector showcases 'rarest x86 CPU' in their hoard — Rise mP6 266 ticked along at 200MHz in 1998

[Admin]

Some images demonstrating one of the rarest x86 CPUs still running have been shared online.

Chip collector showcases 'rarest x86 CPU' in their hoard — Rise mP6 266 ticked along at 200MHz in 1998 : Read more

 

[sammlyu]

mp6 are used in embedded system. May be still have some of them surviving.

 

[mikeebb]

Many years ago, my first PCompatible (after 10+ years with a TRS80 Model 1) was a 386SX (Dak if it matters). Several years later, I wanted an upgrade but couldn't afford a whole new computer. So I got a Cyrix "486" kit (Intel had real 486s, but nothing that worked on a 16-bit bus like the 386SX had) that alleged to upgrade the 386SX in place. It clipped on - push it down over the 386 and it slid over its pins, apparently put the 386 into permanent reset in some way, and took over (386SX was soldered in). The Cyrix also came with a standard Cyrix '87 coprocessor, which the 386SX had an open socket for. IIRC the upgrade didn't improve much, but it didn't cost much, and didn't make anything worse. The '87 did seem to help a little with spreadsheets. Performance was probably more limited by RAM (I filled the empty RAM sockets a short time later, which probably made most of the observable difference in performance) and hard disk performance anyway, give what was available at the time. At least, it kept it working well enough to last a couple more years, until switching to Windows 98 required a new Celeron (P5) machine.

 

[John Nemesh]

MMX...now that's a name I havent heard in a long time...I havent heard that name since oh, before you were born.
(with apologies to Sir Alex Guiness)

 

[Amdlova]

Never see that cpu...

I have used pentium, Pentium mmx, cyrix and amd k6-2
The k6-3 was the today 9800x3d (never see one)

 

[Dr3ams]

The oldest CPUs I still have are a Pentium 133 from 1995 and an AMD K7 Athlon from 2000. I do have an old PC in my closet, but I'm not sure what hardware is in the case.

 

[frankens]

I actually had one of them. I had one installed in my I-opener. Ran amazingly cool. Also installed one on a friend's gateway computer.
They had a demo of one doing a DVD playback being powered by set of aa batteries. *wonders if I still have it*

 

[CelicaGT]

I remember these, never saw one in the wild though. That P5A mobo on the other hand was the defacto S7 board, still have one floating around somewhere that I got on RMA. Still have a K6-2 500 somewhere too, and some other Socket 7 examples. Never got my hands on a K6-3 but not for lack of trying.

 

[Tbonius]

I have one of those old gold amd processors, it's cool looking but not valuable old. It is in it's original plastic amd box that I suspect might be worth more than the processor.