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Comment by dguaraglia | Hacker News Reader

Hahah, I can relate so much with the 'poorerer' part, I'll raise you another one: my first '686' was a Cyrix 6x86 because those were the cheapest you could get. Eventually got my hands on a Pentium II and had to scavenge parts to replace my setup.

Good times. Nowadays I just buy a laptop with everything soldered on it and complain a lot if I have to reboot it every month.

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In the late 90s I had a 486sx33 with one of those Cyrix 586 upgrade chips for the math co-processor slot. It was so hot it had a fan on it! Crazy!

I also maxed out the RAM to 32mb and upgrade the SRAM in my Trident video card so I could do 256 color in Windows 95.

I also had a 40mb Erwin Tape Drive for backing up my 100mb HDD. It wasn't fast but it was faster than reinstalling Tie Fighter from Floppies.

The "math co-processor" chip was actually a full DX33 and your SX33 CPU was disabled.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80487SX

My first was an AMD 286 @ 12MHz, still have it in a cigar box somewhere.

Started with a zx81, graduated to a 286 with a whopping 2MB RAM, which was really really much, but at a time when everyone else was getting 386s.

CyrixInstead ™ represent!

Waay back in the day.. 286 12mhz with 1mb ram and a 10mb RLL drive. Setting the jumpers on the drive controller block was a nightmare that I still have. I think there were 16 or 32 pins and all the jumpers had to be just right or no dice (no drive). Further along I had a 40mhz Cyrix 4x86 I think, with 4mb ram and a Trident VGA 256 color card. I remember the ram being old school block chips and not SIMM modules. It's been a long time, so I could be mistaking the memory type between mobos. Was a great 3.11 machine for the time.

Cyrix/Nexgen 5x86/133!

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