"Unfortunately I have a inner need to build retro rigs so, illogically, I keep doing it."

Yeah, I know the feeling. Logically I should stop messing around with this stuff. Dosbox is great!; but I can't stop playing with the old hardware. Hardware addiction or something.... 🙄

@2Mourty: I've no experience with the old Sierra games, but the K6 series CPUs sometimes seem to behave differently than Pentiums indeed.
BTW, the bug in Sierra's old SB detection routines can be fixed with a little patch utility called GOSIERRA: It's available from the QuestStudios utilities page - click here.

swaaye wrote:

Believe it or not but the GFFX 5600 has proven to be one of the most effective VESA cards I've tested. It's very fast and hasn't caused any crashes or lockups.

I think some cards out of the GeForce series are actually very good with VESA games. The difficult bit is to find out which ones 😉

About building retro-machines: You guys are right, DOSBox manages to inflict the feeling that we're wasting time and resources on really obsolete stuff.
However, there still are a few reasons why I only use DOSBox for testing and play my games on "the real thing": One is the OPL2/3 emulation, which is adequate for most game music, but doesn't make it possible for me to enjoy the few masterpieces composed for these chips. I reckon the situation is similar with the MT-32 emulation, but I have to admit I was too lazy to try it out yet.
Another reason are scene demos, which often were programmed for a very specific hardware generation: get a few specs wrong and the timing goes out of whack. Not to mention some of the VGA tricks frequently used in demos, making these work in DOSBox would require a lot of effort, it may not pay off in the end.
And finally, I had (and still have) much fun collecting, building and fine-tuning my retro machines, so I would regret giving them away after all I've done with them.

2Mourty wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Unfortunately I have a inner need to build retro rigs so, illogically, I keep doing it.

Dosbox is great!; but I can't stop playing with the old hardware. Hardware addiction or something....

Same here. Let's hope we won't end up in some self-help group: My name is 5u3, and I collect old hardware crap... 🤣

kreats wrote:

ok did some testing - both with and without univbe. Most of these results seem quite similar.. 9 seems to be a bit of a barrier […]
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ok did some testing - both with and without univbe. Most of these results seem quite similar.. 9 seems to be a bit of a barrier, I guess I'll have to go to 40MHz bus to get any higher.

486 rig: AMD 5x86 133, Asus PVI-486SP3 rev 1.8 (bios 306), 32 MB FPM RAM. I upgraded the cache on my motherboard to 8x32 rather than 4x64 (256k).

2MB s3 trio64V+: normal 8.0,univbe 8.8
2MB ET4000W32P: normal 8.0, univbe 8.8
4MB S3 Virge/DX (Diamond Stealth 3d 2000): normal 8.8,univbe 8.8
2MB Ark2000PV (Legend 64): normal 8.0,univbe 8.8
1MB S3 Trio64 (Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM): normal 7.7,univbe 8.8
4MB ET6000: normal 8.8,univbe 8.8
8MB SIS6326: normal 8.8,univbe doesn't work
4MB V2100 Rendition Verite (Diamond Stealth II S220): normal 8.3,univbe doesn't work
2MB ARK2000PV (Legend Stingray 64): normal 8.0,univbe doesn't work
4MB Millenium I: normal 8.8,univbe doesn't work
8MB Millenium II: normal 8.8,univbe doesn't work

So I'm taking from these results that the stealth 3d 2000 (virge dx) is the best card to use. It scores the same regardless of univbe and I don't need to run a tsr for most extra vesa modes (I could go up to 640x480 in system shock without running anything). Any thoughts?

Since I recently finalized my Asus 486 PVI SP3 system I did some vid benchmarking too, couldn't resist after lurking around this thread quite often 😁
My system has the latest BIOS
Cyrix Cx5x86 120gp CPU
2+32mb 60ns FPM RAM

Haven't wrote down the results of each card but I've gone thru the same models as in my test with the MS-4134 board except for trying for the first time a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 card which got the highest result:
without univbe = 8.8
With univbe = 9.5

@5u3

How the heck could you get so high results with your i486 DX4 3+40mhz FSB setting?
My Cx 5x86 should beat the crap out of it? 😎
Please let me know your "secret" BIOS settings 😁

Amigaz wrote:

How the heck could you get so high results with your i486 DX4 3+40mhz FSB setting?
My Cx 5x86 should beat the crap out of it? 😎
Please let me know your "secret" BIOS settings 😁

No secrets, I'm afraid. The PCPBench seems to use the FPU, so non-Intel 486 CPUs are disadvantaged. I once benched an AMD 5x86 at 160 MHz, it got the same results as an Intel DX4 at 120 MHz.

Here are my PVI-486SP3 BIOS settings (only the performance-related stuff):

1CHIPSET FEATURES SETUP:
2
3Auto configuration:       Disabled
4Cache burst read cycle:   2-1-1-1
5Cache write cycle:        2 CCLK
6DRAM speed:               Fastest
7DRAM CAS precharge time:  1 CCLK
8DRAM write cycle post:    0 WS
9DRAM write CAS pulse:     1 CCLK
10ISA bus clock:            1/3 PCLK
11CPU internal cache:       Write back
12External Cache:           Write back
13CPU to PCI post write:    Enabled
14CPU to PCI burst write:   Enabled
15PCI burst to main memory: Enabled
1616-bit I/O recovery time: 2 CCLK
178-bit I/O recovery time:  3 CCLK
18...
19Slow DRAM refresh (1:4):  Enabled
20
21POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP:
22Everything disabled
23
24PCI AND PNP SETUP:
25...
26PCI latency timer:        80 PCI clock

My BIOS revision is 0306, CPU is an Intel 486 DX4 with write-back cache.

Got some hardware a while ago, but forgot to update...

I've replaced the 2 MB S3 Trio64V+ in my 486 machine with a 4 MB Virge GX.
PCI throughput on the PVI-486SP3 mainboard was already maxed out with the Trio, so the graphics didn't get any faster. But the Virge offers more RAM, better resolutions, and -- most important -- a sharper picture on my aging monitor 😎

I also got some new peripherals:

• A Behringer RX1602 audio mixer to connect all my sound cards:
  
  
  It has eight stereo inputs, doesn't take up much space and is not too expensive (~130€). Recommended for retro gamers!
• And a nice yellow Logitech Wingman Formula GP steering wheel. It has a gameport connector, so it works with very old DOS games. 😉

Impressive stuff.
I haven't read all 4 pages but it seems the following questions have not yet been asked before.

First, about these added speed setting switches on the Asus P5A (what a great idea!) which ones can you toggle while the system is running, and which ones require the computer to be turned off?

Also, about the mixer above: do you need to mute channels manually to keep the noise levels in check when noisy soundcards are attached?

I did not see any pictures of your computers, would it be an idea to add them?

thanks.

gerwin wrote:

Impressive stuff. I haven't read all 4 pages but it seems the following questions have not yet been asked before. […]
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Impressive stuff.
I haven't read all 4 pages but it seems the following questions have not yet been asked before.

First, about these added speed setting switches on the Asus P5A (what a great idea!) which ones can you toggle while the system is running, and which ones require the computer to be turned off?

Also, about the mixer above: do you need to mute channels manually to keep the noise levels in check when noisy soundcards are attached?

I did not see any pictures of your computers, would it be an idea to add them?

thanks.

Dito "want to see pics" 😁

I have a ASUS P5A as well. Picked it up cuz I wanted an ATX Super 7 board instead of the B-AT board I had before. The best thing about P5A is perhaps how fast it gets through POST. My 486 may be faster (near instant!), but the P5A has to be one of the fastest booters out there. Especially compared to the FIC VA503A that I had for Super 7 before. And my Intel VS440FX mobo takes about 20 seconds to get thru POST which is just painful.

It also will do 60,66,75,83,95,100,105,110,120 FSB speeds. And 75 and 83 don't even mess up the AGP/PCI clocks. That was impressive to me too. Not sure what these speed switch settings being talked about are though. All I know of are the jumpers....

Biggest disappointment is that, as usual with S7, the AGP port is a buggy wreck. Best off with PCI Voodoo cards if you want the easy road to stability. I have had problems with Radeon 7500 & 8500, GeForce 5600 & 5900, Geforce 2 MX, Savage 2000, G400.. Sometimes they are obviously unstable, othertimes you'll play a game for an hour and then get a freeze..

Wish I had seen this last post a few years ago. I wasted no end of time trying to troubleshoot random lockups on a FIC PA2013 with a Banshee card. Was no better with other voodoo cards. With the Banshee it used to crash after random lengths of time if you just left Diablo 2 on its opening screen. Only thing that solved the lockups was replacing the mobo. Though a second and even 3rd PA2013 gave the same symptoms. And yes, latest drivers etc.

As I recall it was ok in Debian. Guess that may be irrelevant but is how it seemed. Command-line only, which may explain it.

Later I got a Soyo 5EMA+, same chipset but completely stable, with same peripherals.

gerwin wrote:

First, about these added speed setting switches on the Asus P5A (what a great idea!) which ones can you toggle while the system is running, and which ones require the computer to be turned off?

Both my PVI486SP3 and my P5A have to be off to change the FSB/multiplier. If I switch them while running, the system will crash. Holding reset while switching does not help, unfortunately.
However, the K6-3+ CPU in my P5A has a nifty feature: The multiplier can be changed through software as well. (e.g. K6CLK).

gerwin wrote:

Also, about the mixer above: do you need to mute channels manually to keep the noise levels in check when noisy soundcards are attached?

Yes, usually I mute the channels currently not used. The output of all the cards combined is really noisy.
The noisiest single card in my setup is *drumroll* the crappy Realtek ALC658D AC97 chip on my Abit AV8. It's terrible, you can hear every mouse movement on that one.

swaaye wrote:

Not sure what these speed switch settings being talked about are though. All I know of are the jumpers...

Those "speed switches" are just jumpers on a wire with a toggle switch attached to the other end. 😉
The simple solution would be a single switch to control every jumper row. You'd end up with lots of switches, but you could select every possible (and several impossible) combinations.
The slightly more elegant way involves rotary switches wired to select some of the more useful combinations.

And yes, some time I'll borrow a decent camera and make some pictures.
Currently I'm a bit handicapped, because I got a tiny metal chip into my right eye yesterday. (Do you know how they remove it in hospital? They bore it out of your eye with some kind of dentist's drill, while you are watching from the inside! 😳 ). So remember, kids: Always wear eye protection when grinding metal, normal glasses don't count!

Yikes!! 😳 Sounds gruesome! 5u3, what were you doing, exactly? Grinding metal? Why?

Get well soon! 😀

(Perhaps I shouldn't do this - 😉 )

Sorry. 😦

Thanks for answering my questions despite your injury. I hope all heals well, so they don't have to poke in your eye again with their drills. ( Hard to imagine how drilling can help, have you suggested them to use pincers 😉 )

A CPU multiplier changing program, now that is awesome! much more convienent then bios settings and switches.
I already suspected you wired the jumper contacts to these switches. the principle is simple but doing it all properly is another thing offcourse.
So you cannot switch FSB jumpers on running system, that is good to know.

Thanks for the get-well wishes, everyone. 😀
My eye has healed amazingly fast (the blurry vision disappeared after one week). The only aftereffect is that I can't watch the beginning of this demo any more... 😵

Anyways, I've added a nice upgrade to my 486:
A Compact Flash to IDE adapter with an 8 GB Transcend 133x CF card. This is perfect for my 486 board, because the transfer rates of the onboard controller are slow and the BIOS doesn't support more than 8 GB anyways. I did some SST benches, but the program seems slightly confused when testing flash memory instead of a real harddisk:

I've bought several CF adapters, now I'll wait until the prices for fast 32 GB cards become lower. The next one goes into my K6, which is still running on an IBM "Deathstar" DTLA 75GXP.

@5u3,

Your purchase(s) seem like the perfect solution! Can you boot from these CF cards? Also, do they (the ones you bought) support DMA? Finally, if you got them from ebay, and the seller has others in stock, can you say who the seller is so I can take a look at the item description(s) please? Thanks a lot. 😀

retro games 100 wrote:

Can you boot from these CF cards? Also, do they (the ones you bought) support DMA?

Yes, booting from the card is possible (otherwise this wouldn't be a very elegant solution). According to the product sheet, my Transcend card also supports DMA, but I haven't tested this yet (the IDE controller on my 486 board doesn't offer DMA modes).

retro games 100 wrote:

Finally, if you got them from ebay, and the seller has others in stock, can you say who the seller is so I can take a look at the item description(s) please? Thanks a lot. 😀

I bought the adapter from a German ebay dealer, but there are lots of offers for the same adapter on ebay UK where you can get them cheaper:
Here is one for £ 4.49 incl shipping. Or, if you have PayPal, you can get five adapters for £ 5.78 here. There are lots of offers for these, so if you search a bit, you might get them even cheaper. There are also adapters that take two CF cards (IDE master/slave configuration).
I chose this model because it fits directly onto the mainboard IDE connector without the need for a cable. And because it has three status LEDs, of course... 🤣

Finding a cheap & reliable CF card is more difficult. High-end models are available in photo stores, but you'll pay through your nose, because these stores cater professional photographers who need decent cards for their DSLRs.
Cards offered on ebay are either cheap and shoddy (beware of "brand name" cards for suspiciously low prices), or cost about the same as in normal computer stores. I decided to buy a retail card in a nearby shop.
For 486/586 class computers it doesn't make sense to get very fast cards, as the controller/bus is the bottleneck. "133x" cards offer transfer rates about 25/20 MB per seconds (read/write), this is fast enough for old retro machines.

The CF card setup feels about as fast as my old 12GB harddisk. When copying a lot of very little files, the CF card is a lot faster.

Thanks very much for the info 5u3!! 😀

I need to do what @5u3 has done, and get a Compact Flash to IDE adapter with a (8 GB Transcend 133x) CF card. This is because getting a fairly modern PCI based IDE controller card to work on a 486 mobo is too problematic. Sometimes the mobo doesn't 'see' the controller card at all, and so therefore booting up from a HDD is impossible. On other 486 boards, the controller card is 'seen', but other problems occur such as resource conflicts with other cards in the mobo, such as the graphics card!

Originally, I was hoping to use a fairly modern PCI based IDE controller card because they support new (modern), large, quieter HDDs. But because of all the problems I'm having, I need to abandon these '66 and 100 ultra speed' IDE controller cards, and get the alternative hardware which @5u3 has got.

But I'm worried about something - getting 486 boards to work is a bit problematic anyway! Getting them to work with something very modern, such as these special IDE adapters + CF cards, seems like "asking for trouble"! Sure, @5u3 has been successful 😁 😎 , but will this success vary depending on 486 mobo to 486 mobo? - ie, will some mobos work OK with this, and not others?

I'm thinking of getting a 2gb and 8gb CF cards. I am guessing that a typical integrated IDE port on a 486 mobo will not be able to cope with anything larger. After that, the next step is to get a decent and reliable (not cheap and nasty) IDE adapter from ... you all know where!

Any comments very gratefully received. 😀

@5u3, how do you use your CD-ROM drive, now that you're using a CF IDE adapter? Is it possible to slave a CD-ROM drive from a CF IDE adapter? Or perhaps you're using a soundcard to 'run' your CD-ROM?

I was thinking of buying this item, for the CF device -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=300233043517 (Can't see a way of slaving a CD-ROM drive from this though.)

And this item, for the CF itself -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=310117817920

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CF-Compact-Flash-to-40- … Cables_Adapters

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CF-Compact-Flash-to-40- … Cables_Adapters

Thanks! Also, how about this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=200258379014

It's an IDE 40 pin male-to-male adapter. I was thinking of this idea -

Typical 40 pin IDE ribbon cable goes on to the mobo. Just like usual. Then, on the other end of this cable, where the slave connector is, goes the CD-ROM. (Just like usual.) Also on the other end of the typical 40 pin IDE cable, where the master connector is, goes this special male-to-male adapter (ebay link above). Then, on the end of this m-to-m adapter, can fit any (female) CF IDE device. Good idea? Bad idea?