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Should I do it?

D

d4nzo

Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2015
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24
So i found a motherboard, and had recently been getting into retro computers/games. I felt like this was a sign.


Now the motherboard I have found, I've looked up and barely found anything until someone from here(in the irc chat) helped me find it. I'm pretty sure it's this:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/U/UNIDENTIFIED-486-80486-VIP.html#.VmUD4YQoDz_
1ciMHkN.jpg

I also found a 5 1/4 inch drive, 3.5 inch drive and a bag full of ram sticks. (i think they're 4mb and 8mb sticks) Not much info on them.

BDsM1wa.jpgox6Wl81.jpg



So basically all I would need to do is get a psu, video card, keyboard/mouse options and a case. Now, my question is, Should I rebuild this thing? I have wanted a pc from this era as it was just before I started getting into computers. What do yo guys think?

Also just kinda introducing myself here so, what do you think?

Any input and suggestions will help out a lot. thanks.
 
Hallo and welcome.

I would not. I would get a working system, as you would probably save a lot of money and not have to worry if it doesn't work.

But, these systems aren't my cup of tea anyway, so I'm not the best to comment probably.

If you get a working machine, you can always use the parts you have.
 
Getting a working system surely is the easiest and the best value for money.

However, for a DIY build that's a very nice board - most 386/486 era boards end up eaten by batteries, but yours has a coin cell (battery missing) and it looks damn near new (or well cleaned!). DIY builds can also be more fun, and you learn more.

For me, finding cases/power supplies is the hardest, as they usually have a working computer inside them - but if you can find an empty case, a dud for cheap, or one with undesirable parts inside (in my case my last two 486 era cases were devalued by a Celeron and AMD K5's) then you wont feel as bad about stripping them down. Annoyingly now I want that Celeron and K5 board but I have no idea where I put them :mad:
 
SpidersWeb said:
Getting a working system surely is the easiest and the best value for money.

However, for a DIY build that's a very nice board - most 386/486 era boards end up eaten by batteries, but yours has a coin cell (battery missing) and it looks damn near new (or well cleaned!). DIY builds can also be more fun, and you learn more.

For me, finding cases/power supplies is the hardest, as they usually have a working computer inside them - but if you can find an empty case, a dud for cheap, or one with undesirable parts inside (in my case my last two 486 era cases were devalued by a Celeron and AMD K5's) then you wont feel as bad about stripping them down. Annoyingly now I want that Celeron and K5 board but I have no idea where I put them :mad:
Click to expand...


Yeah this was my concern. What about finding the cards I'll need, like vga, should I go PCI Or VLB? I imagine doing nothing more than maybe some irc chatting/gaming on this thing.

Also ethernet card, sound card, are these easy and common enough to be on the cheaper end?

Again thanks for any reply.
 
If you have a little extra spending money, yes I would do it :) Building old computers is fun. But it sometimes ends up costing more than you expect, due to things not working or compatibility problems.

If it were me, I'd get a PCI video card and NIC. Easy to find and cheap. Get an ISA sound blaster 16 for best compatibility with DOS games.

You can use a newer ATX case and power supply with an adapter cable like this: http://www.amazon.com/ATX-Motherboard-Power-Converter-Cable/dp/B000E7JUVO
 
Plasma said:
If you have a little extra spending money, yes I would do it :) Building old computers is fun. But it sometimes ends up costing more than you expect, due to things not working or compatibility problems.

If it were me, I'd get a PCI video card and NIC. Easy to find and cheap. Get an ISA sound blaster 16 for best compatibility with DOS games.

You can use a newer ATX case and power supply with an adapter cable like this: http://www.amazon.com/ATX-Motherboard-Power-Converter-Cable/dp/B000E7JUVO
Click to expand...


Solid information. I kept hearing VLB would perform better than PCI. Can i get a PCI card you guys think would work well for most dos games, general aim/irc chatting is all i'll be doing.

Pretty much just wanna hear the sounds of it booting up. And what about mouse/keyboard support. Am I gonna need a card for that? I have four PCI slots, and 2 VLB slots. I also think max memory is 256mb. Any corrections would help, thanks again.


Money is really no object, but I'd prefer to keep it under 300-400 dollars for this old thing lol.
I have three computers now as it is (not retro) But 4.6ghz dual ssd, 32gb ram(windows 7), use it for editing video/gaming.
3.ghz, 8gb ram, ssd for OS, 500gb for media (windows 7) (10tb raid10 drive) i use it for coding/programming.
2.6 ghz, 4gb ram, assortment of drives combined for about a TB of data. This is my oldest machine to date, i use it for aim/irc/general web(porn browsing) and thunderbird email) Linux mint 17 i believe. just random info from a new poster.
 
Last edited:
Keyboard shouldn't be a problem. Either find an older keyboard with the AT connector on it or use a PS2 keyboard with an adapter. Time to hit the Goodwill. That's an odd board. Did you get a good deal on it? What I'm seeing is the two IDE connectors but no floppy connector. You can get a multi I/O card (floppy, serial, parallel, IDE) for the mouse and the floppy drives but you'll need to turn off either the motherboard IDE or the card IDE. If you can still find a serial mouse somewhere.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-16-bit-...359666?hash=item280d3661f2:g:49MAAOSw4HVWDxt6
 
I would stick with a PCI video card until you get system running. VLB video cards, because of the long bus slots were hard to get to fit correctly and in my experience were fussy to get functioning. As far as game performance, you could do your own study of
that by trying a VLB one after the fact. For keyboard, the best would be to get a ps2 type with a ps2 to AT adaptor. You will definitely need an onboard keyboard to get into the bios and set things up. Once you get the system to boot it will show a bios string to help further identify the motherboard. Also for mouse you will need a serial card and serial mouse. I don't see any onboard serial port in your photos? It would be 9 pin rectangle pins connector on the board and probably labeled as such. For usb mouse, you need a usb card and install a driver for DOS. Of course, you won't need a mouse just to get DOS running. Do you have a 3.5 floppy drive on one your other systems? You will have the chicken / egg problem of getting software onto you new 486 build as well.

>no floppy connector

yea, missed that

Larry G
 
A friend of mine had a motherboard like that.
There was a bug: if you used the VLB slots, the ISA slots would run at this speed as well. This caused a lot of issues.
So the only way to use this system with ISA cards (such as a sound card) was to use a PCI or ISA video card.
 
Scali said:
A friend of mine had a motherboard like that.
There was a bug: if you used the VLB slots, the ISA slots would run at this speed as well. This caused a lot of issues.
So the only way to use this system with ISA cards (such as a sound card) was to use a PCI or ISA video card.
Click to expand...


I've experienced conflicts with VLB and floppy controllers as well. Again, best to try after system is running.
 
d4nzo said:
Solid information. I kept hearing VLB would perform better than PCI. Can i get a PCI card you guys think would work well for most dos games, general aim/irc chatting is all i'll be doing.
Click to expand...

I cant see very well in the pics what chipset you have other than its a UMC. If you know the chipset you will be able to tell how well the PCI will perform. Some PCI 486 motherboards, particularly most OPTi based ones, bridge the PCI from the VESA LB, very poorly.


d4nzo said:
And what about mouse/keyboard support. Am I gonna need a card for that? I have four PCI slots, and 2 VLB slots. I also think max memory is 256mb.
Click to expand...

Keyboard is on the motherboard, big 5-pin DIN, you will need an AT keyboard, or a PS/2 keyboard with an adapter. This motherboard does not seem to have a serial pin header, which is a bit odd. So you will need a card with a serial port for a mouse. It will probably have a parallel port too, so you can connect to a printer too. You may get 128MB ram on that board, 256MB is going to cost you a fortune as you will need 64MB simms. Even 32MB ram in a 486 was considered a lot back then.

d4nzo said:
Money is really no object, but I'd prefer to keep it under 300-400 dollars for this old thing lol.
I have three computers now as it is (not retro) But 4.6ghz dual ssd, 32gb ram(windows 7), use it for editing video/gaming.
3.ghz, 8gb ram, ssd for OS, 500gb for media (windows 7) (10tb raid10 drive) i use it for coding/programming.
2.6 ghz, 4gb ram, assortment of drives combined for about a TB of data. This is my oldest machine to date, i use it for aim/irc/general web(porn browsing) and thunderbird email) Linux mint 17 i believe. just random info from a new poster.
Click to expand...

When I first saw this motherboard, I thought PC CHIPS. although it does appear to have real components on it. If your going to spend $300-400 you could possibly get something a bit better. It may turn out this board is great, but being listed as 'UNIDENTIFIED' in total hardware 99, I would not be willing to put $300 into it without further info, especially as your not sure if it works.

What I would do is find a cheap PCI or ISA video card, plug it in and see what you get. ISA would be the best because it is much less likely to have incompatibility problems. If you go for PCI buy an old one ~2MB ram. And then if it works, then think about what video card you really want. Things like a case, good video card and serial ports can be obtained later. If you can find an AT PSU to power it then great, but the ATX to AT adapter posted before is probably your best bet.
 
My favorite PCI video card has become the Matrox Millenium II 4MB (you can optionally add a 4MB daughercard. It has drivers for all of the OS from Windows 3.1 on up throu 95, 08, NT etc...and you can run Win 3.1 at full 1024x768 and, using the Matrox app, have a much larger virtual desktop along with 256 to 16M colors, and upto 24 bit (and easily switch between 4 different display profiles. I have found several on eBay for as little as $12.

My favorite NIC that works with DOS on up is the Intel 100B TX series running at 100Mb in full duplex, Again, dirt cheap (as little as $10) and divers easily obtainable.

I second using a SoundBlaster 16 ISA.

Regards,
Mike
 
mR_Slug said:
I cant see very well in the pics what chipset you have other than its a UMC. If you know the chipset you will be able to tell how well the PCI will perform. Some PCI 486 motherboards, particularly most OPTi based ones, bridge the PCI from the VESA LB, very poorly.




Keyboard is on the motherboard, big 5-pin DIN, you will need an AT keyboard, or a PS/2 keyboard with an adapter. This motherboard does not seem to have a serial pin header, which is a bit odd. So you will need a card with a serial port for a mouse. It will probably have a parallel port too, so you can connect to a printer too. You may get 128MB ram on that board, 256MB is going to cost you a fortune as you will need 64MB simms. Even 32MB ram in a 486 was considered a lot back then.



When I first saw this motherboard, I thought PC CHIPS. although it does appear to have real components on it. If your going to spend $300-400 you could possibly get something a bit better. It may turn out this board is great, but being listed as 'UNIDENTIFIED' in total hardware 99, I would not be willing to put $300 into it without further info, especially as your not sure if it works.

What I would do is find a cheap PCI or ISA video card, plug it in and see what you get. ISA would be the best because it is much less likely to have incompatibility problems. If you go for PCI buy an old one ~2MB ram. And then if it works, then think about what video card you really want. Things like a case, good video card and serial ports can be obtained later. If you can find an AT PSU to power it then great, but the ATX to AT adapter posted before is probably your best bet.
Click to expand...


how much are we talking here like, 40$usd?
 
I'm hearing these are early PCI so i may lean toward VLB. not quite sure yet, thanks for any input.
 
nc_mike said:
My favorite PCI video card has become the Matrox Millenium II 4MB (you can optionally add a 4MB daughercard. It has drivers for all of the OS from Windows 3.1 on up throu 95, 08, NT etc...and you can run Win 3.1 at full 1024x768 and, using the Matrox app, have a much larger virtual desktop along with 256 to 16M colors, and upto 24 bit (and easily switch between 4 different display profiles. I have found several on eBay for as little as $12.

My favorite NIC that works with DOS on up is the Intel 100B TX series running at 100Mb in full duplex, Again, dirt cheap (as little as $10) and divers easily obtainable.

I second using a SoundBlaster 16 ISA.

Regards,
Mike
Click to expand...
would this work on this mobo(Matrox Millenium II 4MB), also since it has been brought up twice the Soundblaster 16 ISA will be my choice with soundcard. only a few more things to get here fellas!
 
GottaLottaStuff said:
Keyboard shouldn't be a problem. Either find an older keyboard with the AT connector on it or use a PS2 keyboard with an adapter. Time to hit the Goodwill. That's an odd board. Did you get a good deal on it?What I'm seeing is the two IDE connectors but no floppy connector. You can get a multi I/O card (floppy, serial, parallel, IDE) for the mouse and the floppy drives but you'll need to turn off either the motherboard IDE or the card IDE. If you can still find a serial mouse somewhere.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-16-bit-...359666?hash=item280d3661f2:g:49MAAOSw4HVWDxt6
Click to expand...
thanks for the info. I actually found this board (free) as well as the disk drives and sticks of ram.
 
Also, the oldest/smallest hard drive i have is a 5gb ide, i see no problem with this working as its hd, no?
 
There's a possibility that the BIOS on that MB can't see anything over 528MB without additional help, i.e., a DDO, BIOS upgrade or an IDE card with a BIOS on it.
 
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