Hacker News Reader

ha I remember that chip so well

instant speed boost for IBM PC

just pop out the 8088 and put in a $20 V20

only problems is some programs ran their clocks too fast

wow that article is amazing, I cannot believe people can reverse engineer at that level, brilliant

What I remember of the V20 was that there was some benchmark (Norton?) that was way faster, but I never saw a difference for any real application that I tested.

I have a soft spot for the V20. The laptop I carried in high school was V20-based (a NEC Ultralite PC1701). I remember a CGA 3D billiards game I played on both the laptop and an XT clone desktop. The V20 was definitely faster for that game.

For most of what I actually used it for (typing notes and playing with QBASIC) I didn't notice a difference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com