DeathAdderSF
Experienced Member
Hello, all.
I recently picked up a Make-it-486 CPU upgrade for 286 machines. While its permanent home is going to be in my Tandy 1000 TX, curiousity got the better of me and I decided to give it a quick spin in my IBM 5160 XT. I accomplished this by way of the Orchid Tiny Turbo, which if you're not already aware is a 286 upgrade card for the XT. What's neat about the Tiny Turbo is that it provides a toggle switch to flip between 286 and 8088 processors (you install your original 8088 chip on the card itself), which is very helpful if -- like me -- you are using hardware and / or software in the XT that specifically requires the 4.77Mhz speed to run properly.
The Tiny Turbo comes with a Siemens 286-N processor which, according to Norton's System Index benchmark, provides 6.6 times the processing power of the 5160's base 8088.
With the Make-it-486 installed in place of that 286-N, the power goes up to 7.5 times the 8088.
But with the cache enabled on the Make-it-486 -- thanks to Cloudschatze for providing the cache utility -- the system ultimately becomes 14.3 times quicker than the base 8088.
Ultimately I think I'm going to go with a Harris CS80C286-20. That should offer more than enough horsepower to this venerable machine.
I thought this was a pretty cool, fun experiment. And I thought to post my results here in case anyone else feels like turbo-charging their 5160 in a similar manner.
I recently picked up a Make-it-486 CPU upgrade for 286 machines. While its permanent home is going to be in my Tandy 1000 TX, curiousity got the better of me and I decided to give it a quick spin in my IBM 5160 XT. I accomplished this by way of the Orchid Tiny Turbo, which if you're not already aware is a 286 upgrade card for the XT. What's neat about the Tiny Turbo is that it provides a toggle switch to flip between 286 and 8088 processors (you install your original 8088 chip on the card itself), which is very helpful if -- like me -- you are using hardware and / or software in the XT that specifically requires the 4.77Mhz speed to run properly.
The Tiny Turbo comes with a Siemens 286-N processor which, according to Norton's System Index benchmark, provides 6.6 times the processing power of the 5160's base 8088.
With the Make-it-486 installed in place of that 286-N, the power goes up to 7.5 times the 8088.
But with the cache enabled on the Make-it-486 -- thanks to Cloudschatze for providing the cache utility -- the system ultimately becomes 14.3 times quicker than the base 8088.
Ultimately I think I'm going to go with a Harris CS80C286-20. That should offer more than enough horsepower to this venerable machine.
I thought this was a pretty cool, fun experiment. And I thought to post my results here in case anyone else feels like turbo-charging their 5160 in a similar manner.
