Oh dear, that was careless of the seller. To get your started quickly, here is the jumper configuration. I think it provides you with everything you need to get you up and running.

Its nicer to having an manual. (or an copy of it)

Ive have fixed the problem with the manual. I had give this person nutral feedback on ebay, and the seller wasnt happy about that. So he contacted me. So he was very kindly to ship me the manual. Now i have it here, it arrived today.

But i have only 3 questions left.

Is it possible to use an ULSI Math co processor on this board? The manual only saying about the intel 387 co processor, and the weitek one..

Where can i find some Sram chips to upgrade the cache memory. Thank you.

Whats an good idea for the battery replacement? Think that mine motherboard battery is also in bad shape.

No idea about the math co-pro, I ended up oulling mine out because I wasn't using it.

SRAM chips - I just raided another old motherboard for 256kb worth of 20ns chips that fit. You will also need to replace the TAG chip but you can use the same chip as the others. For the smaller QS8888 chip, its just an SRAM chip in a smaller package so if you have an old motherboard with SRAM chips that will fit, just steal that.
Apart from that I guess just search ebay for sram cache chips.

For battery replacement, a local electronics shop has external 3.6V battery packs that fit onto the 4-pin wide ext_batt header, so I used that. Get rid of the barrel battery straight away, I don't trust those things.

I've got 2 different coprocessors. An iit 4C87DLC-40 an ulsi 387-40, and they both work fine on every 386-40 board I've tried them on.

DonutKing wrote:

No idea about the math co-pro, I ended up oulling mine out because I wasn't using it. […]
Show full quote

No idea about the math co-pro, I ended up oulling mine out because I wasn't using it.

SRAM chips - I just raided another old motherboard for 256kb worth of 20ns chips that fit. You will also need to replace the TAG chip but you can use the same chip as the others. For the smaller QS8888 chip, its just an SRAM chip in a smaller package so if you have an old motherboard with SRAM chips that will fit, just steal that.
Apart from that I guess just search ebay for sram cache chips.

For battery replacement, a local electronics shop has external 3.6V battery packs that fit onto the 4-pin wide ext_batt header, so I used that. Get rid of the barrel battery straight away, I don't trust those things.

Wheres that TAG chip for? Just the `memory controller`? Why do i need to replace this TAG chip, isnt the stock one good?

Is it also possible to use an other brand cache chips (yes then i need to replace them all 8.

To put it very simply, TAG RAM is basically the chip that holds the index of the cache contents. If you look on page 1-3 of your manual you'll notice one chip is labeled as TAG. It generally needs to be slightly faster than the other chips - but not necessarily the same size (often smaller will suffice.) See page 2-8

Yep you can use any brand cache chips as long as they are the correct size and package, and have the correct latency. I'd advise against micing types and brands of cache chips although it may work anyway.

Just to add, usually the tag ram can be of the same speed rating as the rest of the sram chips 😉

Sure if the rest of your SRAM is fast enough.
But I've seen many boards (this one included) that have 20ns SRAM and 15ns TAG.
If you put in 15ns SRAM then your TAG can be 15ns as well. Of course for higher bus speeds you may need faster TAG.
back in the day it was obviously cheaper to give one high speed chip than replacing the entire lot.

Ok, results time:

ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
System Speed Test Ver 4.70 Report file - created on 11-06-2011 14:13:57
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

CPU is in V86 mode: No
Processor : 80386DX 40 MHz
CPU speed index : 8.96

Total memory size : 8 MB
Memory speed index: 23.36
VESA video memory : Unknown

Hard drive 0 : 894C 5H 55S 120 MB
ÀÄÄÄÄÄ Model (PM): Conner Peripherals 120MB - CP30124
Tested in FULL mode
Maximal seek time : 15.97 ms
Average seek time : 13.60 ms
Track-to-track seek : 2.83 ms
Random access time : 22.30 ms
Linear verify speed : 1664 KB/s
Linear read speed : 903 KB/s
Buffered read speed : 1593 KB/s
Hard Drive speed index : 25.87

BIOS vendor : American Megatrends, Inc. (12/12/91)
Year2000 Bug : 31-12-1999 01-01-1900
OS version : MS-DOS 6.22
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

ATA/ATAPI Device Information

IDE0ÄÂÄMasterÄ<ATA>Ä Conner Peripherals 120MB - CP30124
³ Cylinders: 895, Heads: 5, Sectors: 55 (120 MB)
³ Serial Number : BHB4853
³ Firmware Revision : 0.46
³ Maximum Transfer Mode : PIO 0
³ Cache Buffer Size : 32 KB
³
ÀÄSlaveÄÄ<Empty>

IDE1ÄÂÄMasterÄ<Empty>
³
ÀÄSlaveÄÄ<Empty>

IDE2ÄÂÄMasterÄ<Empty>
³
ÀÄSlaveÄÄ<Empty>

IDE3ÄÂÄMasterÄ<Empty>
³
ÀÄSlaveÄÄ<Empty>
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Cache/Memory Benchmark
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿
³ Read ³ Write ³ Move ³ Average ³
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´
³ Cache Level 1 ³ 24.80 MB/s³ 29.39 MB/s³ 29.47 MB/s³ 27.88 MB/s³
³ Memory ³ 14.74 MB/s³ 29.40 MB/s³ 9.69 MB/s³ 17.94 MB/s³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Memory Modules Information

SMBus/i2c Host Controller : Not Present
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

End of report.

Please use the current version 4.78. Otherwise it is not clear if the numeric results could be compared to the other results at all.

I also noticed that different FPUs give different Processor Scores.
This is with an ULSI:

and this with a Cyrix FasMath:

(but also a different system)

It would be better to have separated scores for CPU and FPU.

Second attempt:

Thought it was interesting that my memory benchmarks seem quite off-pace compared to everyone elses.

Well, try to reduce your Cache and Memory Waitstates until the system starts behaving unreliable. Maybe there is still some potential for transfer speed increase.

Another interesting fact is, that the scores for Processor are lower if you have a FPU installed.
Looks like this is not really useful for any comparison.
Probably it is better to use Dhry and Whetstone numbers from NSSI 0.6 f.e.

which boards/chipsets are you using? your memory speed is still far more superior than any 386 board I tested lately

Well, I made an overview here: http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/retropcs.html
The 386 system there corresponds to the first system above. There are photos linked.
For the second 386 system I have not made such a summary yet. It uses a SIS chipset.
You can find some photos here though: ftp://78.47.153.163/pictures/386DX40/

this board > 386er Babyscreamer Mainboard American Megatrends < is like the wet dream for any 386 retro build. are you using it?

Whats the size of your monitor? 15 inch?

Not sure who your question is directed at, but the one I use in the photos in this thread is a 15 inch Philips manufactured in 2000. Its much newer than the PC its attached to 😀
I'd love an old 13/14 inch VGA like the one I used to have (a Samtron) but they all seem to have been destroyed by now.

Ok that why you are using an bigger monitor..

@DK
Is there a 386 mobo that have PCI bus, or this was brand new with the 486?