Bit bemusing – according to US PC Week, to make its 33/66MHz Blue Lightning 486 chips more attractive to personal computer manufacturers, IBM Corp is considering making the chips with the same pin-out as Intel Corp’s 80486, sources close to IBM said: the paper notes that the chips now use an 80386SX pin configuration and that with the 80486 pin-out, manufacturers could design one motherboard to support both Intel and Blue Lightning 486 chips – but it also repeats that under its agreement with Intel, IBM can sell the chips only as part of a motherboard, not as components, which seems to make the benefit marginal unless it wants to upgrade its own 80486 PS/2s in the field.
