alt Hacker NewsThe worst part about the 486 name was all the varieties, an uninformed consumer could get a real lemon.
The author links to an example:
https://dfarq.homeip.net/ibm-486slc2-cpu-when-a-clone-isnt-a...
You then had the 486 DLCs which were even worse. you'd get companies that sold 386 and even 286 systems with '486' chips, constrained by slow, 16-bit buses, etc.
The 486DLC was fully 32 bit. The 286/386SX-like model with a 16 bit bus was the 486SLC.
But, even a 486SLC wasn't all that bad at the time. It was still much faster than a 386DX for many things (DOOM, for example).
These AT-like machines limited users to 16-bit ISA cards for expansion, and a 24-bit address bus (16 MB RAM). But how many consumer PCs used more than that, back when your 32-bit bus options were VLB (video only), MCA (IBM only), or EISA (expensive servers/workstations only).