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Getting back into older PC's with my first 486 Build in almost 30 years

That case does look nice. Good job cleaning it up.

A DVD-RW? I don't think I've ever seen that in a 486 class machine. My latest 486DX4-100 was made in 1994. DVD-RW came out in 1999 or 2000? DVD came out in 1997? I've never tried DVD in a 486.

Seaken
 
seaken said:
That case does look nice. Good job cleaning it up.

A DVD-RW? I don't think I've ever seen that in a 486 class machine. My latest 486DX4-100 was made in 1994. DVD-RW came out in 1999 or 2000? DVD came out in 1997? I've never tried DVD in a 486.

Seaken
Click to expand...
I dont have too many ide drives left. Most are black. This one color-wise looked best. Whenever I am at swapmeets I try to grab a few IDE optical drives as they tend to be dying lately. Without an MPEG card I cant watch dvds but with NERO installed... heck I might just be able to burn some dvds? I guess we will see. I was burning cds on my 486 DX4 so its not that far off having a burner.

Thanks for the case again!
 
I may have some CD-ROM drives in my collection that are the right color. But I think it's cool to have the DVDRW in there. Looks nice.

Seaken
 
VERAULT said:
Ok making the changes.

Cache Write W/S I need clarification. There are two settings for ZERO. 0, 8Kx88 and 0, 32Kx8. Which one should I choose? I just want to test and run diags. If its unstable Ill revert.


Edit!! Below are the results from Cachechk with the new settings. Also going back to the old photos. Why do I seem to have L3 cache only with the turbo button changing the speed to 29mhz?
Click to expand...
I have never seen a wait state option being tied to cache chip size before, that's quite odd. You would want 32Kx8 since you have 256KB cache.

Looks like adjusting the settings helped marginally, but I think it's just a slow board.

De-turbo can be implemented in many different ways on 486 boards. Apparently yours does something that only slows down the upper half of L1 cache and trips the software out into thinking it's 2 tiers.
 
So even though this full tower has an old early 486 motherboard and is slow I think Im going to make it my primary 486. Since its so huge and its an interesting board.
I just got the etherlink III mostly working. I used the config program to enable the boot rom and set the I\O. The card has the XTIDE universal bios and it seems to be working. I have the mouse working. I have the parallel port working. Configuring the Etherlink III is not as straight forward as the etherlink II (set the jumpers and install). This pseudo PNP setup is confusing. This is the card I am using:
index.php


I downloaded this 3com config disk: https://archive.org/details/3com_etherdiskv50etherlinkiiisanic3c509b_830845005
I dunno. Maybe its too new? I have the base I/O setup as 330H and the IRQ is now 3. It was 10 but it didnt seem to be working (could have been something I was doing wrong).
So Now I have the card driver from that config disk as well as tcpIP32 loaded. The strange thing is its not giving me a workgroup logon for windows (just username and password).. But its somehow working because on the 486 tower I can see my other network machines under shared drives and I can see the 486 tower and copy files to it from my network. So.. Its mostly working... I am getting about 100Kb throughput which is nice. Id still prefer the workgroup logon.
Also strange to see a 3Com network card with NO activity LED's at all. I dont know why but I dont like that one bit.





With the Network mostly done and XTIDE now working properly from the Boot rom of the 3Com etherlink III that leaves the final item. The sound card. When I started the thread I only had the Ensoniq card but now I have 3 sound cards. So im putting it out there. You guys tell me. Which of these 3 sound cards is the best and should I put in the machine?

1.) Ensoniq Vivo
index.php




2.) Mega Image32 card (of course if I choose this card I need to remove the IDE card, reinstall the 8 bit I/O card and try to get XTIDE working for this CDrom IDE connector... a new can of headaches!)
index.php

index.php




3.) and The third option is the Creative Vibra16
IMG_20240227_105112.jpg

What do you guys think? The other two will end up in the two Gateway 2000 486 systems I am also working on.
 
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maxtherabbit said:
I have never seen a wait state option being tied to cache chip size before, that's quite odd. You would want 32Kx8 since you have 256KB cache.

Looks like adjusting the settings helped marginally, but I think it's just a slow board.

De-turbo can be implemented in many different ways on 486 boards. Apparently yours does something that only slows down the upper half of L1 cache and trips the software out into thinking it's 2 tiers.
Click to expand...
Ok I tried the change on the cache wait state:
IMG_20240227_112524.jpg

Here is a result of the tests:
IMG_20240227_112424.jpg

I dunno. What do you think. I feel we chiseled it down to a better place than it was originally.
 
VERAULT said:
So even though this full tower has an old early 486 motherboard and is slow I think Im going to make it my primary 486. Since its so huge and its an interesting board.
I just got the etherlink III mostly working. I used the config program to enable the boot rom and set the I\O. The card has the XTIDE universal bios and it seems to be working. I have the mouse working. I have the parallel port working. Configuring the Etherlink III is not as straight forward as the etherlink II (set the jumpers and install). This pseudo PNP setup is confusing. This is the card I am using:
index.php


I downloaded this 3com config disk: https://archive.org/details/3com_etherdiskv50etherlinkiiisanic3c509b_830845005
I dunno. Maybe its too new? I have the base I/O setup as 330H and the IRQ is now 3. It was 10 but it didnt seem to be working (could have been something I was doing wrong).
So Now I have the card driver from that config disk as well as tcpIP32 loaded. The strange thing is its not giving me a workgroup logon for windows (just username and password).. But its somehow working because on the 486 tower I can see my other network machines under shared drives and I can see the 486 tower and copy files to it from my network. So.. Its mostly working... I am getting about 100Kb throughput which is nice. Id still prefer the workgroup logon.
Also strange to see a 3Com network card with NO activity LED's at all. I dont know why but I dont like that one bit.





With the Network mostly done and XTIDE now working properly from the Boot rom of the 3Com etherlink III that leaves the final item. The sound card. When I started the thread I only had the Ensoniq card but now I have 3 sound cards. So im putting it out there. You guys tell me. Which of these 3 sound cards is the best and should I put in the machine?

1.) Ensoniq Vivo
index.php




2.) Mega Image32 card (of course if I choose this card I need to remove the IDE card, reinstall the 8 bit I/O card and try to get XTIDE working for this CDrom IDE connector... a new can of headaches!)
index.php

index.php




3.) and The third option is the Creative Vibra16
View attachment 1274449

What do you guys think? The other two will end up in the two Gateway 2000 486 systems I am also working on.
Click to expand...
Personally I would go with the Soundblaster but that's just based on the fact they were the thing back then!
 
The CT4180 doesn't have a OPL3 chip on it so the sound is emulated and isnt that good.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/sb_vibra.php

The megaimage32 sound card is really a BTC 1817DW card with a real OPL3 and built in hardware wavetable with 512kb soundfont.

The Ensoniq VIVO is a good MIDI card with shitty SB emulation so it's better as a second card for MIDI playback while using a real OPL3 for sound effects.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/retro_review_ensoniq_vivo_pt1.php

3-part review and setup at the above link.
 
Unknown_K said:
The CT4180 doesn't have a OPL3 chip on it so the sound is emulated and isnt that good.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/sb_vibra.php

The megaimage32 sound card is really a BTC 1817DW card with a real OPL3 and built in hardware wavetable with 512kb soundfont.

The Ensoniq VIVO is a good MIDI card with shitty SB emulation so it's better as a second card for MIDI playback while using a real OPL3 for sound effects.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/retro_review_ensoniq_vivo_pt1.php

3-part review and setup at the above link.
Click to expand...
So reviews are reviews.. whats your pick?
 
I would try out the megaimage32 first and see how it sounded. If it wasn't good I would use the Soundblaster for FX and the VIVO for midi (with FX disabled).

Personally, I have stacks of ISA sound cards here and my preference is probably a SB Pro 2.0 for older machines and older DOS games and a SB16 non-PnP with a Yamaha DB50XG Wave blaster add-on card. I have a 1MB GUS, GUS PnP, pretty much every Soundblaster from the 1.0 to AWE32 (no AWE64 for some reason), Ensonics, Aztec cards, adlib clones, various Crytsal chips.
 
Unknown_K said:
The CT4180 doesn't have a OPL3 chip on it so the sound is emulated and isnt that good.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/sb_vibra.php

The megaimage32 sound card is really a BTC 1817DW card with a real OPL3 and built in hardware wavetable with 512kb soundfont.

The Ensoniq VIVO is a good MIDI card with shitty SB emulation so it's better as a second card for MIDI playback while using a real OPL3 for sound effects.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/retro_review_ensoniq_vivo_pt1.php

3-part review and setup at the above link.
Click to expand...
Agree with this. I would go for the Mega Image32 card. The CDROM connector on it is most likely either set to ternary or disabled by default and should be able to be safely ignored without changing the rest of your IDE/IO cards' setup
 
VERAULT said:
Ok I tried the change on the cache wait state:
View attachment 1274453

Here is a result of the tests:
View attachment 1274454

I dunno. What do you think. I feel we chiseled it down to a better place than it was originally.
Click to expand...
I guess. The L1 and L2 numbers here are really not bad but the main memory is still about half to one-third the speed it should be. It doesn't sit well with me but I don't know what else to suggest though.
 
Actually here is a thought... that weitek FPU is memory mapped right? Try removing it. Perhaps the board is inserting wait states because of that thing
 
maxtherabbit said:
I guess. The L1 and L2 numbers here are really not bad but the main memory is still about half to one-third the speed it should be. It doesn't sit well with me but I don't know what else to suggest though.
Click to expand...
I really wish we could get to the bottom of it. I repaired this board and got it out of the dump. Id like to see it thrive.

maxtherabbit said:
Actually here is a thought... that weitek FPU is memory mapped right? Try removing it. Perhaps the board is inserting wait states because of that thing
Click to expand...
Hmm interesting. I can do that.
 
Weitech chips need special Weitek sockets and BIOS support, so they won't fit let alone work on standard 486 systems.
 
maxtherabbit said:
Be careful pulling it out, they have become quite valuable to chip collectors despite being practically useless
Click to expand...
Taking that weitek out was some chore. IT was touch and go and at several points I thought this is a very bad Idea. I got it out but chiped a bit of plastic out of the corner of the socket.. Just superficial thankfully. I disabled the weitek in the bios and ran the cachechk,. Here are the results.
IMG_20240304_133013.jpg

Seems to be no change at all. So I guess I should put it back in.
 
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Also I thought might be a good idea to benchmark the machine with and without the weitek. Maybe this is the wrong test to run in Checkit..... as the results were the same with or without the weitek chip.
So these are the results with or without the weitek.IMG_20240304_140246.jpg
 
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