- My first computer was a 486sx 25Mhz [1] The rig (tower, monitor, etc.) cost around $3,000. We got the SX instead of the DX because it was $500 cheaper. And I wanted a 16bit sound card. (Note that this is in 1992 dollars. Today it would cost over $7,000)
My parents didn't have a lot of money, but my great-grand father passed and they used some of the inheritance to buy the computer. I was instantly hooked. In hindsight I see how much of a gift my family gave me.
The announcement reminded me of article John Dvorak wrote around the same time. 1GB hard drives had just come out, and he asked what all the extra space would be used for. Even as a young teenager, I remember thinking how short sighted that comment was. That was before I realized how the tech press tends to get stuck in local optimizations, and can't understand the bigger picture.
It's all a good reminder that cutting edge today doesn't stay cutting edge very long, and the world figures out how to squeeze every ounce ounce of power out of hardware. (Also, yes, that leads to bloat...)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I486SX
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
by fabiensanglard
9 subcomments
- The 486 killer app was DOOM. It was butter-smooth at 20 fps if you also had a VLB graphic card.
The 486 DX2 66MHz was the target platform for gaming during almost two years (1992-1994). That was an huge achievement back in the days to be at the top that long.
by theodorethomas
5 subcomments
- The 486 and https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html changed everything.
Suddenly, it was possible to imagine running advanced software on a PC, and not have to spend 25,000 USD on a workstation.
- I loved my 486DX2 66Mhz based IBM PS/1 (2168), which had a whopping 8MB of RAM. Not only did it really enable me to experience the fullness of PC gaming of the era, but it was the first computer I was able to install an internal modem into, and the computer I used to get SLIP dial-in access to the state university mainframe and thus to the Internet (prior I was limited to Prodigy walled garden). It was this computer that let me play early MUDs via telnet, let me play my first graphical MMORPG (Ultima Online), and and introduced me to real visual programming (Visual Basic).
To a significant degree, the 486DX2 was the primary computing platform that created the foundation I needed to learn computing at depth and enabled my later career, and really set many of the formative moments in my life. Thanks Intel, even though you suck now as a shadow of your former self you were a beast in the 90s.
by loloquwowndueo
0 subcomment
- We ran a 3-line BBS (Renegade and then Wildcat) on OS/2 on a 486-33 with 12 MB RAM. This was in 1994 or so. Great way to multitask several dos applications!
by realreality
1 subcomments
- I didn't have access to a 486 until around 1999. I was making do with a hand-me-down 8088 and then a 386SX.
Back then, 10 years of technological advancement made a huge difference. Today, you can get by just fine with a 2016-era laptop.
- 486 was my dream. Unfortunately, my parents didn't have money for it. I bought my first PC in 1999 - a Pentium 2. I invested a lot of money in the monitor; computers become obsolete very quickly, while a monitor can serve for many years. Surprisingly, flat monitors appeared soon after...
- I remember getting my first 486 33mhz computer and being able to play Ultima 7 the black gate, and later Ultima 7 part 2. This was a turning point for me as the game was way ahead of others on the console side of things. DOS 6 !
- Funny I'm working with intel 686 right now brutal to get stuff to build eg. rust/cargo related (missing deps but mostly the hardware, slow). Recently trying to fix this maturin problem I ran into. But it is cool the backwards compatibility of python 3.11 to 32bit with debian 12
The CPU I'm working with is Celeron M 900MHz single core no HT struggling to build wheels for python (several hours)
- Back in the day I couldn't even dream of a PC. They were way too expensive. It took my extended family chipping in (~15 people) to buy me a C64 with tape storage. Still it was great fun. It made me learn programming in BASIC and English at the same time (as the Polish language book included was so badly translated and full of errors it was hopeless).
It was pre-internet obviously so obtaining software was very difficult. For years when I was learning assembler I was using a so called "monitor cartridge" that did simple assembly/disassembly, but it didn't support labels and such. I could read about software like "Meta Assembler" that let you use labels and variables and think "wow, I could do so much stuff with that..."
My first PC was sometime in late 90s. A Celeron 233MHz with Windows 95. I wasn't a huge fan of Windows back then. I remember when one of the pc magazines I got had RedHat Linux install CDs. I liked it from the start. The fact my software only modem and Lexmark printer didn't work got me into kernel programming :-)
Fun to think of it now, but I prefer 2026 a 100x :-)
by insane_dreamer
1 subcomments
- > But when Word 97 arrived with real-time spelling and grammar checking and Clippy, the 486 couldn’t keep up. You really needed a Pentium or equivalent to do all three at once without noticeable lag as you typed.
In other words, faster hardware was needed because the quality and performance of the software dropped. I was doing spell-checking with WordStar on an CP/M Apple II with zero lag -- and WordStar fit on one side of a 5' floppy.
- Linux kernel version 7.1 will drop support for 486: "Linux devs think even one second spent on 486 support is a second too many." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/04/linux-kernel-maintai...
by randomdrake
0 subcomment
- I got a paper route just to get a hold of the dx2.
It was a life-changing machine.
Ordered, I believe, from the depths of a Computer Shopper magazine.
by KellyCriterion
1 subcomments
- Raise your hand if you have been there and:
- tinkered for HOURS to get enough EMM/XMM memory by tweaking Config.Sys & Co to get whatever game running
(and having dedicated boot options configured, because you could unload some drivers from mem and could then run other games)
:-D
- Heh, I remember using my first machine, a 486 for a long time after it was obsolete and reading system requirements like, what do you mean pentium recommended and why the hell do you need 16Mb of RAM. It's interesting to reflect that the old games like Settlers, HoMM 2 or Warcraft 2, that are no worse than modern ones gameplay wise, used to run on something that is so vastly underpowered by modern standards the numbers don't even feel like a real spec.
- • Ran my first Linux at home on a i486-DX2 (33 MHz, 4 MB RAM), which supported a decent X11/R6 performance in color in 1992, with a 14" CRT.
• Ran my first real UNIX at home on a PA-RISC (HP 9000-715/75 with HP-UX 9.03 and 96 MB RAM) in 1997, 20" color CRT.
• Today, Linux is still here, but on a 2-CPU, 140-core AMD server with 2 TB RAM, hundreds of TB NAS and a 40" TFT... (and it still takes too long to open the bloated Web browser! - keenly awaiting Ladybird to the rescue in August.)
by axeldunkel
0 subcomment
- I still have a 486 linux system from those days - has not been turned on in this century but I'll try some day together with a glas of whisky :-)
by nickdothutton
0 subcomment
- Hard to imagine now, but this was a huge turning point. A genuinely powerful CPU in a "Pee-Cee" available for less than RISC workstation money. I had to wait a while, mine was an AMD DX2-66 since I didn't have a budget for Intel... add Slackware... and countess hours messing with XF86config and I had a poor-mans Sun workstation.
by andrewstuart
0 subcomment
- Hard to convey these days how the 486 felt like an absolute quantum leap in computing power.
I built a 486 Compaq Novell server for the company I worked for and named it Godzilla - gives a sense of how the 486 was seen.
- Microsoft was and still is the reason why average people needed more powerful chips lol, maybe with the exception of browser bloat.
by mrlonglong
0 subcomment
- And of course, support for this venerable processor will be dropped in Linux kernel 7.1 in a couple of months time.
- I've got one sitting on the shelf above my desk, a 33 Mhz dx, I don't even remember what machine it came out of.
- 486 SX 33Mhz, could not afford the DX
- It comes over as so incredibly insane to me that people from the late 80s (people working with computers! Reporting on them!) would look at their current technology stack and basically go: "I have no idea whatsoever what else we can do with these things, we've reached the end"
The lack of imagination is just disturbing.
- For me, the 486 was right between my (actually my Dad's) first computer, a 386, and my first personal computer (Pentium MMX). During those couple of years my friends had 486s and I was always jealous. I used to drool at the Best Buy catalog that came every Sunday in the mail.
Nowadays, 486 computers are getting rare and relatively expensive. CPUs themselves are 25, 30, 40, sometimes 50 bucks on eBay. Whole working systems are in the low hundreds, and fully working 486 laptops can fetch 400 or 500 bucks.
sigh
- How was the person incorrect that speed increases won't continue forever? Pentium 4 was 3.8GHz and Ryzen 7 has 4.7Ghz some 20 odd years later?
- Great throwback.. they were awesome proc's. With a few Simms (4 - 16 Mb) it could do multimedia madness never seen before (play a CD-ROM game of mpeg1 video) 486dx4 100 was the latest Intel I had before going to Pentium clones. (AMD K series and the shitty Cyrix 6x86)
by phplovesong
0 subcomment
- Uuh! I recall i had this setup, not in 89, but sometime in the early 90s.
Played some awesome games, like DOOM, Wolfenstein. Later duke3d was the shit. But i cant remember if i run on the same setup or something newer.
by bpbp-mango
0 subcomment
- dx2 gang
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