Finished installing Windows 98 Second Edition onto another hard disk cradle for the 486.....now here's what I've got cooking thus far...

15GB - MS-DOS 6,22/Windows For Workgroups 3.11
20GB - Windows 95 OSR2 REVC
40GB - Windows 98 Second Edition
80GB - ????

Tested all my smaller drives, all of them are bad (2 2GB and a 6GB, not very surprising). Might need to look for some more RH17 Mobile IDE Rack Trays for more drives or possibly move to some DOM (Drive on Module) units next. Kind of liking the speed I get already running ATA-100/133 drives in the 486 currently though.

Next up will be installing the PTI-255W Win9x drivers on it, the only drivers I need to much about with on this computer post install.

Seems I hit the nostalgia nerve on the wife - she was in shock when she saw I had Windows 98 running on something in here, that was the first windows she ever used. Might have to install Dark Forces and X-Wing on this thing ;D

bjwil1991 wrote:

It could be that the CF card is too fast for the system to handle since the 486's IDE bus speed (on-board or ISA/VLB card) is ra […]
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brostenen wrote:

I have begun building my 486dx2-80 VLB system. I had some trouble getting the CF card to work on the controller. It turns out, t […]
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I have begun building my 486dx2-80 VLB system. I had some trouble getting the CF card to work on the controller.
It turns out, that I have to lower the IDE speed on the controller by aprox half, compared to a platter that runs full speed.
Can someone perhaps explain why a faster solution needs a slower controller settings?

Hardware (so far)
- Abit AH4T motherboard
- AMD 486dx2-80 WT running on 3.3v
- 24mb Ram
- S3-805-1mb VLB
- Goldstar Dual-Channel IDE controller VLB
- Pentium era AT case. (recently got it, PSU tested stable)

I really do not know what soundcard I will put in, what optical drives I am going to use.
Testing and tinkering will tell what hardware I will end up with on this Dx2-80/VLB system.

IMG_20170416_163416567.jpg

It could be that the CF card is too fast for the system to handle since the 486's IDE bus speed (on-board or ISA/VLB card) is rated from 16MB/s up to 66MB/s and certain CF cards are rated differently (from 66MB/s to 133MB/s).

My Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus would lock up when I was trying to autodetect the CF to IDE adapter, and I found out my IDE cable was on backwards on the CF to IDE adapter.

Out of curiosity, how big is your CF card? If over 2GB, try a smaller one. Also, it could be the brand CF card that's installed that could have issues. I have 3 SanDisk CF cards (1GB, 2GB, and 4GB) that are rated at different speeds. The 2GB card is rated at 15MB/s, whereas the 4GB card is rated at 30MB/s, and I believe my 1GB is about 7.5MB/s for the speed (could be wrong since my 1GB CF card is a Type 1, and the 2GB; 4GB cards are Type 2).

Well.... I did get it to work on this controller. It is a 512mb Transcend Industrial CF-Card. Now... Another issue came to be. Wich is, that the second ide channel is defect. I don't know what happened, though I did get a partial refund from the seller. Connecting both a CF card and a CD-R to the first channel is working. I just wanted to have two channels. Going to search for some other controller now. I think this is the reason why the channel is defect. A bad packing....

(Seller said that this is 100% ESR/Antistatic safe packing.... I really have my doubts on this)

A vogoner helped me in obtaining an ISA I/O card so I'm dancing around in joy. Now all I need is an ISA VGA card.

appiah4 wrote:

A vogoner helped me in obtaining an ISA I/O card so I'm dancing around in joy. Now all I need is an ISA VGA card.

Dude, why didn't you say - I've got loads!

In other news, I've been organising my screws. Yes really. I know I'm not the only one!

brassicGamer wrote:

Yes really. I know I'm not the only one!

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Been there... Done that. (Good that it is over)

brassicGamer wrote:

Dude, why didn't you say - I've got loads! […]
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appiah4 wrote:

A vogoner helped me in obtaining an ISA I/O card so I'm dancing around in joy. Now all I need is an ISA VGA card.

Dude, why didn't you say - I've got loads!

In other news, I've been organising my screws. Yes really. I know I'm not the only one!

20170415_174024-1600x900.jpg

Well, my parents taught me to kindly thank people for their favors and return them in kind whenever possible, not ask for more 😀

brassicGamer wrote:

In other news, I've been organising my screws. Yes really. I know I'm not the only one!

20170415_174024-1600x900.jpg

So nice to have them organized. No more digging through a pile of them trying to find what you need.

Mine are pretty organized and have been for years. But the case I have them in has some cracks in it and the tabs that hold it closed don't really work that great anymore.

I already have a replacement case but haven't taken the time to move the stuff over and trash the old case.

brostenen wrote:

Well.... I did get it to work on this controller. It is a 512mb Transcend Industrial CF-Card. Now... Another issue came to be. Wich is, that the second ide channel is defect. I don't know what happened, though I did get a partial refund from the seller. Connecting both a CF card and a CD-R to the first channel is working. I just wanted to have two channels. Going to search for some other controller now. I think this is the reason why the channel is defect. A bad packing....

(Seller said that this is 100% ESR/Antistatic safe packing.... I really have my doubts on this)

Keep in mind that many (most?) motherboards from the VLB era don't have a BIOS with dual IDE channel support, so if you use a controller card with two IDE channels you won't be able to use the secondary unless the controller card has its own BIOS with support for both channels.

To check dual IDE channel support on your BIOS, you can look at the HDD auto-detection screen. If it only tries to detect drives C & D, it means it's only using the first channel. In case both channels are supported, you would see C, D, E & F.

TheMobRules wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Well.... I did get it to work on this controller. It is a 512mb Transcend Industrial CF-Card. Now... Another issue came to be. Wich is, that the second ide channel is defect. I don't know what happened, though I did get a partial refund from the seller. Connecting both a CF card and a CD-R to the first channel is working. I just wanted to have two channels. Going to search for some other controller now. I think this is the reason why the channel is defect. A bad packing....

(Seller said that this is 100% ESR/Antistatic safe packing.... I really have my doubts on this)

Keep in mind that many (most?) motherboards from the VLB era don't have a BIOS with dual IDE channel support, so if you use a controller card with two IDE channels you won't be able to use the secondary unless the controller card has its own BIOS with support for both channels.

To check dual IDE channel support on your BIOS, you can look at the HDD auto-detection screen. If it only tries to detect drives C & D, it means it's only using the first channel. In case both channels are supported, you would see C, D, E & F.

The motherboard supports dual channel controllers. There are settings for that.

Finished building my Amd 80486dx2-80 system. And did a few benchmarkings.
I am most pleased with this. Feels like a solid machine. And fast in Doom.

brostenen wrote:

Finished building my Amd 80486dx2-80 system. And did a few benchmarkings. I am most pleased with this. Feels like a solid machin […]
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Finished building my Amd 80486dx2-80 system. And did a few benchmarkings.
I am most pleased with this. Feels like a solid machine. And fast in Doom.

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Nice to see the machine fully functional. To set the date past 31-12-1999, a Y2K fix ISA card is a must since some BIOS chips released before late 1994 and early 1995 are not Y2K compliant (like AMI and Award BIOS chips), while 3rd Party manufacturers, like Compaq, Packard Bell, etc. used the Phoenix BIOS that's Y2K compliant.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Nice to see the machine fully functional. To set the date past 31-12-1999, a Y2K fix ISA card is a must since some BIOS chips released before late 1994 and early 1995 are not Y2K compliant (like AMI and Award BIOS chips), while 3rd Party manufacturers, like Compaq, Packard Bell, etc. used the Phoenix BIOS that's Y2K compliant.

True that. I remember that they were sold like hot bread, back in 1999. As I am not using any of my old computers for anything of importance, I don't really need a Y2K card. I just set the date correctly and change the year to something between 1986 and 1990 or so.

creepingnet wrote:

Still continuing my major PITA with the FIC 486-PVT..... […]
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Still continuing my major PITA with the FIC 486-PVT.....

Now I'm searching around for more FIC boards to get that 0 Ohm Resistor network part, particularly another 486 PVT if possible so I can have a backup/spare while I fix the other one (put an ad up on Amibay for that).

Tried my staple change last night, and seems I can't get either chip to work, starting to wonder maybe if enabling Cache or fast RAM timing blew something small like RAM or whatever. Removing the video card and the network card is not giving me much....maybe this Resistor network is faulty. It's got me thinking there is something more going on with the board than what I originally thought. I'm just hoping it's not a broken trace somewhere or some other problem related to swapping parts out on it so often - my 128MB of RAM is supposed to come in today and I have a 512MB Cache coming in as well in early March from China. I may try swapping the RAM just in case the old 70ns Fast Page blew under the stresses of the AMD DX4.

I tried pulling everything, RAM, Video Card, it powers on, the keyboard lights flash, just no POST, no beeps (listening via SoundBlaster passthrough as that's all I have), got me wondering what part of the POST before RAM or Video it's getting hung up on. May need to try the oven-reflow trick one day if it keeps going this way.

Testing continuity on the motherboard and the old broken 0 Ohm 8P4R Resistor Network, I am finding the readings to be 100% the same if I use the staples between the contacts exactly as they work inside the resistor (around 0.0003 Ohms if I use the 200 Ohm scale on my Multitester). So I'm starting to think it's not that. Did i also mention the staples are EXACTLY the right size to fit the holes and not short each other. So things should be working. I'm just hoping I did not have a bad DX4-100 CPU, but my DX2-66 won't POST Either.

I found that one of the P8/P9 connectors were hung up on one side when "fully connected" not sure what's going on there....

Oh well, bought one of these this morning to aid in my board level repairs - http://www.ebay.com/itm/380831560767?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT - maybe if I get good I could start buying up some of those Bulgarian/Hungarian/Turkish/Whatever 486 boards that are going for 30-something bucks as well, I also kind of need this thing for work anyway too, might help to tell the OEM what's actually going WRONG with their stuff rather than "we swapped out a bunch of parts and determined it's this one just because all these other parts removed did not remove/reproduce the symptom". I always loved that I had one of these built into my ABIT AW9D board on my Pentium D machine.

Still I'm a tad ...uhh....aggravated because now the DX2 chip does not boot either using correct jumper settings, and I found out I had been using it on 4 volts instead of 5......odd.

Just hoping I can get this thing finished eventually and working so I can button it up and not bother with it again. I'm starting to miss having a working 486 on my desk and getting getting a bit annoyed with having this thing open in "breadboarding mode" next to me every day to try more insane things in hopes it will eventually POST.

Hi, I have just bought this card too recently. But the ebay guy did not send the manual and ignored me. Now I have to search everywhere but cannot get it. If you can help me, please send the manual in pictures or video to my email benarto_@yahoo.com and I will very appeciate and thank you.

It's not exactly the same card but the list of Port 80 codes and beep codes is the only thing that is needed. This manual isn't the best I have seen but it was the first one I found with Google...

Well I got some MoBos:
FIC v31 Socket 478
HP (Asus) P4SD-LA Socket 478
MSI MS-6712 ver 1.0 kt4v socket 462/A
Does anyone have drivers for these MOBOS and for these 2 video cards ?

and 2 video cards for this era:
Geforce 2 Mx200 V7100 Magic AGP 32MB
Radeon 7500 RV2l-b3-64MB

So I was looking for some drivers xp32 or w98 with less succesful only for MSI found drivers.
I have GoTek floppy emulator and did order SD to IDE adaptor too.
I have rams and dvd cd drives as well so I got everything to hook up this computer.
My plan is that build a quiet PC with WINXP or WIN98 and play some oldschool game on it and get a nice case with a side plexi + LED stripes and modding the case a bit

Later plans: got 386 mobo + PII mobo 300mhz cpu ram voodoo3 card awe32 sb sound card ---> dos game machine project

Doggy wrote:

Well I got some MoBos: FIC v31 Socket 478 HP (Asus) P4SD-LA Socket 478 MSI MS-6712 ver 1.0 kt4v socket 462/A Does anyone have d […]
Show full quote

Well I got some MoBos:
FIC v31 Socket 478
HP (Asus) P4SD-LA Socket 478
MSI MS-6712 ver 1.0 kt4v socket 462/A
Does anyone have drivers for these MOBOS and for these 2 video cards ?

and 2 video cards for this era:
Geforce 2 Mx200 V7100 Magic AGP 32MB
Radeon 7500 RV2l-b3-64MB

So I was looking for some drivers xp32 or w98 with less succesful only for MSI found drivers.
I have GoTek floppy emulator and did order SD to IDE adaptor too.
I have rams and dvd cd drives as well so I got everything to hook up this computer.
My plan is that build a quiet PC with WINXP or WIN98 and play some oldschool game on it and get a nice case with a side plexi + LED stripes and modding the case a bit

Later plans: got 386 mobo + PII mobo 300mhz cpu ram voodoo3 card awe32 sb sound card ---> dos game machine project

Lwgacy Radeon drivers areavailablr on www.amd.com.

I would assume www.nvidia.com also has geforce 2 mx drivers.

appiah4 wrote:

Doggy wrote:

Well I got some MoBos: FIC v31 Socket 478 HP (Asus) P4SD-LA Socket 478 MSI MS-6712 ver 1.0 kt4v socket 462/A Does anyone have d […]
Show full quote

Well I got some MoBos:
FIC v31 Socket 478
HP (Asus) P4SD-LA Socket 478
MSI MS-6712 ver 1.0 kt4v socket 462/A
Does anyone have drivers for these MOBOS and for these 2 video cards ?

and 2 video cards for this era:
Geforce 2 Mx200 V7100 Magic AGP 32MB
Radeon 7500 RV2l-b3-64MB

So I was looking for some drivers xp32 or w98 with less succesful only for MSI found drivers.
I have GoTek floppy emulator and did order SD to IDE adaptor too.
I have rams and dvd cd drives as well so I got everything to hook up this computer.
My plan is that build a quiet PC with WINXP or WIN98 and play some oldschool game on it and get a nice case with a side plexi + LED stripes and modding the case a bit

Later plans: got 386 mobo + PII mobo 300mhz cpu ram voodoo3 card awe32 sb sound card ---> dos game machine project

Lwgacy Radeon drivers areavailablr on http://www.amd.com.

I would assume http://www.nvidia.com also has geforce 2 mx drivers.

Thanks !

Got my Tualatin Celeron system up and running properly. I was beginning to fear that it couldn't handle the PCI GeForce FX 5500 I had (PC is a small form factor AT-like system, with external PSU), but it turned out to be simply a combination of incompatible Graphics drivers coupled with a troublesome modern 16:9 Monitor. I rolled the drivers back to as early as I could go and switched to an old 4:3 monitor - all working great now. Still some room for extra tweaking, will experiment with different drivers etc.

Acquired another PC for my collection. Rather abysmal spec, but I got it free so can't complain:
Gigabyte GA-7IXE4, Socket A Motherboard
AMD Duron 800MHz
64MB SDRAM
ATI Rage XL AGP Graphics Card
Sound Blaster 128 PCI CT4810 Sound Card

No HDD installed at present and I may not bother for the time being, mostly just keeping this around for spare parts. The motherboard can apparently take up to an Athlon XP 3200+, but as I already have several Athlon XP systems in storage plus another 2 Socket A Durons, no point upgrading this really. I'm not actively collecting these Socket A systems, people just seem to want to give them away to me for free, can't blame them really. 🤣

Finally, a bit off-topic, a non-PC retro activity I got up to: checking to see if my old Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2A was working. Keyboard needed dismantling and cleaning, so I did that and it's now working fine. But the tape recorder needs a new belt, so I've got to wait until that arrives in the post. Couldn't load anything onto it without the tape, as the sole audio port on the system is audio OUT and I don't really want to modify the board to fix this. 😢

Took a razor to these unsightly black feet things. I'd rather have those scratches but I touched them up a bit by sanding it.

I've never played any of these, and picked them up cheaply 😀

So I've been playing these over past few days on my PII whilst I decide what S370 board to purchase! UT is great fun.