I was wondering what would be the ultimate upgrade for my 386 motherboard. It has a 386 CPU soldered-in, an unpopulated 386 PGA socket and a socket for either 387 FPU or 486 PGA or (might take a Weitek as well – not quite sure) and even might have a soldered-in 486SX PQFP. Plenty of options…
Nothing about this makes any sense, and yet, it’s just plain awesome.
Doubtless after this proof of concept Intel will compensate existing owners of Intel CPU’s thrown on the scrapheap by Microsoft’s Windows 11 by producing socket compatible replacements and Lenovo will update their BIOS and remove BIOS whitelisting.
As this is never going to happen I’m on the move to Linux and never giving any of them another penny.
I don’t think making socket-compatible CPU’s will stop all those CPU’s from being scrapped. After all, if you’re replacing a CPU with a newer one, then the older one instantly becomes obsolete and junk…
I want Microsoft to stop being arrogant, or a plug in replacement and updated BIOS preferably with someone else paying for it. It’s not just the CPU. A new CPU and BIOS would mean the other 99% of the computer wouldn’t need to be scrapped either. That’s not going to happen so I’m leaning in to using Linux. Last night I went through installing more of the cross-platform software I’ve been using on Windows. So far so good.
Older generation computers like the one cited in the article chew through electricity so I wouldn’t want to go back to that or CRT, or tungsten or halogen lightbulbs for energy use alone. I did like the 50 inch SDTV CRT televisions in walnut cabinets when they were a thing. They had charm and character and were more aesthetically pleasing than the black slabs we have now much like cars have now become anodyne bubbles. Still, we have a planet to save don’t we so…?
I have no idea what the TDP is of motherboards.
Still, interesting topic. Intel’s pin-outs always did seem a bit sus.
There’s no reason that a modern TV couldn’t be produced in a walnut cabinet, or an existing cabinet hollowed out and a new screen fitted.
Older generation computers do use a lot of power, but so do modern ones. The modern ones are far more performant, but the extra performance is sapped by bloated inefficient software.
A modern embedded processor on the other hand would be more than powerful enough to run the older more efficient software, while consuming absolutely trivial amounts of power. A pentium is less powerful than the processors in even the cheapest of budget smartphones today.
Also the motherboard in the article is not a “386 motherboard”, it’s a 486 motherboard which happens to have offered backwards compatibility with the 386 chip. You wouldn’t be able to fit a pentium into an original 386 motherboard. Also look at the bios date – 1994, the 486 came out in 1989 the pentium in 1993. The 386 was from 1985, so it’s possible they actually considered pentium upgrades when they built this board.
True enough but you have to think about the design in context. A modern flat screen in a walnut cabinet would look wrong or waste space. The old 50 inch CRT’s were fairly square and the cabinet looked like an ordinary cabinet. You really need a large room with the right proportions to accomodate this. There are design options today but most require spending lots of money for reconstuction or silly figures on the display or a seperate viewing room most people won’t have. There are ideas around such as building displays into desks which “unpack” or which rise up from behind working cabinets but I’ll let this float out there for people to play with.
The CPU in my computer is three times more powerful and has a lower TDP than the my old desktop. A newer more powerful CPU has an even lower TDP. As you note modern OS and software soaks this up while not actually doing anything more useful.
Intel were inching there way towards using the socket as a weapon to obsolete old hardware. Back then you could by 486 (and Pentium?) drop in replacements which came with an adapter socket. That’s not an option today espeically since Intel discoered they could make money off chipsets. Intel view it as in their interest to force you to buy a new CPU and motherboard and if they could get away with it new memory all from them or with a nice royalty attached..
The123king,
It’s one thing when the hardware is being replaced due to greater needs by the user, but it’s another when the owner wants to keep using their existing hardware and gets hampered by software imposed planned obsolescence. I think this is another indicator that the companies behind the major computer platforms would like PCs to become more like mobile with owners having much less control and flexibility. Many of us wish mobile devices could be as updateble as PCs, but unfortunately I suspect it is more likely for PCs to regress and pick up the mobile gimmicks that accelerate hardware upgrade cycles.
I do wonder if microsoft is planning for this to be a one time deal, or if they’re planning on arbitrarily phasing out CPUs more regularly now. Remember that more hardware sales = more OEM sales.
As a linux user, I can mostly ignore it, but alas even linux users often end up paying the MS hardware tax