Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-10-20, 01:39

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Check the ISA divider in CMOS Setup, if it was clock/5 for the DX50 it was running at 10Mhz, but now it will be a sluggish 6.6. clock/3 should work well, but you might have to go to clock/4 if NIC or soundcard act up (Mostly they're good to a bit over 12Mhz, but some glitch earlier, 8 bit cards …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-10-19, 02:17

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After some time I managed to finish this build, with the correct 16MB Fast Page RAM and the DX2-66 update along with the new crystal needed for it. It has been a learning process for me, thank you everyone for your time and help, wouldn't have been possible without it. I'm a bit intrigued regarding …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-24, 14:16

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At least now I have a much stronger reason for the RAM not to work. Never thought that a simple RAM upgrade would be such a pain

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 16:44

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe they are looser timings to meet 60ns specs, like cas 3, and need 1T refresh instead of 2T etc... so if you went into setup on the working SIMMs, slackened everything right off, or load failsafe defaults if nothing else available, then try them again they might work??? Since your memory table …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 16:12

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, they're both parity SIMMs. Odd number of chips = parity, even number = non-parity. A few non-parity SIMMs cheat by including a parity generator chip, but thankfully those are hard to come by these days. Only way to tell is to look up the part # of the chip in question, if it's a RAM chip then …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 15:58

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try getting some 9-chip SIMMs instead, and see if your system doesn't work with those better. I'm trying to narrow down the issues to the smallest scope possible but from what I can tell it's going to be hard to eliminate the risks of buying stuff blindly. If I go for it I will try at least to find …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 15:46

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are your memory sticks 3-chip or 9-chip? Some motherboards *require* 9-chip SIMMs for timing purposes. I have an Everex Tempo 486/33C and an MX 305 386DX motherboard that are like this, they will absolutely not work well with 3-chip memory at all, it's 9-chip or nothing. Many 3-chip SIMMs are sold …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 15:32

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-23, 15:30: being so old I would settle with 1mb sticks as their lack of 2mb density mean they would last much longer in the same package but best of luck with 2mb I will keep that in mind, still have the original 1x8mb modules anyhow, thank you

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 15:26

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

could also be the moherboard only likes 2mb sticks max I remember I tried 4mb ones once but what they didn't work. I assumed they were dead. But 1 and 2mb ones did work. The base memory address is the most precious running dos games xms is just windows or a ram disk That's useful, I will have to …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 15:18

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I got the 16mb RAM upgrade that I wanted, but it doesn't work at all. I followed my motherboard's chart and put the 4x4mb 30 pin simm 4x9 modules in bank 0, but it doesn't post. The chart itself says "4x9" which means parity I assume, as it was the same in the seller's page. So what's wrong …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 15:13

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looking at the board while disassembling, I noticed that one of the two floppy disk drives was not connected. Then looking at these photos, I realise I don't have enough connections. I would like to connect the two original floppy drives, and to install a CD-ROM drive in there too. Do I need …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-23, 14:18

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just for grins did you try the ram in the other bank? Do you have another system to test the ram to make sure it's good? Yes I did, no luck, I did it for this suspicion also: when I mentioned my motherboard model in the beginning of the thread - 486-HC-HD - practically everyone said that it was the …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-22, 21:59

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When I upgraded the RAM for my 486, I couldn't use chips with a gold connector, only a silver one. Do not ask me why that mattered, but it did. Also, the IBM service manual was wrong, something I am still a bit bitter about. I always assume that my lack of knowledge might have something to do with …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-07-22, 21:33

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I got the 16mb RAM upgrade that I wanted, but it doesn't work at all. I followed my motherboard's chart and put the 4x4mb 30 pin simm 4x9 modules in bank 0, but it doesn't post. The chart itself says "4x9" which means parity I assume, as it was the same in the seller's page. So what's wrong …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-06-25, 14:23

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Unless you have specific things you want to run in Windows 3.x, I wouldn't bother with it - it's absolutely not needed if you are only interested in Dos games. This! Just use DOS Shell if you're not a fan of the command line. ESS cards are a good, generally way cheaper alternative to Creative sound …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-06-25, 02:34

by

by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Moving slowly but surely, the Trident 8900CL arrived today, installed the Win 3.1 drivers and it has a separate setup for DOS drivers as well. Do you recommend installing the DOS drivers or it won't make a difference for DOS games?

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Re: I wish I had discovered Windows ME sooner!

Posted on 2021-06-20, 22:56

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Its like a stripped down version of Windows 2000 Pro (GUI), fused with Windows 98SE features! I remember back in the day I heard about it's *instability*, but to be honest it has been playing on my real retro system (my sig) for a month, and I LOVE it! p.s. If I could only get the START menu *label …

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SpeedFan alternatives for Win 98SE / ME / XP PC's?

Posted on 2021-06-16, 02:00

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello everyone, Inbetween other stuff I've been doing I remembered to try and tackle an old problem plaguing three of my builds: fan noise. I can't seem to grasp SpeenFan's logic to be able to fully control the fan speed / temperature ratio to tweak it as I want exactly, I can only apply "ON/OFF" …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-06-12, 16:57

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The easy way to get the total cache is to watch the boot-up sequence. At some point it should say something like '256K CACHE ENABLED'. If it's an Award BIOS, then the cache will be listed on the final sign-on screen which shows the 'specifications' of the system. For example, for 256K cache, both …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-06-12, 15:09

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by andre_6

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd vote the Trident 8900CL or 8900D (don't bother with the 8900B or 8900C, they're much slower). 16MB of RAM isn't strictly required (unless you plan on playing more complex games) but is quite nice to have, if you can find it cheap then by all means use it. One relatively cheap upgrade you can do …

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