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486 Turns 15 Years Old

wooby writes "The 486 processor , introduced in 1989 at 25 and 33MHz clock speeds, is now 15 years old. Intel's simultaneous launch of both the 486, a CISC chip, and the i860, a RISC chip, was a gamble. Remarks Intel's former CEO, Andy Grove: 'our equivocation caused our customers to wonder what Intel really stood for, the 486 or i860?'"

32 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. w00t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Three more years until she's legal!

    1. Re:w00t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      alright, post pics of you and her in three years

    2. Re:w00t by t_allardyce · · Score: 5, Funny

      prostration!? that sounds like a cross between prostate and castration.. erm.. *backs off slowly*

      --
      This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
    3. Re:w00t by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 4, Funny

      oh shit... 15's not legal?

      Anyone heading towards mexico?

      Perhaps she was overclocked... hey it aint my fault... they just should do that! She said she was a fucking DX... I said.. fine... Lets fuck baby.

      She said hang on... i gotta get into protected mode...

      I Said.. hey baby.. everything is fucking manged baby... i'm running Desqview and i'll be working the front door and the back door... whats your NUP bitch?

      She said "elitewarez"

      And so i slipped my login her oblivion2. The bitch was running 3 ports she dropped 3 lines... and i said i'm using them all cauze i have a 0-day load to drop...

      She said fuck, better be good... I said fuck yeah.. its the Fairlight release of Jordan in Flight.

      She said, i love jordan, hes so smooth... and so i fucked her brain dead and her memmanger screamed for more buffers.

      Then she said hold the fuck up... lets get her... I said her?

      She said yeah.. my config.sys

      I was there.... and her sys was all mine. Her sys was running renegade, but i knew it was just a hacked teleguard...

      So i busted through her backdoor and the only words i heard was "QEMM" Then suddenly she demanded that Norton Commander. I said fuck yeah... this shits going to pkunzip on her double -d's.

      Dam I was digging it... WHAT? 386... her sys was a 386... SON OF A BITCH... 25sx? What a fucking pig.

      No wonder.

      Never again will i boot another 486... but now and then i remember the days... so new, so fresh.. ah you never forget your first 286... and if you never forget your 286... try fucking a 486.

      Those were the days. Them was my chicks.

  2. Aww wow... by form3hide · · Score: 2, Funny

    I am really getting old, huh?

    *sniff... memoorrriieesss....

  3. 486 dx2 66 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    mines still going strong, gotta love doom :]

  4. Obvlivious by z0ink · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine a beowolf clu....
    Oh. 15 years old, right.

    --
    Steal This Sig
  5. Whoa... by su2ge · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ahhh, those were the days..... Gorilla still ran at a decent speed, but then when these new fangled contraptions came around, the banana moved at the speed of light!

  6. Re:jup by |<amikaze · · Score: 4, Funny

    And the i860 is controlling my DSL modem right now! What a team they make!

  7. Re:Ah the memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Wow. Where can I get one of those 500gig HDDs?

  8. 486? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's a left-over from the Stone Age.

    It's funny, but I can't seem to throw mine away...

  9. It was my first by L.+VeGas · · Score: 5, Funny

    I remember watching my brother show me his 386 with sound. Dr. Sbiatso and all that. It so blew me away that I saved every dime and got a 486 with a video capture card, sound card, modem, blah blah blah. Cost me $3,500 For two years, every almost waking spare moment I had was spent on that machine.

    That experience made me what I am today. A Slashdot geek with an old 486.

  10. Legal in Canada by mfh · · Score: 4, Funny

    She's legal in Canada. Age of consent is 14 here. I think the Liberals are trying to push it down to 13, the pervs.

    But in all seriousness, my college room-mate had a 386 and then replaced it with a 486. A guy on our floor had a 486 with tape drives and the works. That was great until someone hit his room with a leaner and hosed his whole backup system (which was on the floor). For all you who don't know what a leaner is, it's when someone fills a garbage can with water and tilts it against someone's door. When they open it, the water splooshes over everything, especially them. Pretty nasty! We used mirrors to check for leaners so they never got us. :-)

    Bah, I went from a 286, to a P-133 and then up from there, regularly. Nostalgia time. {{ahhhh}}

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    1. Re:Legal in Canada by David+Horn · · Score: 2, Funny

      You think you had it tough? I just ported Linux to my slide rule...

      --
      PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
  11. Release two chips at once... by Yhippa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pretty RISCy maneuver, eh?

  12. Re:Good times by cr@ckwhore · · Score: 5, Funny

    OH... and it had one of those mHz displays on the front, and with one press of the magical turbo button, I could go from 25 to 33 flat!

    --
    Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
  13. Dodgy computer guy... by cd_serek · · Score: 3, Funny

    15 years old eh? I remember buying my first computer in '92. I was told that it was the state-of-the-arts, brand new, top of the range, 386 system. And now to be told that 486 was around since '89... I knew that I should have trusted my 2nd hand car salesman over that computer guy.

  14. pentium by ziggyboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd wait for the day the Pentium turns 15. I remembered the days of the popular Pentium bugs that affected various 60-100Mhz versions.

    And who'd forget the classic that went something like...

    The Pentium was not officially named 586 because 486+100 turned out to be 585.9999999999999.

    1. Re:pentium by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Funny
      TI produced a script for the scene from 2001 where Dave is trying to persuade HAL to let him back in based on the Pentium bug. It ends with HAL singing:

      Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,
      Getting hazy, can't divide three by two.
      My answers, I can not see 'em,
      They're stuck in my Pentium.
      It would be fleet, my answers sweet, on a workable FPU.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:pentium by XSforMe · · Score: 2, Funny

      The following post circulated usenet for a couple of months... it made me laugh until tears rolled:

      Q&A: THE PENTIUM FDIV BUG

      Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
      A: 1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.

      Q: What's another name for the "Intel Inside" sticker they put on
      Pentiums?
      A: The warning label.

      Q: What do you call a series of FDIV instructions on a Pentium?
      A: Successive approximations.

      Q: Complete the following word analogy: Add is to Subtract as Multiply
      is to:
      1) Divide
      2) ROUND
      3) RANDOM
      4) On a Pentium, all of the above
      A: Number 4.

      Q: What algorithm did Intel use in the Pentium's floating point divider?
      A: "Life is like a box of chocolates." (Source: F. Gump of Intel)

      Q: Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
      A: Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got
      585.999983605.

      Q: According to Intel, the Pentium conforms to the IEEE standards 754
      and 854 for floating point arithmetic. If you fly in aircraft
      designed using a Pentium, what is the correct pronunciation of
      "IEEE"?
      A: Aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee]

      TOP TEN NEW INTEL SLOGANS FOR THE PENTIUM

      9.9999973251 It's a FLAW, Dammit, not a Bug
      8.9999163362 It's Close Enough, We Say So
      7.9999414610 Nearly 300 Correct Opcodes
      6.9999831538 You Don't Need to Know What's Inside
      5.9999835137 Redefining the PC -- and Mathematics As Well
      4.9999999021 We Fixed It, Really
      3.9998245917 Division Considered Harmful
      2.9991523619 Why Do You Think They Call It *Floating* Point?
      1.9999103517 We're Looking for a Few Good Flaws
      0.9999999998 The Errata Inside

      --
      My other OS is the MCP!
  15. Re:And take that thought... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    about how feeble a device that a 486 is today, and look at the PC in front of you now.
    The PC in front of me now IS a 486.
  16. In soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    15 turns 486 years old!

  17. Wake-up Call by Digitus1337 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hmm... maybe it's finally time to upgrade.

  18. Re:DeathSentence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Strangely enough, people who set up a leaner don't always sign their names on it. Usually it's done in the middle of the night, and you have no idea who it was.

  19. Re:jup by lewko · · Score: 4, Funny
    everyone who uses a computer nowadays should have a 486 level machine

    Bah! 486? LOOGSHERIE! When I was your age, we didn't have none of those fangled 486es, oh no sir. 286 was more than enough for everyone... Or was that 64k of RAM? Now let me see...

    --
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  20. makes sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    From age 18 until 21, you're expected to try to
    get laid. In case you're too ugly or dumb for that,
    we take pity on you by allowing you to buy porn.

    The idea is to encourage good adult relationships.
    (married, hetero, consent, no rape, no S+M, etc.)
    Such relationships lead to happy children.

    Tough luck if you just want to be a perv. :-)

  21. Re:Atari ST forever !!!.......... /||\ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    No, the Acorn Archimedes is the system of the future, it uses RISC, the CPU architecture of the future, and the RISC OS beats your pathetic GEM.

  22. Re:jup by DoctorPepper · · Score: 3, Funny

    Heh, Lynx works just fine on my P-120 w/ 40 MB of RAM! ;-)

    --

    No matter where you go... there you are.
  23. Re:HOWTO: Diffusing a leaner by hey! · · Score: 4, Funny

    You get a relatively strong person to lean against the top half of the door, and wedge pennies between the door face and the door frame on the doorkknob edge. Repeat the process at the bottom of the door. This puts pressure on the bolt so that it cannot slide out, and the doorknob is jammed. This can only be undone from the outside so far as I know.

    Back in the day, we had a dorm phone system where the circuit was not released until the caller hung up, so to complete the task, you'd call the dorm phone and leave your receiver off the hook so the person had to hang out their window and shout for help.

    When I was an MIT student, this happened occasionally, but somebody always took pity on the victim and let them out almost immediately. Usually the perpetrator. All, in all, this is a nasty, potentially dangerous trick to play on somebody. The first rule of hacker ethics is do no harm. The second rule is safety.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  24. Re:jup by Reziac · · Score: 3, Funny

    Kids these days... in MY day, we had to carve our own computers out of wood!!

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  25. Re:jup by Dogtanian · · Score: 5, Funny

    a modem cost $300 when your cat chewed through the power cable? (I miss poor fluffy.)

    Fluffy seems like an unusual name for a modem.

    --
    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  26. Just wait 'til next year. . . by Rogue+Leader · · Score: 3, Funny
    When the 486 turns 16! I'm not letting mine drive the car.

    me: (in passenger seat) "Okay, turn left up here."

    486: (behind the wheel) Cursor turns to hourglass for 10+ seconds.

    me: Aaaah! Brake! Brake!

    486: Hard drive gets really loud, keeps going straight. Hits mailbox and plows through farmer's market. "Beginning dump of physical memory."

    me: (bleeding, picking glass out of skin) "Your brother Pentium wouldn't have crashed like this."

    486: (tear) "You know I can't multitask!"

    --

    worst sig ever. . .