assumed application crashes were
due to buggy code.
Several companies licensed the
technology from INTEL to make their
own CPUs and Harris Semiconductor
was one notable example. Though
several years late to the market, the
company offered 286-compatible
processors operating at up to 25MHz
- a 100 % overclock above INTEL's
maximum clock speed for the 286.
INTRODUCTION OF THE
CHIPSET AND JUMPER
OVERCLOCKING
Up until 1986, the IBM PCs consisted of
100 or more chips on the motherboard
keeping everything functioning.
Included were DMA controllers,
interrupt controllers, keyboard
controllers, bus controllers, nonvolatile CMOS RAM/real-time clock
chips, memory controllers and more.
Other than the CMOS/clock chip
which came from Motorola, these
chips were mostly manufactured by
INTEL or an INTEL license-holding
manufacturer. Building an IBMcompatible clone computer required
all of these components, leaving
very little room on motherboards to
integrate more functionality as well as
high prices.
A company called CHIPS AND
TECHNOLOGIES changed the playing
field by introducing the 82C206 - the
first chipset. The 82C206 included
the functionality of the 8254 system
timer, dual 8259 interrupt controllers,
dual 8237 DMA controllers, the 82284
clock generator, 82288 bus controller
and even MC146818 CMOS/clock
chip. Four other chips augmented the
82C206, acting as buffers and memory
controllers. This reduced most of the
entire motherboard circuit design to
just five chips.
The four chips augmenting the
82C206 were later replaced by three
chips, and the set was called the New
Enhanced AT (NEAT) CS8221 chipset.
This design was later shrunk down
to the 82C836 Single Chip AT (SCAT)
chipset in 1989, with the functionality
of the motherboard shrunk down to a
single chip.
These cheaper, simpler
motherboards meant that higher clock
speeds were possible. The INTEL 386
launched in 1986 as the first 32-bit
processor, allowing for access of up to
4 GB of RAM. The 386 launched with a
speed of 16MHz, ultimately reaching
33MHz. The CPU still operated at the
same speed as the FSB as the CPU
multiplier was still several years
away.
A big advancement with the 386
was the introduction of banks of DIP
switches and jumpers for configuring
system speeds and voltages. This
made overclocking as simple as
moving a plastic jumper or flipping
a tiny white switch, putting an end to
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