Not a Review, but a cool product
-
Do they come with OS ram and hd?
-
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
They still make the 486 too.
Why on earth would they possibly make that still?
Embedded devices. They cost pennies to buy and if all that you need is a 486, why pay for anything more? The 486 is actually much more powerful than the 8bit Z80 that tons of devices still use. What do you think powers washing machines, microwaves, refrigerators, watches, etc.? There are microprocessors all around you in nearly everything that you deal with every day. Only a small fraction of those are modern AMD64 processors, those are super expensive and overpowered for most tasks.
What do you think powers an Arduino?
-
The Motorola M68000 processor family is still popular in embedded devices too. That was already an old processor when it was put in the Apple Mac in 1984.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
They still make the 486 too.
Why on earth would they possibly make that still?
Embedded devices. They cost pennies to buy and if all that you need is a 486, why pay for anything more? The 486 is actually much more powerful than the 8bit Z80 that tons of devices still use. What do you think powers washing machines, microwaves, refrigerators, watches, etc.? There are microprocessors all around you in nearly everything that you deal with every day. Only a small fraction of those are modern AMD64 processors, those are super expensive and overpowered for most tasks.
What do you think powers an Arduino?
Makes sense.
-
I find the 486 pretty boring. But I would love to have some small computers (with console serial outputs or ethernet in some cases) made from some old systems like the Zilog Z80 and Motorola M68K derivatives or other less common procs. They would be a lot of fun to use as true, hardware-based retro gaming platforms. Just for fun, not practical at all. But interesting.
