I've almost completed my audit of desired games on this mini 486 system and have the following figures:

- Total games installed: 213
- Games which start and are playable: 186
- Games with graphical issues: 8
- Games with speed issues: 20 (19 of which have been resolved via setmul or moslo - one remains which is too slow; Cybermage)
- Games which need a clean boot and don't like himem+emm386: 3
- Games with audio issues: 15

On the whole, it runs almost everything I have thrown at at. The big stand out audio problems are:

- None of the Legend Entertainment adventures (Gateway 1 + 2, Superhero League of Hoboken) work properly: they crash when used with SoftMPU for MT-32 support.
- Dune (CD): digital audio locks up the intro movie and narration
- Flashback: soundblaster support does not work at all
- Ringworld: cannot get MIDI to work at all
- Quest for Glory 4: cannot get MIDI to work at all

The graphics issues include:

- Captain Dynamo: screen flashing when scrolling
- Lemmings (several versions): palette issues part way through the screen - playable but doesn't look great
- Sim City Classic: looks like the VGA font is corrupted as the menus and text in EGA and VGA hi-res mode is all nonsense - fixed, this was a missing 8x14 font in the video bios
- Powerdolls: moving the mouse cursor makes the screen flicker
- Gateway: Animated images in the main UI cause the screen to be redrawn and flicker in time with their animation (e.g. the flashing light on your computer in the apartment is about 1-2Hz... and you see the UI screen being redrawn in time)

Most of the games work fine without needing to do anything with the speed of the system, almost all of those that have speed issues are resolved by turning the L1 cache off with setmul. Wing Commander (1) needed a little bit more slowdown so I added moslo /75 which made it almost perfect.

this would be a killer system to bring to a DOOM lan party!

This is a great system and I just love that wooden case it's just beautiful!

Thanks for the feedback; I've been wanting to build a tiny real-period-hardware system for some time now and I'm fairly pleased with how it has turned out!

There are a few tweaks left to make - get mtcp working and a few other things. But the main activity now will be to try to resolve those few games issues.

This one machine has replaced three full sized cases (286-20, 486dlc-40, p166), so not only have I now got a something entirely bespoke, but I have freed up a load of desk space and packed up a couple of dozen cables, leads and power supplies. I'm feeling a lot more 'zen' in my office now than just a few months ago!

For what it's worth, I've been playing Flashback lately and more or less gave up on trying to get it to work with the Sounblaster 'peasant version' Vibra 16. Fortunately for me I used to play this game on an IBM PS/2 55, so I actually prefer the PC speaker effects.

Anyway, looking really nice now and you can say with certainty that it's the only one like it on Earth.

@megatron-uk Did you happen to test "The Elder Scrolls: Arena" with that setup?
I have been trying to get it working on the Tinyllama (also a 486-like modern computer) without success.
I got to the tittle screen, but never to the actual gameplay.

vanfanel wrote on 2024-04-30, 08:41:

@megatron-uk Did you happen to test "The Elder Scrolls: Arena" with that setup?
I have been trying to get it working on the Tinyllama (also a 486-like modern computer) without success.
I got to the tittle screen, but never to the actual gameplay.

No, I haven't. But give me a couple of days and I'll try it out.

vanfanel wrote on 2024-04-30, 08:41:

@megatron-uk Did you happen to test "The Elder Scrolls: Arena" with that setup?
I have been trying to get it working on the Tinyllama (also a 486-like modern computer) without success.
I got to the tittle screen, but never to the actual gameplay.

Just tried it - works pretty well. Speed-wise, at 133MHz without any slowdown tools running it is very smooth. The only slight issue I have is with some small amount of crackling with the digital sound; I was testing SB Pro, perhaps it may be better in the basic SB mode. MIDI is fine, mouse works fine.

Short video clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THQToEOPDA

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-30, 20:03:

vanfanel wrote on 2024-04-30, 08:41:

@megatron-uk Did you happen to test "The Elder Scrolls: Arena" with that setup?
I have been trying to get it working on the Tinyllama (also a 486-like modern computer) without success.
I got to the tittle screen, but never to the actual gameplay.

Just tried it - works pretty well. Speed-wise, at 133MHz without any slowdown tools running it is very smooth. The only slight issue I have is with some small amount of crackling with the digital sound; I was testing SB Pro, perhaps it may be better in the basic SB mode. MIDI is fine, mouse works fine.

Short video clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THQToEOPDA

Thanks! Good to see It working there.
Strange... I dont know what could be causing It to fail on the Tinyllama...any ideas are welcome.

I swapped out the ESS1868 soundcard with a Yamaha YMF719 which has solved the broken digital audio in Tyrian/2k, and also allowed Dune CD speech to work without crashing the machine.

I'm going back through my audited games to retest, but so far it looks to have slightly better compatibility than the ESS card.

Some titles have some clicking/clipping on digital audio playback with the Yamaha card, but compared to those same titles either not working at all, or locking up, that's definitely an improvement.

I *do* like the bass/treble/3d spatializer adjustments to the sound though - it definitely sounds 'fuller' than the no-frills ESS controls.

You might consider the low pass filter mod on you YMF719, which makes it sound almost identical to a real SB Pro:

Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

badmojo wrote on 2024-05-06, 22:39:

You might consider the low pass filter mod on you YMF719, which makes it sound almost identical to a real SB Pro:

Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

Any idea if that will reduce the noisy/clicking/crackly digital audio path?

Not sure but I doubt it, that sounds like a more fundamental problem to me.

I'll have to see if I can get another ymf719 in that case - in turns of compatibility it's definitely better than the ESS card.

I've just picked up a YMF715 based card, apparently this should be the same specs as the 719; being the same, last generation OPL3-SA3 made before the jump to PCI.

I'll see if this one is any better in terms of the clicking digital audio. If not, then I guess it's going to be a case of living with the noise for the increased number of games that work with it.

Good luck with it, they're good cards. There are older versions of that chipset too like the YMF701, which is not PnP. Still the same great compatibility but might cooperate with your board a bit more...? Or could be worse! Worth trying if you come across one.

Replacement Yamaha card hasn't arrived yet, but I have now ordered a Cyrix 5x86-100 to test in place of the Am5x86-133.

I intend to test it at 3x33 and then at a 3x40 overclock and see if it will give me both a slight speed increase for some of those later 3d titles, as well as allow a bit more granularity via software slowdown from setmul, which can only do L1 cache enable/disable on the Am5x86, but I understand can actually turn also enable/disable the clock multiplier on the Cyrix chip. Both 100 and 120 speeds are supported for Cyrix 5x86 chips according to the SBC owners manual (but 133 isn't listed).

@megatron-uk: What a beautiful little system, love the wooden case! Work of art! 😁

The alternative Yamaha card (actually a YMF-718, not a YMF-715 which I thought I ordered) arrived today. No difference in compatibility (good!) or digital audio playback (crackling/bad!).

I'm wondering if the issue is actually something related to the VIA chipset DMA implementation. Now I need to decide if the ESS + partial incompatibility or Yamaha + noisy digital audio is the better option.... decisions, decisions....

The Cyrix 5x86-100 also arrived. I'm currently running it through the same benchmarks as the Am5x86-133.

So far with the same system settings it seems to have far better memory speeds (L1 + L2 cache) and the benchmarks show that for 75% of the clock speed of the AMD chip, you get approximately 90% of the performance - all of the benchmarks are within 10% of the AMD chip at 133MHz. I'd eager to see the system run at 120MHz next.