Is there an Intel 80386DX timeline?

[gg1978]

I find it interesting that the intel 80386 (DX) was supposedly introduced in october of '85, though it seems that production really didn't get going until sometime in '86. My oldest production 80386DX is a week 48 of '86 one, so that's fairly late in '86.

I was also wondering if the copyright dates on the front of the chip may indicate what stepping level a given 80386 is. With the ones with a '85 only date being the earliest stepping, the '85 '86 ones being slightly later, then the '85 '87 ones being the last stepping..

[Neon_WA]

I haven't got around to doing a 386 timeline yet.. bit old, but gives idea of earliest around

http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4381

[gg1978]

Well it looks like Week 16 of '86 is the magic week for the 386, and all of them from that week look to be the 12MHz version, which oddly enough doesn't seem to show up much after week 19, when the 16MHz started to become available..

Makes sense though, as my 386DX mech sample is from week 3 of '86.. Though that makes me wonder if intel actually released the 386DX to production, but didn't manage to get any properly working chips for about 5 months.

it also appears the copyright date doesn't say much, as the very earliest have '85 '86 for that, while some much later chips like the SX218 and SX366 have '85 only. Although the mech sample does have '85 only..

[Chook]

I recall reading somewhere that Intel didn't plan to release a 12mhz 386, but had troubles getting early chips to run at 16mhz.