{"id":474,"date":"2025-08-28T21:33:55","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T19:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.familie-kleinman.nl\/brain\/?p=474"},"modified":"2025-08-28T21:33:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T19:33:55","slug":"35-years-of-cpu-mayhem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familie-kleinman.nl\/brain\/index.php\/2025\/08\/28\/35-years-of-cpu-mayhem\/","title":{"rendered":"35 Years of CPU Mayhem!"},"content":{"rendered":"

When 16 MHz was enough\u2026 until my laptop showed up 20,000 times faster<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here we are in 2025. i9s, fast Ryzen CPUs, Xeons with a gazillion cores \u2014 computers nowadays are fast beyond belief. But it all started somewhere! Intel kicked off the PC revolution with the 8088 CPU (add Wikipedia link later as a reminder). This article is a journey back in time: from the CPUs we had when I was a little kid, to the first processors I owned myself in my early builds, all the way to the latest CPU in the workstation I\u2019m using right now.<\/p>\n

Again \u2014 buckle up for some CPU mayhem! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The early days<\/h2>\n

Before our first personal computer, we had an MSX game computer. It was my introduction to the computer world: to programming, to peeking and poking into registers to see what they did, and to my first real look at computer hardware. Our MSX broke a few times \u2014 especially the game ports in the front, usually after we dropped our joysticks again or got tangled up with our feet in the cords. I wasn\u2019t the one fixing it; that was my dad\u2019s job (thanks, Dad! \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n

Atari PC4<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s start the x86 journey, shall we?<\/p>\n

I was about 12 when we got our first personal computer: an Atari PC4. An 80286 machine with 1 megabyte of memory and a whopping 60 MB hard drive.<\/p>\n

AMD 80286 @ 16 MHz \u2014 check!<\/p>\n

Colani bigtower<\/h2>\n

We skipped the whole 80386 era entirely. About four or five years after the PC4, we bought ourselves a new machine: a Vobis Colani big tower equipped with an AMD 80486 running at 40 MHz.<\/p>\n

AMD 80486DX @ 40 MHz \u2014 check!<\/p>\n

Operation Braindead!<\/h2>\n

My first computer entirely paid for with my own hard-earned money, back in 1995. A real \u201cscreamer\u201d of a machine: an AMD 80486DX2 running at 66 MHz, with 4 megabytes of memory and a 1.1 gigabyte Quantum Fireball hard drive. At the same time, the fastest CPUs on the market were Pentiums already cruising well above 100 MHz.<\/p>\n

AMD 80486DX2-66 MHz \u2014 check!<\/p>\n

Overclocking<\/h3>\n

This was also the first CPU I ever overclocked. With help from a friend, we pushed this bad boy to 80 MHz by changing a few jumpers.<\/p>\n

1995-1998<\/h2>\n

Upgrade era one. I absolutely loved the Super Socket 7 days.<\/p>\n