The Performance Boosting Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 Accelerator Boards for PC XT (behind the scenes video

[@stefanpaul9443]

A Siemens AT 286 was my first ever computer and for programming I bought the extra 287 math coprocessor. Really made a difference back then..

[@AlsGeekLab]

I'll see if I can get enough time to make said video!

[@TawaSkies]

I remember these. They work well. If I remember correctly this model gets the clock off the ISA bus. Performance wise they where OK, most programs got a boost but as soon as the ISA bus was been use for like I/O performance dropped off, you had to disable the cache on these to get some programs to work correctly and did have some compatibly issues on some clone motherboards.

[@mattg7485]

I've got a similar card made by AST. I just finished adding an RTC and 640KB, and updated to the TurboXT 3.1 BIOS in preparation to install the 286 board,

[@EvanBThompson]

Would love to see a accelerator card with 486 on it

[@AlsGeekLab]

I have a friend who had tried 286 to 386 to 486 over 3 boards. It worked, but got verrry hot!

[@VicTheVicar]

Very cool stuff! I would love to see a more indepth feature about this. Does the card need any drivers for max performance? Any BIOS incompatibilities? Would love to know more on how those 16 bit data/adress lines gets translated into 8 bit.

[@lloydieization]

Sadly these types of cards where never that affordable, especially once the PC clones were common place, they were anywhere from 50%-85% the cost of a new 286 PC clone and would generally be limited by less RAM (640K/1M vs 4M for a "full" 286) and the 8 bit bus. I think only businesses and certain professional users (e.g. your lotus 123 example) would find this a cost effective upgrade, and that saved cost was probably due to time saved just sticking in a single card vs swapping a PC , copying data reinstalling applications and or swapping additional hardware .