The History Of Pentium

yootje writes "ArsTechnica is running a story about the history of the Pentium processor. It starts with the original Pentium back in 1993, but it also handles the Pentium II and III. The article goes deep about how the processors are designed and work."

Does it mention...

[mirko]

F00FC7C8 ?
I remember exploding many systems running many OSes with that...

Now I feel old

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes me feel old that they now have a histroy for things I was around for the beginning of.

Re:Does it mention...

[perly-king-69]

Does it mention... F00FC7C8 ?

Shall I RTFA for you to find out? ;-)

Re:Does it mention...

[baywulf]

Good thing it was not the C0FFEEA55 or DEADBEEF bug. The FOOF bug has a nicer ring to it.

Re:My First Pentium.

[SnowDeath]

You lucky BASTARD, all we had was a 486SX-33. Yes, that's right, no math-coprocessor and no way to play Quake1 when it came out! At least we were able to upgrade from 4 megs of ram to 8

Re:when is 786 comming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they called them the 80386 and 80387.

Re:Where did the name come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Five guys drinking fifths around a pentagram on the 5th floor of the pentagon on the pentecost.

Sadly

[WormholeFiend]

the article doesn't tell us when we should expect the Hexium.

Re:My First Pentium.

[bwthomas]

I remember when my mother brought home a 486 DX-2 66MHZ Packard Bell with something like 8 or 12 megs of ram.

we thought we were descended from kings, that day.

Those were the days...

[supersam]

[nostalgia]
... when I used to lust, in equal measures, for the hottest girl in my class and the soon-to-be-launched Pentium!!
[/nostalgia]

*sigh*

Re:Where did the name come from?

[October_30th]

One of the five guys mentioned above?

Explosions and fire

[WizzleWizzleWizzle]

I had only been in the PC-building business for a few months when the Pentiums came out. I was always really nonchalant when it came to building computers and was certainly not gentle. However, everything I had built up to that point either had the CPU soldered onto the motherboard or someone else had done it because I had never seen a separate CPU.

When the first Pentium-based system arrived at my workstation to build I mounted the motherboard to the case and then put the CPU in place, but it didn't go in very well. I pulled it out and bent the pins back into place and put it in again. It felt like it went in okay.

I took the little arm thing and pulled down to secure it in place and heard a sound, but I thought it was okay... I had never done this before.

I put in the cards, drives and memory and fired the system up... blank screen and then... POP!!! and some smoke.

I didn't realize the CPU had a dot that corresponded with a notched corner indicating how to put the thing into place. From then on I started paying attention to things like that.

The Pentium made me mature as a technician... for about a week; then it was a contest to see how far we could launch them in the air. (kidding)

Re:Dusty

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

I'm using a P4 at work right now, and when I had a PII, I remember having to extract all the text content just to be able to work on it, and copy-paste it back into the graphically enhanced version.

I hear ya on that one, but I seem to remember (keep in mind I'm an old geezer in computer terms - 33) that to alleviate that, you could just upgrade the 'graphics accelerator'. I may be wrong, but couldn't a PII with a good ole' Diamond Viper V550 or V770 do the trick?

Plus the fact, that every new OS or software version magically requires more and more power. GRanted some of this is necessary, but how much is really necessary? Some people use ALL of the features of a package, but most don't even scratch the surface. Alot of folks consider me a computer 'Guru', and though I probably know more than most, I am far from it. It's like buying the Hyabusa [suzukicycles.com], when all you want to be capable of doing is riding on two wheels [honda.com]

Very Brief History

[Epistax]

1978: 8086 processor is released
1979-Present: Regret

I think many of you will know exactly what I mean.

Re:Those were the days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess: you got the Pentium but not the girl ?

Re:My First Pentium.

[AngryTech]

I tell my nephews that my pcs used to have a "turbo" button, and they look at me cross-eyed.

Re:Explosions and fire

[the real darkskye]

Been there, done that, put the chip in the right way and it still worked fine.

I can't remember if it was my AMD 486DX4 or my P200MMX that survived the smoke escape but both served me for many years after.

I'll pass

[invisik]

I don't need to read it, I've lived it.... :)

-m

It's all about the Pentiums Baby!

[supertbone]

It's all about the Pentiums, baby

What y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard?
Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills
Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills
I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM
I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
Installed a T1 line in my house
Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse
Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K
I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
It's all about the Pentiums, what?
You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen
You've got white-out all over your screen
You think your Commodore 64 is really neato
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet
Your database is a disaster
You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster
Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar
Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar
And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er
I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller
You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller

Uh, uh, loggin' in now
Wanna run wit my crew, hah?
Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
They call me the king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em printed out on my bedsheets
My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
My digital media is write-protected
Every file inspected, no viruses detected
I beta tested every operating system
Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em
While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'
It does all my work without me even askin'
Got a flat-screen monitor forty inches wide wide
I believe that your says "Etch-A-Sketch" on the side
In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user
You've got your own newsgroup, "alt.total-loser"
Your motherboard melts when you try to send a fax
Where'd you get your CPU, in a box of Cracker Jacks?
Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you
If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you
What? What? What? What? What?

Re:Where did the name come from?

[James Turpin]

"Pent-" is a Greek root for "5" and "-ium" is a Latin suffix often used for new elements. Thus the Pentium is the Fifth Element [sciflicks.com]. As anybody who has seen the movie knows, the Fifth Element is a sexy red-head. That makes the Pentium the sexiest processor around.

Lexicon

[Kenshin]

I know it's not nice to want people to die... but I want those people to die.

Re:Where did the name come from?

[ktakki]

Five guys drinking fifths around a pentagram on the 5th floor of the pentagon on the pentecost.

No, no, the question was "who came up with the name Pentium?" not "how is US foreign policy formulated?".

k.