i very vaguely recall cyrix having a 586 but i can’t recall if it was drop in compatible or not - their chips were always bootleg quality as i remember it
Crazy to think that the concept of “bootleg quality” was even possible for a CPU.
i have no idea how they were viewed to the world at large; i was a teenager when these were released. I know the vibe at the time though was these were budget chips that you got if you couldn’t afford intel chips, and the cost discount came with a performance hit it wasn’t an AMD situation.
i’m pretty sure i ran a cyrix chip at some point although i think it was a likely a 486 clone until i could afford a proper discount intel chip; the celeron
I think your description of “bootleg CPUs” is spot on. I was even younger (pre-teen) than you in those days. Some of my first computing experiences were on a 486 running Windows 3.1 in 95 or so. I was waiting for my mother to finish work and I was allowed to mess around on the receptionist’s computer.
I am just thinking it would be crazy to have say a bootleg Ryzen (or even Snapdragon) in our time.