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Kafoopsy
10-31-02, 12:57 AM
Just out of interest, has anyone here ever seen/used the Intel 487 maths coprocesor?
I have a picture of one in my avatar.
nipster
10-31-02, 01:06 AM
never used one, but had a 486SX which had the socket for it... was too expensive to be worth it, could have just got a DX to begin with
larva
10-31-02, 02:13 AM
Never even saw it, drop shipped to the customer. It worked fine, but cost as much as the 486DX chip which obviated the question. Only on boards without a removable CPU did it make any sense at any price.
batboy
10-31-02, 08:18 AM
Wow, a blast from the past. I've thrown away at least four 486 computers in the last year, including one 486-66DX. I can't even give that stuff away nowadays. Too bad you live overseas or I'd just send you something better.
FTC
10-31-02, 09:38 AM
Well, I can put my .05 here. If I remember correctly, the 487 was exactly the same as a 486DX, with an additional pinout signal to *stop* the 486SX so that it could take his role,.... but with a functional math coprocessor part of the chip. This is why it costed as much as a 486DX... because that IS what it was.

Regards
FTC
NookieN
10-31-02, 09:44 AM
Not exactly an answer to your question, but I upgraded a 386DX with a math coprocessor. I could finally play Doom in "high detail" mode after that.
Kafoopsy
11-01-02, 01:33 AM
Originally posted by FTC
Well, I can put my .05 here. If I remember correctly, the 487 was exactly the same as a 486DX, with an additional pinout signal to *stop* the 486SX so that it could take his role,.... but with a functional math coprocessor part of the chip. This is why it costed as much as a 486DX... because that IS what it was.

Regards
FTC

That's correct.

The reason I asked this was that I had been wanting one for my CPU collection. Even an internet search brought up only one or two results about it. It was very hard to find any information on it at all. Curently, I have only ever seen or heard of 4 of these chips and I've got all four of them.
batboy
11-01-02, 07:45 AM
I used to see them around ocasionally and in fact I threw one away a couple years ago. Had a friend that even had a math co-processor for his 386 many moons ago.
doormat
11-01-02, 08:32 PM
Heh, its scary to think that there was once a need to have a seperate processor for math. Now look at a P3 celeron and see how small the die is. Geez. Ten years can really change things.