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My new custom built 386DX40!

I collect some of my machines to have the correct vintage hardware for games of that era. Running Quake on a 386+387 is not something I care to try because it would suck. Running Quake 1 on a new 4 core machine would be about as pointless to me. But Quake 1 on early Pentium machines with a broad selection of video cards to select from with 3d patches is fun to mess around with.
 
....which is exactly why I have and am building systems with:
diamond pci voodoo1
dual voodoo2 with sli cable
(to be gotten)voodoo3 2000 agp
voodoo5 5500 agp

as for pentium 4... I won't touch them, they are horrible.

I want to see how it runs on the 386 personally, Ive never seen it. It's far from pointless to me, though I will almost certainly only play it on my (future) 486-133 and early pentium systems.
 
....which is exactly why I have and am building systems with:
diamond pci voodoo1
dual voodoo2 with sli cable
(to be gotten)voodoo3 2000 agp
voodoo5 5500 agp

as for pentium 4... I won't touch them, they are horrible.

I want to see how it runs on the 386 personally, Ive never seen it. It's far from pointless to me, though I will almost certainly only play it on my (future) 486-133 and early pentium systems.

The original Quake 1 3d driver was for the Verite chipset made by Rendition (took me a while to find that video card). While I love the Voodoo card series you should also check out the original Geforce DDR and maybe a TNT2 ultra plus the G400 Max.
 
I plan on it. I just don't want to list everything I wanna try here, I would be typing for days. literally.

and not QUITE accurate - original quake was software, yes the first 3D was verite. that needed a patch and you ran vquake.exe

I am probably not ever going to find my favorite two cards ever, the s3 vision968 VLB (yes they did make one I had it once, it was the #9 imagine 128 ) and the card I cant remember it's name that used three s3 chipsets one for each of R, G, B.
 
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I plan on it. I just don't want to list everything I wanna try here, I would be typing for days. literally.

and not QUITE accurate - original quake was software, yes the first 3D was verite. that needed a patch and you ran vquake.exe

I am probably not ever going to find my favorite two cards ever, the s3 vision968 VLB (yes they did make one I had it once, it was the #9 imagine 128 ) and the card I cant remember it's name that used three s3 chipsets one for each of R, G, B.

Yes the original Quake was DOS and didn't have accelerated 3D. When I first played it I was using a 486/133 at 160 on a PCI motherboard with a Matrox Millenium 1 and it made me jump to a Pentium 133.

I have the #9 GXE64 Pro (S3 Vision 964 4MB VLB) in one of my machines, it is nice.
 
May I try buying one of each?
Here's what I have:

1) 512K TVGA9000B This one also works in an 8-bit slot on my XT.

2) 1MB TVGA8900CL This one has a 32-bit bus

3) 1MB TVGA8900C This is a JAX-8212 card. It is boxed with manual and two disks. I bought it new in 1992 and have the receipt.

4) 2MB ATI MACH64

These have been sitting on a shelf in a closet for about 15-20 years so they haven't seen much use. I just recently tested all of them.

I have another 1MB TVGA8900C card that doesn't work and I don't know what is wrong with it.
 
I would like to remind everybody that they need to be civil when posting in public here. It would be nice if they were civil elsewhere too, but we can't control that.

The second reminder is that posts that are of a private nature and not of interest to our very large and broad audience should not be made. Use the private message system - that is what it is for. The question above about shipping is a clear violation of this long term policy, and a quick re-reading of the general guidelines for posting will help prevent further noise.

(You also might want to update your location now that we know you are in zip code 97448. Loopback is cute, but not helpful.)
 
The second reminder is that posts that are of a private nature and not of interest to our very large and broad audience should not be made. Use the private message system - that is what it is for. The question above about shipping is a clear violation of this long term policy, and a quick re-reading of the general guidelines for posting will help prevent further noise.
er...oops. I think this may be the very first forum I didn't read through the entire rules and such before posting on. sorry :(
(You also might want to update your location now that we know you are in zip code *****. Loopback is cute, but not helpful.)
I had planned on editing it (zip) out later... and in my personal opinion a single post with it is far less dangerous than an entire forum where it is smeared all over every post I make...
If you don't want me having lo0 there, then I will remove it.
 
mbbrutman what's your location? Mods/Admins should be leading by example. Or is that too old fashion?


We don't have a policy that forces people to disclose their location. But if you are going to be buying or selling here then it makes sense and you will notice that those are the people who get the nudges to list their location.

When I start to buy or sell things using the forum, then it will be a relevant criticism.


Mike
 
C'mon. Policy or not one the first things new members are encouraged to do is put up their location. Call it an observation.
 
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C'mon. Policy or not one the first things new members are encouraged to do is put up their location. Call it an observation.
.... only when they post in the For Sale and Wanted Forums, or as "looking for" in one of the other forums. At least from what I've observed here in my time.
 
C'mon. Policy or not one the first things new members are encouraged to do is put up their location. Call it an observation.

Where did you observe that?

We are off topic here, but it is an incorrect observation - you are not going to find any place where that happens, except when a relative newbie is trying to buy or sell.

Leading by example is important. It's also important to admit mistakes and move on. And at this point, there should be no further off topic discussion in this thread ... Start a new thread, or better yet make (incorrect) observations in private where they can be addressed without causing friction for a wider group.
 
I want to find a 387-40 for this... I would so love to see how it performs with it.



I was running a 387-33 in my 386DX-40, for quite a while with no problems. Seems to be able to handle it. I had a test utility called 87TEST and some other one I can't remember now, but it ran for over an hour without issues. Of course, YMMV since its overclocking the co-pro but if you can find one easier/cheaper than a Cyrix or other 387 compatible designed for 40MHz operation it could be worth a shot.


I ended up taking the 387 out because I wasn't using it for anything, and I was doing 3DBENCH tests and it seems the presence of a maths co-processor affects the results (on my 386 it nearly halved my score)
 
"I am probably not ever going to find my favorite two cards ever, the s3 vision968 VLB (yes they did make one I had it once, it was the #9 imagine 128"

Oh...you mean this one?

Picture%2520035.jpg


It's actually called the "Number Nine 9FX Motion 771". It's not to shabby for VLB. It's the only VLB card I've ever seen that has DRAMs mounted on both the front and back of the PCB. This is one of my favourite VLB museum pieces. Must have cost a fortune to make. Here's a link to the GXE64 Pro 4MB VLB card that preceded this one. It's not cheap though:

http://us.ebid.net/for-sale/number-9-gxe64-4-meg-vga-vlb-card-52394023.htm

The extra socket on that 386 board was likely for a Cyrix 486DLC chip. I had a very similar 386DX-40 board a while ago. It had both a soldered 386 chip and an empty PGA socket. Unfortunately I had to slice off the 386 CPU to get the socket working. My board used an ALi 1489 chipset. I didn't care for it. While it was really fast, it didn't set well with my bus mastering SCSI controller.
 
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Pretty much what my first PC was. I tried to maximize it, but was bottlenecked by its lack of VLB (or an ISA clock configuration). Now I've got a better board, with VLB, better RAM, better cache, FPU and I'm pretty sure it is as far as the 386 can go. The only thing I can't stand in these PCs, is the noise of the hard drives. The rest of the PC is pretty silent and needs no fans at all, but those vintage old HDDs is unbearable. Got an SD --> IDE adaptor just to get rid of the noise.
 
I actually got a cirrus logic 1MB card, a trantor T160 card, a better condition sb16 jumpered, a creative mke/panasonic interface 2x cdrom drive, a 5.25" drive, and a 1/2 height IBM SCSI 1GB drive for this system since I last posted. I have yet to test it, though, because I have been ill.


OH! and the best piece of them all for my classic computers, a samsung syncmaster 770 TFT monitor! Very awesome and about as era correct as youre gonna get for an LCD for these.

Img_0158.jpg
 
I actually got a cirrus logic 1MB card, a trantor T160 card, a better condition sb16 jumpered, a creative mke/panasonic interface 2x cdrom drive, a 5.25" drive, and a 1/2 height IBM SCSI 1GB drive for this system since I last posted. I have yet to test it, though, because I have been ill.


OH! and the best piece of them all for my classic computers, a samsung syncmaster 770 TFT monitor! Very awesome and about as era correct as youre gonna get for an LCD for these.

Img_0158.jpg

The cirrus logic card probably has similar DOS performance to the S3 968, okay but nothing spectacular.
I'm just curious why you would load your system with a SCSI controller and HDD, but go with a Panasonic MKE drive. While it would be era specific, anybody that had a SCSI card back then wouldn't have bothered with a proprietary CD-ROM drive. The MKE and Sony interface drives were basically stripped down budget models, and were a little on the slow side (even compared to other 2X drives). The MKE drives also completely stink at reading CD-R media. NEC probably made the best SCSI drives at the time. However, if I were you I'd go for a nice Plextor 8X SCSI drive. Those look era specific, are fast, quiet and reliable. I have a black 8X model in my XT, and a 32X caddy loader in my 486.
 
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