What's going to house this monster of a 486 you ask? An AT case with turbo LED, of course!

Disassembled

A few rust spots, but not too bad

Sanding

Painting

Painting complete

PSU cleaning and fan replacement. It’s fairly quiet now but I am considering replacing the fan grill with a wire one to further reduce noise.

BeQuiet!

Test fitting everything - good to go!

Board is set to 40MHz resulting in 160MHz for the CPU. No delay jumper is set. BIOS settings are a WIP still. Here's where they currently stand:

Some preliminary benchmarks - these are from Phil's benchmark pack. Phil just rocks, don’t ya think?

Great build! I think you have some awesome skills — I wish I could restore cases like that.

Does your quad speed CD-ROM read CD-R/CD-RW?

jheronimus wrote:

Great build! I think you have some awesome skills — I wish I could restore cases like that.

Does your quad speed CD-ROM read CD-R/CD-RW?

Thank you! I'm not sure about CD-R's but I'll check 😀

So far the biggest issue with this board was that PS/2 mice wouldn't work. I tried a lot of things and eventually fixed it by desoldering the keyboard controller (AMIKEY-2) and replacing it with one from eBay. Whew!

Next up
Repaint the outside of the case in beige
Replace PSU fan grill with one that is less restrictive
Retrobrite font panel
Get the front panel turbo LED to work properly
Put a fan on the CPU heatsink
Connect the floppy drive
Optimize BIOS settings
Benchmark DOOM!

Benched DOOM this morning - v1.9s, no sound/music, mouse/kb enabled, biggest view while still making the hud visible. Is this the "standard" way to benchmark DOOM?

The real question is can it run Win95 and play MP3’s ?

Good stuff.

Really like this motherboard.
I noticed that it does better with L1 cache in Write-Back mode for 486 class CPUs.
Also, Speedsys CPU scores seem to be affected slightly by the different VLB VGA adapters.
The one you used pushed it above the average of ~59.5ish common for this board and CPU.
The VLB IDE controller seems the be doing pretty good job too - about 0.3Mb/s better read/write speed compared to ISA IDE adapters.

Just sharing some observations.

pshipkov wrote:

Good stuff. […]
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Good stuff.

Really like this motherboard.
I noticed that it does better with L1 cache in Write-Back mode for 486 class CPUs.
Also, Speedsys CPU scores seem to be affected slightly by the different VLB VGA adapters.
The one you used pushed it above the average of ~59.5ish common for this board and CPU.
The VLB IDE controller seems the be doing pretty good job too - about 0.3Mb/s better read/write speed compared to ISA IDE adapters.

Just sharing some observations.

Thanks for sharing pshipkov!

Some updates:

Got the front panel LEDs working

Put a fan on the CPU heatsink and connected the floppy drive

I’ll be very interested to know the brand and colour of paint you find that matches the bezel. I haven’t found any rattle can colour that I was happy with and I tried 3. You might want to rerrobrite the bezel first if you haven’t already.

Got distracted with other projects for a while but went back to working on this system last weekend with a mod to the PSU fan grill. Played through Doom E1 afterward and had a blast 😀

The fan is quieter with the less restrictive grill, but not as quiet as I had hoped so in the future I'll change the voltage running to it.

To Do
Repaint the outside of the case in beige
Lower voltage to PSU fan
Retrobrite font panel

The brand name or model of the fan "be quiet" is very appropriate. I hate noisy fans and usually add a 1 watt resistor in series to quiet them down.

feipoa wrote on 2020-05-12, 23:40:

The brand name or model of the fan "be quiet" is very appropriate. I hate noisy fans and usually add a 1 watt resistor in series to quiet them down.

Thanks for the tip feiopa, I'll try it out!

Its a simple voltage divider circuit. To find the resistance value which corresponds to the fan noise you desire, I suggest temporarily connecting a trimmer (variable resistor) using clip cables of some sort. Adjust the trimmer until the desired fan noise is reached. Remove the trimmer and measure the resistance with a DMM. Then find that value of resistor to solder in series. Usually resistors in the 10-60 ohm ranges are used for this, depending on the fan. Sometimes 1/2 W resistors are sufficient if you work out that the power consumed is within the resistor's tolerance. I usually find power to be in the 0.3 - 0.6 W range, so to make things simple, I use 1 W resistors.

airs wrote on 2020-05-12, 20:26:

Got distracted with other projects for a while but went back to working on this system last weekend with a mod to the PSU fan gr […]
Show full quote

Got distracted with other projects for a while but went back to working on this system last weekend with a mod to the PSU fan grill. Played through Doom E1 afterward and had a blast 😀

The fan is quieter with the less restrictive grill, but not as quiet as I had hoped so in the future I'll change the voltage running to it.

To Do
Repaint the outside of the case in beige
Lower voltage to PSU fan
Retrobrite font panel

For the sake of your local radio reception, please put a filter can on the PSU input. Socket replacement or chassis mount, your choice.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-05-13, 04:32:

For the sake of your local radio reception, please put a filter can on the PSU input. Socket replacement or chassis mount, your […]
Show full quote

For the sake of your local radio reception, please put a filter can on the PSU input. Socket replacement or chassis mount, your choice.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying by having this computer turned on for two hours every two weeks in my basement I'm making radio reception worse for other people near me?

airs wrote on 2020-05-13, 04:42:

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-05-13, 04:32:

For the sake of your local radio reception, please put a filter can on the PSU input. Socket replacement or chassis mount, your […]
Show full quote

For the sake of your local radio reception, please put a filter can on the PSU input. Socket replacement or chassis mount, your choice.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying by having this computer turned on for two hours every two weeks in my basement I'm making radio reception worse for other people near me?

There's no input filter at all on that PSU, so large amounts of broad band switching noise will be conducted back onto the mains, radiating as it goes. It will certainly make radio reception worse for yourself. Unless you live 100s of ft away from your neighbor, it will make reception worse for them as well.

A filter can is inexpensive, straightforward to install, and efficient at suppressing noise.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-05-13, 04:47:

There's no input filter at all on that PSU, so large amounts of broad band switching noise will be conducted back onto the mains, radiating as it goes. It will certainly make radio reception worse for yourself. Unless you live 100s of ft away from your neighbor, it will make reception worse for them as well.

A filter can is inexpensive, straightforward to install, and efficient at suppressing noise.

I'm pretty far away from anyone else, and don't listen to radio. I might look into the filter for fun though, and install it when I lower the voltage to the fan. Thanks.