Thraka wrote:

Should you just stick with VLB on Socket 3? Or can you go PCI? I honestly had never seen one with PCI until recently and need to get a new 486 board because mine died.

PCI and PS/2 might be worth it. But you might need to pay a bit more.

I think it comes down to personal preference.
Some people prefer VLB as this architecture was designed with your 486 in mind.
However, you might find that VLB expansion cards (HDD controller & especially "good" graphics cards) are a bit more expensive and hard to come by these days than your PCI cards.

I've have both VLB & PCI 486 motherboards that have PS/2 connectors but, finding the former could prove to be challenging.
PCI motherboards normally has their controllers built into the motherboard, whereas with VLB motherboards, you require an expansion card (I'm now referring to your generic motherboards).
If you're lucky, you might find a combo motherboard that has at least 1 VLB slot and PCI slots.
You also might be able to take advantage of the PCI slots if you have a 3D graphics card.

Well PCI parts are easier to source

Some late 486 boards have great PCI implementations.

I'd agree with PCI for simplicity; there's a lot of options for PCI cards, and many of them are pretty cheap.

Sometimes, if you are lucky enough, you don't need to choose. 🤣

Pictured here is FIC-VIP-IO:

For me, 486 (66 and higher) is "VLB".

If you want a 3d accelerator, or easier source of parts, or "simplicity", just go socket 5-7 Pentium vanilla (or MMX).

On the other hand, I've sucessfully sold all my AT stuff, including ~10 complete towers/desktops and ~20 AT sets.
I fit them all into the "too much trouble" category. No PS2/USB/coin cell battery on most 486s, brackets everywhere etc etc.
One can substitute 386-486 speeds by playing with caches/bus speeds on a decent ATX (super) socket7 board.

@Thraka: When you say "worth it", what prices are we talking about. Some of the prices of the better Socket 3 boards out there are quite ridiculous. And by better, I mean with PS2 mouse headers that work. Non coin-cell batteries can be worked around.

So far, every Socket 3 build I have, I end up strapping a POD83/ Cyrix 586/ AMD 586 onto it, then ask my self why I don't use a Socket 7 build instead and slow it down?

So I went with a Pentium 3 machine for all my accelerated game stuff. Runs win 98 really well, I can do just about any Windows game that doesn't really work on a modern computer. A lot of DOS stuff works fine also. However, I wanted to do a 486 build for completeness. Any problematic game would just be shoved and played on that.

I only have 1 VLB video card and quite a few PCI ones. It seems most the PCI boards have disk controllers so I don't have to worry about that.

I guess if I can find a good deal on one, go PCI.

Yes. VLB is a bit of a pain and hard to get. And you have less options.
PCI can be quite good on socket 3 if you get a good board.

smeezekitty wrote:

Yes. VLB is a bit of a pain and hard to get. And you have less options.
PCI can be quite good on socket 3 if you get a good board.

In your opinion, what would you say are good PCI based socket 3 boards?
Which combo (VLB & PCI) socket 3 boards are the good ones? From what I've read, on some combo boards the PCI bus wasn't always implemented correctly (in terms of the bridging between the PCI bus and the VLB).

If you only want a 486 to be able to play DOS games, get a socket 7 system instead. AMD K5/K6 can be slowed down quite significantly by disabling the caches. Much less trouble.

If you want a 486 for the sake of having a 486, go for it. PCI is less painful, VLB is cooler, IMO.

jesolo wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

Yes. VLB is a bit of a pain and hard to get. And you have less options.
PCI can be quite good on socket 3 if you get a good board.

In your opinion, what would you say are good PCI based socket 3 boards?
Which combo (VLB & PCI) socket 3 boards are the good ones? From what I've read, on some combo boards the PCI bus wasn't always implemented correctly (in terms of the bridging between the PCI bus and the VLB).

The board I use is a Acer AP43. It doesn't have VLB though. Just PCI and ISA.

I use an S3 ViRGE (but other PCI cards work okay) and a PCI USB 2.0 controller. I also use an ISA ethernet card and ISA sound card.
No significant problems.

Anyone has a picture of the ps2 Bracket coming with the FIC-VIP-IO?

I patiently waited a year (or more...) to find a socket 3 486 with ISA and PCI slots.
Finally got it, a 486/DX66. With ram
Why? Because of the Voodoo 2 3D accelerator card I have. (yeah, I know I could just stick a PCI 2D/3D SVGA card in it).

I was going to put it in my lunchbox case, but I couldn't find a video card that would work with the built-in display.

I wish I could find a desktop AT case for it.
I'm also tempted to get a broken Compaq Portable off of Ebay and retrofit it into that as a case.

Aren't those trash PCChips 486 boards with PCI super common?

I think PCI Socket 3 486 motherboards might cost more then a generic VLB but the add on cards are cheaper (video and network built in I/O and IDE).

If you just want a 486 board then get whatever you can buy cheap.

You have to be a hardware nut (like me) to buy 486 boards in ISA only, ISA+VLB, ISA+PCI, ISA+EISA, MCA. Most of mine are VLB because I like collecting the cards but the other ones are cool too.

its an old topic but i would surely go with pci, so i can stuff in some extremely fast 3d cards like riva128 and even geforce2mx, and run some crazy games and applications:
quake3
need for speed 3/4
3dmark99
3dsmax
etc.

Socket 3 boards with PCI work just fine.

I have a PCI 486 with am AMD 486-133 processor (Model name 5x86-133-P75 I think)

Just make sure you stick with an ISA based sound card. There doesn't seem to be any proper DOS sound card emulation support on these very early PCI chipsets.

I also have a VLB based 486 with a DX-66 processor on it. But VLB cards are expensive and/or difficult to find, so the opportunities on this board are so much more limited.