Back "in the day" I was the hardware review editor for a CAD magazine. I had the pleasure of running benchmarks with these chips. It did provide a noticeable bump in performance within MicroStation but in my opinion not enough to warrant the high price for it. Whille reactivaing my retro computer hobby after retirement I have been digging out all sorts of ancient hardware from the 80s-90s. I found one of the two chips and I know I have the second one around here. No plans to sell it but might build of a circa 1990 "CAD station" using the bits and bobs I have from that part of my career. Keep up the good work!

Sir, do you have a museum or is this a personal passion of yours? Regardless, I want to sincerely thank you for preserving & sharing these historical pieces with the world.

Until your January content, I didn't know this CPU existed at all. I always thought no one could fool me. I've been in the game since the MOS 6510 processor.

Nice! I wish I had a RapidCAD chipset, but I'm not ready to buy at current prices. Keep up the great videos! I like the content, comparison, and discussion about various chips.

It is a aesthetically pleasing chip.

At 00:48 "Cheap" is a relative term..:) Its so interesting that these solutions have turned in value, now are a good 486 motherboard more expensive than "last years model". A bit like old premium cars, they turn at a very low value and if they survive that period they become collectibles. By the way, I have a 386 motherboard with a 287 and 387 socket, that would be the opposite of a RapidCAD upgrade, to put a plain 287 in it. :)

I love these old ceramic chips....have quite a few Pentium and AMD k5 ceramic cpus in my collection.

Heeeey now I know why you commented about an incomplete rapid cad chip I have. 😆👍 Thanks buddy.

I've worked on and collected (hoarded) computers since the mid 90s. I have been gifted many, purchased large lots at business auctions, bought some from clients, and bought from a recycler. I have a single RapidCAD chip in my collection, not the set. I have no idea where it came from and probably didn't know what it was when I first came across it.

There actually _is_ another 'OverDrive-like' solution that I swear had Intel branding, but it was merely a PCB which plugged into the 386 socket that allowed you to install a 386 _and_ 387, made for those early motherboards which only allowed the use of 287 FPUs otherwise. They are incredibly hard to find and didn't contain any fancy circuitry, nor did they do anything like increase the clock - but some third party ones seem to at least have had vias and pads for this.

Cook pre 486 solutions at a lower price. Interresting technology was moving so fast at that time . The out-tro music got 16 points from me too :D

Luckily i have this set for ages in my collection :) Greetings, i440BX

What’s the title of ending song?

Im sad to say that in the mid 90's I worked for alarge car manufacturer and oversaw the destruction of a number of PC's with RapidCAD processors. i actually wanted to buy one or 2 for use in ray-tracing (a hobby of mine at the time) but it was company policy to sell all machines to "recyclers" who broke them down for their material content rather than reselling them. I guess most of the RapidCAD chips would have been in machines owned by companies rather than individuals, so its likely they all went the same way.

Nice! So apparently I have very collectible chips, go figure! I have one set in nice condition, I really don't remember how I got the chips in my small processor collection, but I think that a guy who taught me PC servicing 20 years ago gave me those with a bunch of old stuff, that back then was basically garbage: 386 and 486 systems, and some old apple products. Because of space issues i had to recycle them but I keep the processors, I know back then that those pretty things were going to get valuable haha! Greetings from Colombia.

Are there any pictures of the die in the "FPU" chip? Or is there basically nothing in it?

If you would start rating the rarity of GPUs as well, you could rate the RTX 30xx cards already 😅 To early?

Can we get a RapidCAD-2 clone? Seems simple enough

Well, someone's gotta ask: DOOM on a 386?

That display stand does not look ESD safe.