I used to be a WAN admin, my department built computers for 167 remote locations and used these chips, in a socket 7 motherboard if I remember it right, it was a replacement for the Pentiums of the time. The software we were using was only pushing and pulling information and served no other function so we really didn't need hardcore floating point calculations. These chips were an alternative for people who were not really playing around with programs such as excel, or heavy math computations. They were inexpensive compared to like the Pentiums and K5/6 that were being used around that time.
Although they might seem like they are common, they really didn't gain that big a market share. If yours is in good condition I would hang onto at least one. Eventually they will be very difficult to find. I think their market share was far less than any of the other chip makers during it's time, including the NEC Risc processors that were not really a big hit with PCs.
VERY cool find...
Scott