VOGONS


My first 486 rig!

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First post, by Tetrium

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Well, my turn to post some pics of my retro hardware!

I build this 486 about 4 years ago, it was my 2nd build ever! (1st was a celeron 400 that's kept running until recently).
It was also my 1st computer to use Windows 95.

- AP43 Socket 3 with 256kb cache
- 4x16MB FPM
- DX4-100 (AMD? Intel?) with custom heatsink attached with a metal clip.
- Rendition 2100 4MB (bad choice from hindsight, didn't know better at the time)
- 1GB harddrive.
- A soundblaster soundcard. Can't remember the model though but it's an ISA one.
- 24X standard CDROM and a standard 1.44M floppydrive

Even though I now realize that this computer is very poorly configured (for instance I only later found out that the Rendition is a good card for any Pentium 1, it's really not a good choice for DOS games) I'm still very pleased with how it turned out in the end 😀
I did a LOT of work to clean it all up as best I could, it looks almost brand new! Even the fan in the back of the power supply looks like it's fresh from the factory!
Also I think not all of the main memory is cached but I don't know for sure. I could still set it to write through instead of write back.
Also this computer isn't really stable.

I really did a lot of research to get the most optimal harddrive in there. In the end I read the Redhill guide and put my fastest 1gig harddrive in there. Windows 95 boots up really fast!

Afterwards I did some attempts to make the whole system a bit more silent with the custom CPU cooler and by adding cardboard on both sides of the case. It actually does a good job at dampening the sound and it's dirt cheap too 😁 !

Apart from it's buggyness it's really fast in windows but not great in games. Doom1 was laggy!

I'll have to admit that I haven't used it after I moved last year, was too busy with my other 'retro' rigs hehe
I have quite a few working systems but this is the oldest one I have currently

I'm not planing on tweaking it much, I'd rather just build another one!

The case. Not realy inspiring but I wanted one where I could fit a fan in the front. The heatsink gets pretty warm after a while, might be why it crashes sometimes?
DSC00203.jpg

U-cap removed, showing my 1337 hightech silencing systems for cheapscates
DSC00204.jpg

Overview pic of the inside
DSC00206.jpg

Showing the custom metal clip with largish passive heatsink
DSC00207.jpg

...and then my flashcard in my camera was full!

Anyway, hope you enjoy 😀

Reply 1 of 30, by gravitone

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I had the exact same case back in the day, used it for a few years with a 486dx2 + unknown motherboard at the time. All great until the cheap ISA NIC installed in it decided it was time to liquify the network controller chip. In its bubbly goodness it thankfully spared the other hardware inside. However that nasty blue chemical smoke stank up the case and components (especially the PSU) to such a degree that I ditched the whole thing shortly after.

Reply 2 of 30, by Concupiscence

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For running older DOS games it may help you to download the renutil application for the V2100. That should allow you to "trick" applications into using the VESA 320x200 mode instead of the Verite's dog-slow VGA emualtion. After a few minutes of lucky Googling and a quick visit to archive.org, I have managed to dig it up. See the attachment. 😀

That's a seriously nice old PC. Remember that you might be able to "trick" the BIOS into using a larger hard drive, too.

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    renutil.zip
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    RENUTIL.ZIP
    File license
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Reply 3 of 30, by swaaye

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Renutil only helps with VGA 320x200. It doesn't accelerate the very popular ModeX 320x200. VESA modes are accelerated without Renutil. I remember back in the day that there was a lot of backlash when people found their Pentium 166 was running Doom at 10fps and there was nothing that could be done to remedy it. Of course, some people said "who play's Doom anymore" back in 1996 🤣. The Doom engine perhaps runs better on Trident ISA cards than it does on a Verite!

I think a PCI card with some sort of S3 chip is the best bet with a 486. The best compatibility and speed that's beyond what a 486 will saturate. 3D acceleration is nearly useless on a 486 system because the fastest 486 CPU simply can't cope with the demands of those games.

BTW, I have a thread with a package of lots of Rendition drivers and utilities.

Reply 4 of 30, by bushwack

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swaaye wrote:

Renutil only helps with VGA 320x200. It doesn't accelerate the very popular ModeX 320x200. VESA modes are accelerated without Renutil. I remember back in the day that there was a lot of backlash when people found their Pentium 166 was running Doom at 10fps and there was nothing that could be done to remedy it. Of course, some people said "who play's Doom anymore" back in 1996 🤣. The Doom engine perhaps runs better on Trident ISA cards than it does on a Verite!

Yeah the whole Verite 320x200 bashing was ridiculous. People who actually owned the cards were playing Duke Nukem in VESA 640x480 and VQuake at 640x480. And other cool high resolution games. 😀

Reply 6 of 30, by leileilol

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A Voodoo2 is actually the best 3d card you can match in a 486 due to 3dfx's nice drivers, but anything else is a floating point demander.

Totally IMO.

YMMV! Some games rock it smooth 30+fps (Activision's 3d games i.e. mech2, i76, bzone), some don't (anything Microsoft Games, including Hellbender, Midtown Madness, Metal Gear Solid and up) and mmx loving games you should just flat out avoid anyway (Unreal engine stuff, Lithtech stuff)

Show us your ti...SSTs.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 7 of 30, by Tetrium

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swaaye wrote:

But it does make Verite a less than ideal choice for a 486. 😁

Oh poor poor Tetrium 🙁 🙁 🙁 😁

Hehe, and that is one of the reasons why this 486 is badly configured 😁
Another is that I 'think' half the memory isn't being cached as I set the cache to write back (another possible cause for it's instability).
Also the heatsink becomes quite hot after using this computer for a while.

I didn't realy know what I was doing when I build this rig. It's my second build ever (The first was a celly 400)so I just used whatever I thought would work. It works alright but I can tell you, it is very very slow for a 486. I think Verite's are much better suited for the faster Pentium 1's
BUT...browsing in Windows is realy fast. Also it boots fast.

My next 486 is gonna use one of those awesome S3 cards 😁
Or a Mach 64, haven't decided yet.

I'm waiting for my CPU's to come in the mail, then do some mass testing and then the fun shall begin 😀

Thanks for the replies, It's a pleasure reading them 😀

Reply 8 of 30, by swaaye

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Stay away from old ATI cards. Bad for DOS games. S3 all the way. I'd look for an S3 Virge of some sort because then you can try out the shitty 3D on a faster machine someday if you're curious. 😉

When it comes to cacheable L2 cache range, a 486 with 256K L2 usually does 32MB in writeback mode and 64MB in writethrough mode I believe. 486s were usually equipped with 4-16MB of RAM so this wasn't an issue until RAM became cheaper in the Pentium years.

Reply 9 of 30, by Tetrium

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Hehe, the rendition has WAY better 3D then the Virge. They didn't call them 3D graphics decelerators for nothing 😜
I guess I put the rendition in the 486 because I think the card itself just looks so cool. It reminds me of a 4-chip Voodoo3 or maybe even a Radeon 9600, looking at how the RAM chips are arranged. Way more modern then those EDO rectangle chips on those Virges.

Good thing I have a LOT of those S3 cards to choose from. They were sooo common in throw-away pc's back in 2002-2003.
I sorted my graphics cards in about 5 boxes in like this way:
-Faster AGP cards
-Slower AGP cards
-Faster PCI cards
-Slower PCI cards
-S3 Virge and Trio cards 😁

I even have 2 Virges in my test equipment, I use them everytime I'm testing a new motherboard. If the board somehow fries the S3, no harm done, they are teh expendable ! 😜

Edit: Now that you mentioned it...is there anything those Mach 64 Ati cards are actually good at?

Reply 10 of 30, by Old Thrashbarg

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The Mach64's are actually pretty fast in Windows, they just suck for DOS.

The thing is, on a 486 system, a lot more games are going to be in DOS than in Windows, so it's better to go for a balance of performance, which an S3 card would give you.

On an unrelated note, what did you use for your heatsink clip, there? I have that exact same sink on my 486, but it's currently just being held on by the thermal paste. 😵

Reply 11 of 30, by Tetrium

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It's a metal clip shaped a bit like a Z, except it has 90 degree angles.

I got a couple of these from old Dells and other similar Pentium 1's I scrapped years ago. Leme look up a pic of one...

Got it!

Metalcpuclip.png

Most Pentium 1's I gutted had the heatsinks stuck with just thermal paste also (usually Pentiums from 75 to 120Mhz) but from time to time I found one mounted with such a metal clip.

They are very handy, I wish I knew where I could get a couple more.
I've used them on 2 occasions mounting heatsinks when one of those plastic tabs had broken off.
I was actually thinking of writing a couple guides which include the use of this metal clip 🤣

Reply 12 of 30, by Old Thrashbarg

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Hm, I actually have some of those, but I didn't pay any attention to 'em because I assumed the clip was too small. I guess it is a tiny bit too narrow, but nothing some pliers can't fix. Good idea...

Reply 13 of 30, by Tetrium

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These clips fit Socket 3 as well as Socket 5 and seven, Socket 370 and Socket A (though theres no CPU's you can use with the clip on Socket A).
For Socket 3 you just need to make sure the clip's attached under the plastic thingy because that socket's actually a lil too small for the metal clip 😉

Also about Socket 3, not all Socket 3's have the plastic thingies and many that do, have capacitors or other stuff in the way...usually it's even harder removing the clip then it is installing it.

Reply 14 of 30, by Old Thrashbarg

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I think the heatsinks/clips you have might be a bit bigger than the ones I have... the clip I'm looking at just barely fits over the edges of the socket...

What sucks is, I have a box full of heatsinks that would work great on a 486, but they're all the Socket 5/7 style and don't have the offset mount clips on 'em.

Reply 16 of 30, by 5u3

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Tetrium wrote:

Whats the DOS performance of the early Matrox cards btw?

I've tested some Matrox Millennium/G100/G200 cards a long time ago. The performance is not bad and the analog signal quality is excellent, but they have compatibility troubles: CGA/EGA emulation is flawed and VGA ModeX does not work right.

Reply 17 of 30, by Tetrium

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Thanks 😉

In that case the choice is either to go for S3 (the easy way out) or for a Matrox. I'm probably gonna use both, in 2 seperate systems.

Now I also need to decide what CPU to use then them, but that has to wait till I receive them in the mail 😀

Do you happen to know if there were any troubles getting the POD83 to work?
I seem to recall that the POD83 sometimes disabled the onboard cache but that there were some motherboards that worked just fine with both the POD83 cache and L2 cache enabled.
I haven't been able to find any conclusive info about that on the net though.

I'm also considering using Windows 98SE with the unofficial Service Pack + some of my own tweaks.
I once tried to use 98lite but to be honest, I found it somewhat cumbersome. Even though I can hold my own using DOS, I'm definitely no DOS guru!

Reply 18 of 30, by swaaye

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S3 all the way. Only Tseng Labs stuff might be comparably compatible. Matrox is not worth considering for anything IMO.

POD83 is messy. All it's really good for, if it works, is 3D games. a Am5x86 160 is faster otherwise. If you want to play 3D games, you don't want a 486 platform at all.

I wouldn't even use 98. Go with Windows 95. It will be a lot faster. Find yourself OSR 2 or 2.5 (Win95 B/C).

Last edited by swaaye on 2010-05-07, 18:50. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 19 of 30, by Tetrium

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True true. And about the Voodoo 3, I'm keeping mine for the Super 7 builds I'm planning 😉
I just gotta try building a VIA MVP3 system with Windows ME...should be fun!
But first I'm gonna wait till all my chips arrive. I'm still waiting for all my Socket 3 chipsto arrive 😁
Then I can pick wether I'm gonna go AMD 5x86, Cyrix 5x86 or POD83 😉
I think I'll build 3 systems, with one each

Yes I'm nuts 😜