Supplies of the now obsolecent 286 part are being snapped up by large companies eager to use it in PCs, it has emerged. Earlier this week, a source working for French memory company Dane-Elec told The Register that high street company Marks & Spencer was looking to upgrade 1,000 286 PCs. Intel does not manufacture 286s, any more, even for the embedded market but there is a company which will sell the parts. Rochester Electronics, which describes itself as "leaders on the trailing edge of technology" has a multitude of 286 chips, not just from Intel but from AMD too. The site says it has 80 million such parts in stock. A quick look at its Web site (http://www.rocelec.com) showed that it has many millions of such parts. The source at Dane-Elec told The Register that there were many assemblers looking to build machines using so-called obsolete 286s, using defunct memory. "It's very cost effective," he said. He would not be drawn on which operating systems such a PC might use. ®