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Northgate Elegance 386 Cache Upgrade

I

IBM

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Dec 25, 2011
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Location
Ohio, USA
I have a Northgate Elegance 386 33 MHz motherboard that has 64k of cache installed (factory default).

I would like to upgrade it to 256k (maxed out).

There are 10 (2 for TAG?) MCM6288P20 cache chips installed. These are 22-Pin DIP, rated 20NS, 64x1K SRAM made by Motorola. Looking on Stason.org, 64x4K chips are needed to go to 256k total cache.

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/N/NORTHGATE-COMPUTER-SYSTEMS-INC-386-ELEGANCE-386-RE.html

The cache sockets allow for both 22 and 24-pin DIPs (the typical odd double-socket arrangement seen on many older motherboards).

I cannot seem to find any compatible chips to upgrade the cache, nor do I have the manual that would have the list of acceptable chips. The double staggered sockets would allow for a 24 pin DIP, but I am unsure of what I would need.

I would appreciate some suggestions here. What's this all about? Thank you.

-Isaac
 
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I suppose those you have are 64K x1 and it needs 64K x4. These should be fairly hard to find and I didn't even know that there were 386 boards with such kind of cache memory. 256K cache became standard in the mid-486 days with DIP-28 32K x8 chips. DIP-24 64K x4 should have been a very-rare very high-end at its time configuration, probably with a small number of chips produced. Maybe you should add a search at ebay to notify you when someone lists something like that.
 
Yes, correct; I meant there were 64x1k on there now. I corrected the original post.

How did I just know that these chips would be impossible to find? :angry:
 
Thanks, that's a start.

Looks like MCM6208-20 is the proper part. Dang hard to find though and pretty expensive - and I need 10 of them.
 
-- edit -- oops, nevermind. Was thinking you were saying 24 and 28, not 22 and 24. Shame it doesn't have 28's -- 32x8's are dirt cheap.
 
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The motherboard is a 33 MHz 386 DX that "deturbos" to 10 MHz. Why 10 instead of 8 or 16? I would think 30NS would be fast enough for a 33 MHz CPU yet it has 20. This system was seriously expensive when it was new circa 1990. It is a massive full AT motherboard. Maybe they used 20NS just because.
 
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