Man, those designs look so simple today! Towards the end of my career I was supporting Cyrix MediaGX and M2 uPs - around the 200mHz-300mHz period of the uP wars. We were faster than AMD for a few months, then in #3 position and losing ground. National Semi had no business being in the uP business - under funded, under staffed, pushing the limits of our fab. You wouldn't believe the stress levels of a uP test engineer during the CPU wars.
The old Cyrix stuff. Last one of those I used was National Semiconductor's Geode CPU on a PC/104 board. It seemed to work fairly well, there's still a metric shitton of the boards I chose out there in the now defunct company's product.
I ran one of those for years as my "mini server" until the SBC revolution started with the Pi.
The old Cyrix stuff. Last one of those I used was National Semiconductor's Geode CPU on a PC/104 board.
Lol! That was one of the parts I supported! My test program ran on that same device. They had a 640 pin grid array ceramic package. They weren't as fast as the M2s but were a complete system on a chip.
Nice. I'll say they've been nothing but reliable. These things go into places You Do Not Want To Be, and go "Yep, I'm good with this."
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