################ ##### ### # ## ## ## # ## # ### # ## # # ## # ##### ## # ## # # ### ## # ## # # ### ## # ## # ########### ## # ## # # ### #### # ### # ### ###### ### ## ### ##### ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | | Technical News Association | | | | #2 | | | | 486 Upgrades | | | | Author: Christopher Barr | | Typed By: Oreo | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ultimate Upgrade That Baby-Blue ZIF socket you may have seen sprouting like mushrooms on 486-based systems boards lately is Intel's latest effort at standardizing the upgrade market. But whether you can upgrade your system to a Pentium-like CPU may depend up on which blue socket you get. Intel, which pioneered the why-sell-one-CPU-to-a-customer- when-you-can-sell-two? strategy, developed a kitchen-sink socket that system makers can install on system boards. This 238-pin baby-blue socket will accept DX2 and OverDrive chips (which are the same internally), as well as a derivative 32-bit bus version of the Pentium (code named P24T), which won't be available until early 1994. A full 64-bit bus Pentium system requires a system board overhaul. Intel will actually promote two different blue upgrade sockets. A 169-pin version is designed for 486SX-and DX-based systems and can't accept the P24T, while the 238-pin version is for DX2 systems and can take the P24T, but system manufactures don't always follow this rule. Zeos International, for example, is shipping the 238-pin socket in its entire line of desktop systems, from the 486SX- 25 to the 486DX2-66, and is staying away entirely from the 169-pin version. As long as system makers design the memory subsystems to support the Pentium, there's no reason why most systems would not be able to use the 238-pin socket. While we commend Intel for making upgrading easier, why couldn't the company simply color-code the sockets for us? Make the blue socket for the OverDrive, and the purple socket for Pentium. Is that too difficult? Copied from: Christopher Barr's article in the January 26, 1993 Edition of "PcMagazine" . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Technical News Association Distribution Sites The Wall BBS (908)294-8830 Skyline BBS (908)363-3832 ---------------------------------------------------------------------