IBM Intro's 486-Based PS/2; Uses Bug-Free Version of Chip
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
In an announcement that was both expected and surprising, IBM
said yesterday that it has begun shipping a new version of its
PS/2 Model 70 equipped with an Intel 80486 processor. Previously,
in order to get an IBM 486-based system, you had to buy a
386-based Model 70 A21 and upgrade it with IBM's 486 Power
Platform, a processor card that replaces the 386-based processor
card in the Model 70.
 
IBM is selling the new PS/2 Model 70 486 in two configurations:
with a 60-megabyte hard disk for $12,395, and with a 120-megabyte
hard disk for $12,990.
 
IBM began selling the 486 Power Platform in October, becoming one
of the first companies to ship products equipped with the chip.
When problems concerning the floating-point math capabilities of
the 486 surfaced in November, IBM stopped shipping the product.
The company said that it is using the new bug-free version
of the 486, and that it will resume shipping the Power Platform.
 
Current owners of the Power Platform will be able to upgrade to
the new bug-free chips. IBM becomes perhaps the first company to
ship a product that has the new bug-free version of the 486.
 
The Power Platform has been criticized for being relatively slow,
as it lacks an external memory cache to complement the 8K
internal cache of the 486 chip. The new Model 70 486 will also
lack an external cache and thus might not be as fast as 486-based
systems from ALR, Apricot, and others.
 
                              --- Rich Malloy
 
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