Talk:IBM 386SLC

"486BL2/3" vs "486DLC2/3" ?
OK, how sure are we of our terminology here? The header in the article says "486DLC", but every scrap of anything I can turn up on the wider web suggests that was only ever officially used for IBM's licensed/second source production of the *Cyrix* chip (which the article currently says the IBM original "should not be confused with"), and under the Cyrix banner at that. There are no pictures ANYWHERE (including otherwise comprehensive "CPU museums" and spec-sheet download repositories) of IBM chips or packaging marked with the "DLC" designation, nor any documentation for it, and even the picture in the article just says "BLUE LIGHTNING DX2" (suggesting it's an FPU equipped processor, not just 32-bit bus / clock doubled?! IBM *did* make some straight 486DX/DX2/DX4 clone CPUs as well as the SLCs/etc after all).

There are a few scattered forum posts where people informally use the term to describe the a chip, but it's never entirely clear which generation they're referring to, and there's never any photographic evidence of that designation being used - no POST screens, no CPU identification in system scanner software, no printing on chip bodies, etc. The most common thing that comes up is an "Alaris Cougar" motherboard, and on that the chip is hidden under a glued-on heatsink... so it could be their source of the name is from a questionable-at-best spec list in a badly photocopied Chinglish user manual for the board itself.

Other than endless backlinks to this very wiki article, everything I can find online suggests that the later 32-bit-bus (but still FPU-less) IBM produced chip was simply called the "Blue Lightning", or at the extreme the 486BL (possibly 486BL2 or 486BL3, even that's not clear). Sometimes even the Blue Lightning DX. But never, not at all, the "DLC". That designation is reserved for the Cyrix model, and copious proof of THAT chip line's existence and designation is so easy to find you pretty much trip over it on your way to a different subject.

Though it's pretty hard to evidence for it, as it's more of an absence than a presence, and would need lots of random sprawling links to pages that are probably soon to die, I feel the article needs editing to reflect this and reduce the ambiguity. Plenty of those forum posts, after all, ended up referencing this page and taking it as gospel, and the road to hell is paved with circular links. 80.189.129.155 (talk) 20:22, 13 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Addendum... followed the white rabbit down the rather engrossing hole of the Redhill CPU Guide (and its related old-tech pages) that was already linked as a "reference" at the end of the article. It in particular ONLY calls the middle IBM part (between the SLC and BL-DX2) the "Blue Lightning" and only shortens it to "BL", and as they appear to be old soldiers of the independent PC retailing game, actually building and servicing computers up close, one hopes they know what they're on about. Have made some "bold" edits to the main article therefore, and feel relatively confident they'll stick. OK, the Redhill pages haven't seen an update for nigh on ten years, but then again neither has this article, and it's a more or less 25-year-old subject we're addressing... I happen to own a machine with a 486SLC in it - it's a monochrome-VGA laptop with all of 4mb RAM and no built-in pointing device or soundcard... 80.189.129.155 (talk) 01:27, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Concern over 486DLC confusion
The Cyrix 486DLC had a 386DX pinout and only 1K cache. Cyrix chips were manufactured by Texas Instruments and several TI variants were sold by that Silicon Fab. TI lawyers defended Cyrix from Intel copyright actions. As a tech, LG computers at the time stated they were "486" but had Windows 95 issues. Cyrix also sold 486srx2 modules that fit over existing 386sx (disabling the 386sx). One motherboard series had either a TI 386sx40 or a TI 486slc33 in same "socket". Note the 386SL (and 486SL) chips found in then era laptops had added power management and cache control (no onboard cache) and were not "SLC" chips in pinout or function. 174.253.192.178 (talk) 18:00, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

The 386SL and 386SLC are completely different designs
The 386SL was a specialized laptop chip with built in power management and cache controller built in (like 385 chip, no onboard cache, 8K). The 386slc has onboard 1 K cache and is write back (most cache at the time was write through, an issue with 486dx4/100). The Alaris board popular when I bought it had a 16bit IBM 486bl3/75 and L2 cache feeding a 32bit VESA local bus. It was roughly equal to 486DX2/66 running 16bit software of the time. 174.253.192.178 (talk) 18:21, 25 September 2022 (UTC)