Amiga A2386

[Xytec]

Amiga A2386,

I have one in my A2000 last used it about 10 years ago.

I was recently pointed to the Amiga Hardware website and saw these boards had been upgraded to 486 by some company or other and found this webpage detailing a hack to speed it up.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/...ock/a2386.html

Now the date on said page is 1998, so I was wondering, how relevant is it now??

Can it be added too or improved a little bit more today??

[rkauer]

You can still find some 386sx to 486 "upgrade" chips on Ebay or other auction sites worldwide if you want to upgrade your bridgeboard. Notice those chips are rare and expensive.

I don't think you will take too much advantage of the upgrade except for the "because I can" factor.

If you really want to improve the hardware emulation on the bridge card, toss an ISA IDE controller and a (S)VGA card plus an ethernet card and you will max out the possibilities of it.

[Xytec]

Originally Posted by rkauer

I don't think you will take too much advantage of the upgrade except for the "because I can" factor.

The 486 upgrade would possibly enable Windows 98 installation

Personal computer with a 486DX 66 MHz or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended)

16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended)

One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive

CD-ROM drive

195 mb of free space

VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended)


and if not Win98 it would most certainly run Win95.


I don't understand how you could think it would only be a 'because I can' and have no benefits??

Win95 needs:

Windows 95 - Hardware Requirements

*
486 (or 386 w/ math coprocessor)

*
8 MB (really 16 MB)

*
min OS is 30 MB (really 500 MB)



I remember the main problem running it 10+years ago was lack of memory, that would still be the main problem today I feel??

[rkauer]

No win98! The better upgrade to the 386SX is a 486SLC (no way to comply a 486DX, nor dx2/66)...

[Xytec]

Originally Posted by rkauer

You can still find some 386sx to 486 "upgrade" chips on Ebay or other auction sites worldwide if you want to upgrade your bridgeboard. Notice those chips are rare and expensive.

There is a 275 'job lot' of them for sale for 60 Dollars on Ebay right now,
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-Of-275-Texas...3%3A1|294%3A50

I actually thought it would just be a case of removing the CPU and putting a 486 there instead

[rkauer]

No use for your needs. You need to locate a 486 overdrive kind of chip (those ones who clips over the i386sx. Notice you need a version who accept run on your 386 clock or with a higher frequency.

To clarify: if your 386sx is a 33MHz unit, you a 486 overdrive who runs @ 66MHz. For a 386 @25, any processor upgrade with more than 50MHz will work. For 12/16/20MHz units any processor upgrade is good.

[Xytec]

Ah thanks rkauer,