VOGONS


The World's Fastest 486

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Reply 20 of 747, by sliderider

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feipoa wrote:

Udam_U got his Cyrix 5x86-100 running at 150 MHz, but again, no full sytem specs and benchmark evidence.

A 50% overclock with a Cyrix? I didn't think they'd stand up to that sort of abuse.

Reply 21 of 747, by feipoa

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Could you tell when the Biostar was made? It can read EDO, so it should be 1995 or newer.

Can't check it now as it is in a running system. From saved images of the MB, I can say that the chipsets have date codes of 31-33rd week of 1996, so the board must be marginally newer than this. If I had to guess, 35-45th week of 1996. There is even a later BIOS that I haven't tried out yet, but why update what is already perfect? I should order some 128K flashable EEPROMs for goofing off.

A 50% overclock with a Cyrix? I didn't think they'd stand up to that sort of abuse.

As rg100 would say, maybe some CPUs are "magic"?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 22 of 747, by feipoa

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This seemed like it might be fun to write-up and add to this post.

So the system is fairly streamlined, so much so that I do most of my web browsing on it using a combination of IE6, Opera 8.53, and Firefox 2.0.0.16. However for reasons of security, if I do any transactions, buy anything, or anything related to money and security, I KVM or Remote Desktop into a "modern" dual PIII-850 coppermine. I will experiment with KernelEx soon, if it runs on NT4.0 (Tetrium, thank you for that comment!).

Why bother? I can equate the regular use of such a system to driving a classic car around town or accross the country -- there is something about using a piece of history which is enjoyable (yes I have a classic car too!).

Some modern web applications/sites that still run well on IE6 are Microsoft Outlook WebApp, eBay, google, wikipedia, yahoo, vogons, wonderground, etc. I try to avoid Adobe Flash and Java enabled websites. The main issue is that I cannot have too many windows open at a time because I dropped the RAM down to 64MB so that all memory is cacheable. For 128 or 256 MB of RAM, I prefer to use the Cyrix 5x86-120 at 40 MHz FSB as the memory throughput is faster than at 33 MHz.

Here is a complete list of what I currently have installed. Everything on this list has been tested for years and works well on this 486 system.

UTILITIES
Adaptec EZ SCSI 5.0
[Scheduler, CD Player, Disk ImageSaver, Drive Light, PhotoCD Viewer, QuickScan, SCSI Bench, SCSI Explorer]
APC Back-UPS Service
AutoRuns
Evergreen ET586 driver (enables Cyrix 5x86 features in NT, also works in w2k)
VopNT Defrag 3.0
Flash Renamer
Hook99
Matrox PowerDesk 5.06
MemTest
Process Explorer
Shell Ex View
Shell Menu View
WinImage
WinRAR
ZTreeWin
Partition Magic 6
Norton Ghost 8

BENCHMARK
CpuBurn
CpuStab
CpuMark99
SuperPi
SCSI Bench
WinBench96
WinBench99
WinTune98

GAMES
DosBox 0.72
Aldo
Bananoid
Black Out - 3D Tetris
Bubble Ball
Condum Game (Flash)
Cruel
Exile
Freecell
Golf
Minesweeper
Paganitzu
Pegged
Pinball
Skyrider
Solitaire
Taipei
Tetris
TicTactics
Subspace

IMAGING
ACDSee Classic 2.43
Photoshop 4/5
Imaging
Microsoft Photo Editor
MS Paint
Quicktime Picture Viewer 2.1

INTERNET
Apache HTTP Server 2.0.63
Cerberus FTP Server 2.32
VNC Server 4
DynSite DNS
FileZilla
IE6
Firefox 2.0.0.16
Netscape Navigator 4.08
Opera 8.53
Outlook Express 6
Pirch32
Remote Desktop (the one from the original XP cd works on NT4)
ThumbHTML
uTorrent 1.7.7
Xchat 1.8.11

MULTIMEDIA
AWE64 Gold Control Panel
Xing Mp3 Encoder 1.0
Mp3 Decoder 1.21
Mp3 DirectCut
Quicktime Player 2.1
Sound Forge 4
Winamp 2.95
Windows Media Player 6.4

OFFICE
Acrobat Reader 4
Acrobat Full versioin 5 w/distiller
OE Address Book
Cambridge Dictionary
Convert
Microsoft Office 97 (Access, Excel, Outlook, Word, Powerpoint)
Webster's Dictionary
WordWeb Dictionary
UMAX VistaScan for Astra600S scanner
Ti-Graphlink 89 (v2.10)

Other thoughts: The system also works markedly well with FreeBSD, Debian, and Damn Small Linux once configured, but web browsing in these operating systems was a real test of patience. My only other avenue for enhancement is to get one of my working 4-PCI slotted 486 boards with 512KB write-thru cache (128MB cacheable) working in NT4 with a USB-to-PS/2 mouse. The reason for the PS/2 mouse over a serial mouse is so that I can still KVM into my dual PIII-850 without having two mice on my desk.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 23 of 747, by Tetrium

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@feipoa: Would you by any chance be using those Belkin KVM's we talked about earlier?

Edit:Those 850 Coppermines are nice, it's quite difficult finding Coppermines (both Slot 1 and s370) that are 1) Pentium 3's, 2) 100FSB and 3) above 750Mhz (I say 750 100FSB as this can easily be accomplished by underclocking a 1Ghz part). You should keep those! ;D

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Reply 24 of 747, by feipoa

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Naw, I gave up on the Belkin KVM for now. It kinda fell off my list. It was for getting a serial-to-PS/2 converter working right? I decided I might have better luck finding a USB-to-PS/2 solution for NT4.0. I gave it about 1 hour of my time and gave up.

As stated in my 486 specs above, I use an IOGEAR GCS614A MiniView, 4-port KVM w/Audio. I don't even see why anyone would want a KVM without audio potential.

I didn't know the Slot1 Coppermine's at 850 MHz were rare now; they sure weren't when I was looking for upgrades. I suppose I started retro computing at the right times, when the parts are not rare and cheap. For slot1 coppermines, I have all duals of 400, 600, 700, 850, and 1000 at 100 MHz FSB. I have attached a scan with my retro SCSI scanner of these CPUs.

The reason I have the 850s is because, at the time, I was trying to optimise my Dell Workstation 410 which has a 100 MHz FSB. I found out that the 1000 MHz CPUs would work, but every so often XP would give memory errors. So I tried the 600's, it worked, then 700's, it worked, then 850's. Its been working with 850's for about 5 years now.

Consequently, I bougt this all SCSI customised Dell Workstation 410 back in 1998 with dual PII-400's. It was probably the fastest computer in a 5 km radius. It was over $4,000, but it has paid for itself in that an upgrade to 850's, 1GB of ECC RAM, and a 64MB AGP NVIDIA card are all I need, even today. I built-up a dual Tualitin 1.4 GHz system some time ago, but only my wife uses that. I try not to touch it -- way too fast for me!

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Reply 25 of 747, by Tetrium

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The 100Mhz Coppermine P3's are hard to find once you pass 800Mhz or so. I think I only have a pair of 800Mhz ones laying around and have not a single s370 one that's 800 or faster.
Perhaps your 1000's caused memory errors due to them being not a matched pair? Or perhaps the board wasn't up for the task of supplying enough juice to the 2 1000's, can't really tell from here. Memory errors can be a touch one to fix, glad you figured out it was the CPU's 😉

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Reply 26 of 747, by feipoa

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The two 1000/256/1.7V/SL4KL Coppermine Slot1 CPUs I have are pretty closely matched; the serial numbers differ by only 7 digits.

10470043-0233
10470043-0226

I don't think many people have been able to run a Dell Precision Workstation 410 with higher than 850's stably. I'm not sure what the limitation is here. It has an Intel 440BX chipset.

Consequently, the fastest 100 MHz FSB, s370 Coppermines I've used are dual, perfectly matched, 1100/256/100/1.75V/SL5QW units (scanned photo). Used the pair in my wife's ASUS-CUV4X-DLS until I got greedy and tried to use some Powerleap server tualatin adapters in there, which worked for awhile, then the board became buggy. Replaced the motherboard with a (dual) Intel SAI2 server board, thinking that a Matrox PCI-X graphics card would work in there (no AGP slot on this board), but it didn't. It ended up that the Intel SAI2 motherboard needs a BIOS upgrade that neither Intel, nor Matrox were willing to invest in to get the one and only PCI-X graphics card working. Currently, a 66 MHz NVIDIA GeForce6200 is fast enough, I guess, but where's the challenge in that?

There you have it, my computing life in a nutshell. Well, there was the 8086, 286, and 386's, but those don't seem to have much appeal.

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Reply 27 of 747, by Tetrium

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feipoa wrote:

Consequently, the fastest 100 MHz FSB, s370 Coppermines I've used are dual, perfectly matched, 1100/256/100/1.75V/SL5QW units (scanned photo).

Ah you lucky git! 😜

I've been searching around for a couple cheaper ones and have been unable to find any. Not in a hurry though, I just want 1 or 2 around.
The Celerons are easy to get, but of course their performance isn't nearly as good as that of the proper P3's.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 28 of 747, by sliderider

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feipoa wrote:
The two 1000/256/1.7V/SL4KL Coppermine Slot1 CPUs I have are pretty closely matched; the serial numbers differ by only 7 digits. […]
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The two 1000/256/1.7V/SL4KL Coppermine Slot1 CPUs I have are pretty closely matched; the serial numbers differ by only 7 digits.

10470043-0233
10470043-0226

I don't think many people have been able to run a Dell Precision Workstation 410 with higher than 850's stably. I'm not sure what the limitation is here. It has an Intel 440BX chipset.

Consequently, the fastest 100 MHz FSB, s370 Coppermines I've used are dual, perfectly matched, 1100/256/100/1.75V/SL5QW units (scanned photo). Used the pair in my wife's ASUS-CUV4X-DLS until I got greedy and tried to use some Powerleap server tualatin adapters in there, which worked for awhile, then the board became buggy. Replaced the motherboard with a (dual) Intel SAI2 server board, thinking that a Matrox PCI-X graphics card would work in there (no AGP slot on this board), but it didn't. It ended up that the Intel SAI2 motherboard needs a BIOS upgrade that neither Intel, nor Matrox were willing to invest in to get the one and only PCI-X graphics card working. Currently, a 66 MHz NVIDIA GeForce6200 is fast enough, I guess, but where's the challenge in that?

There you have it, my computing life in a nutshell. Well, there was the 8086, 286, and 386's, but those don't seem to have much appeal.

How does an 1100/100 PIII compare to a 1400/100 Celeron?

Reply 29 of 747, by feipoa

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They're going for between $20-$80 now, much much less than what I paid for them new in '02 -- that's how I get an exact serial number matched pair.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 30 of 747, by sliderider

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Tetrium wrote:
Ah you lucky git! :P […]
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feipoa wrote:

Consequently, the fastest 100 MHz FSB, s370 Coppermines I've used are dual, perfectly matched, 1100/256/100/1.75V/SL5QW units (scanned photo).

Ah you lucky git! 😜

I've been searching around for a couple cheaper ones and have been unable to find any. Not in a hurry though, I just want 1 or 2 around.
The Celerons are easy to get, but of course their performance isn't nearly as good as that of the proper P3's.

A Tualeron might compare well to a 100mhz FSB P-III, and Tualerons are incredible overclockers. You can run them on 133mhz bus a lot of the time and sometimes even as high as 150mhz bus. 😳

Can you imagine running a 1.4ghz Tualeron at 150mhz FSB? That's 2.1ghz and well up into Northwood performance territory. You'd probably have to be water cooled to do that, though.

Reply 31 of 747, by Tetrium

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sliderider wrote:
Tetrium wrote:
Ah you lucky git! :P […]
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feipoa wrote:

Consequently, the fastest 100 MHz FSB, s370 Coppermines I've used are dual, perfectly matched, 1100/256/100/1.75V/SL5QW units (scanned photo).

Ah you lucky git! 😜

I've been searching around for a couple cheaper ones and have been unable to find any. Not in a hurry though, I just want 1 or 2 around.
The Celerons are easy to get, but of course their performance isn't nearly as good as that of the proper P3's.

A Tualeron might compare well to a 100mhz FSB P-III, and Tualerons are incredible overclockers. You can run them on 133mhz bus a lot of the time and sometimes even as high as 150mhz bus. 😳

Can you imagine running a 1.4ghz Tualeron at 150mhz FSB? That's 2.1ghz and well up into Northwood performance territory. You'd probably have to be water cooled to do that, though.

I wanted to overclock a Tualeron, till I got some 1.4Ghz P3-S parts for cheap 😁

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 32 of 747, by sliderider

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Tetrium wrote:
sliderider wrote:
Tetrium wrote:

Ah you lucky git! 😜

I've been searching around for a couple cheaper ones and have been unable to find any. Not in a hurry though, I just want 1 or 2 around.
The Celerons are easy to get, but of course their performance isn't nearly as good as that of the proper P3's.

A Tualeron might compare well to a 100mhz FSB P-III, and Tualerons are incredible overclockers. You can run them on 133mhz bus a lot of the time and sometimes even as high as 150mhz bus. 😳

Can you imagine running a 1.4ghz Tualeron at 150mhz FSB? That's 2.1ghz and well up into Northwood performance territory. You'd probably have to be water cooled to do that, though.

I wanted to overclock a Tualeron, till I got some 1.4Ghz P3-S parts for cheap 😁

Yeah but you need a Tualatin motherboard for those and you can't clock them as high. A 1.4 ghz Tualatin only has a 10.5 multiplier. At 150mhz FSB that only comes out to 1.575ghz. The Tualeron would have been faster because it uses a 14x multiplier x 150mhz =2.1ghz.

Reply 33 of 747, by Tetrium

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sliderider wrote:
Tetrium wrote:
sliderider wrote:

A Tualeron might compare well to a 100mhz FSB P-III, and Tualerons are incredible overclockers. You can run them on 133mhz bus a lot of the time and sometimes even as high as 150mhz bus. 😳

Can you imagine running a 1.4ghz Tualeron at 150mhz FSB? That's 2.1ghz and well up into Northwood performance territory. You'd probably have to be water cooled to do that, though.

I wanted to overclock a Tualeron, till I got some 1.4Ghz P3-S parts for cheap 😁

Yeah but you need a Tualatin motherboard for those and you can't clock them as high. A 1.4 ghz Tualatin only has a 10.5 multiplier. At 150mhz FSB that only comes out to 1.575ghz. The Tualeron would have been faster because it uses a 14x multiplier x 150mhz =2.1ghz.

I got a couple tully boards laying around 😉

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Reply 34 of 747, by feipoa

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I wonder what kind of sick looks I'll get for posting this...

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Reply 36 of 747, by Tetrium

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33 is good, everyone has a 486DX-33 😜

...riiight?

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Reply 37 of 747, by feipoa

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Good call. Actually, for it to be most sinsible with what I am eluding to being the world's fastest 486, the replies would need to be 133.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 38 of 747, by feipoa

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I decided I might have better luck finding a USB-to-PS/2 solution for NT4.0. I gave it about 1 hour of my time and gave up.

So using the IONetworks solution for USB in NT4.0, I am able to use a USB mouse flawlessl. I also tested a USB hub and a USB/SD card adapter. All worked fine on an OPTi-chipset USB 1.1 PCI card.

I also put in an NEC-chipset USB 2.0 card and compared the transfer speed vs. the 1.1 card. The IONetworks version 4.06 and higher supports USB 2.0. I used version 2.06. I get about 0.9 MB/s with the USB 1.1 card and 2.1 MB/s with the 2.0 card when transfering jpeg images from the SD card to the hard drive.

Unfortunately, when I plugged my PS/2 mouse into a PS/2-to-USB converter, it the mouse would not function properly. The pointer would only move up/down. I tried the same thing in Windows 98SE using the Microsoft drivers and everything worked fine. So the issue is not hardware related. It seems that the IONetworks solution does not have the USB drivers for the PS/2-to-USB adapter.

Back to the drawing board -- how to get a PS/2 mouse working in NT4.0 when the motherboard doesn't have a PS/2 port. Any ideas?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 39 of 747, by Tetrium

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feipoa wrote:

Any ideas?

Have you tried the driver provided on this page?
http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/usb.htm

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!