I also understand that VLB doesn't work with a 386, VLB basically *is* the 486 bus exposed on a slot. (That's the main reason why you can't have many VESA slots running, no decoupling from the CPU. VLB on Pentium mainbords is basically emulated.)
VESA cards have all ISA pins, as far as I understand they should work as ISA cards in such a board when a 386 is installed. (ISA cards will work in VESA slots.)
As for memory: Although some boards may support insane amounts of RAM, if you go higher than 16MB and want to have VESA linear frame buffer (which is good for performance in SVGA modes) you'd have to enable the "15-16MB memory hole" in BIOS setup. I don't know if all operating systems agree with this. I'd probably use no more than 16MB in that case.

schlang wrote:

Ya ya ya SCSI been there.... I have an EIDEMAX controller in my 386 so gladly I can put in any IDE drive I want 😜

Yeah. But it will not be SCSI... 😈

this is why it will work so smooth 😁

HighTreason wrote:

I love SCSI but it is rare and expensive in the UK. Finding drives that aren't inches from death is difficult and finding them at a reasonable price is nigh on impossible.

You can find 20 USD 73GB NOS ones in US, but probably shipping price will be high.

In UK, used ones (73 - 146GB) are all around 13-15 GBP (I think this is reasonable but, well, it's me). I have more than 10 SCSI HDDs in use, all grabbed as used (from old servers), and none of them failed me to date.

schlang wrote:

this is why it will work so smooth 😁

Smooth means they would not have the mesmerizing start up click / spin up whine. Bad. 🤣

The most powerful 386SX would be the am386SX 40 I guess. 486SLC, 486DLC and so on are no longer true 386s IMO. The IBM 386SLC is likely the most powerful 386SX derivative. I have an IBM PS/ValuePoint 325T with the 386SLC in it.

The most powerful 386DX is probably the am386DX-40. 486SLC, 486DLC are not really 386s any longer IMO.

On really old systems is where SCSI shines. It may be noisy and the drives more expensive, but removing the overhead of having to deal with the drives from the CPU to a discrete controller can make a big difference in performance.

Performance where exactly?

schlang wrote:

Performance where exactly?

CPU and hard drive, naturally. Duh.

For me an AMD Am386DX-40 is the processor to go for. Graphics card, I found cards with WD and Tseng ET4000 the fastest. Cirrus Logic not far behind. For storage I'm using CF cards, a fairly modernish CD-RW drive and GOTEK floppy emulator. You can use DDO software for larger partitions (32 GB CF card for example), but I prefer to stick with 2 GB partition and MS-DOS 6.22. It feels more "right".

By the way, for the most upgraded 386 I would also buy a DIP oscillator connector, to solder instead of the original 80MHz oscillator:

A set of oscillators ranging from 80MHz to 120MHz would give a huge overclocking capability (40MHz to 60MHz FSB).

At what point is a 386 no longer a true 386 but a nerfed 486? Internal cache? 486 instructions? Working VLB support? Integrated math coprocessor? The 386DX40 is the purist's choice, 128-256KB of external cache, perhaps a math coprocessor, 8MB of RAM, a 1MB ISA video card and a SCSI disk system was probably about as powerful as anyone ever got.

sliderider wrote:

schlang wrote:

Performance where exactly?

CPU and hard drive, naturally. Duh.

blabla, explain a real world example where this actually matters

When Windows uses swap file. It matters in multitasking environments - not really a Windows 3.11 specialty but it does.

schlang wrote:

sliderider wrote:

schlang wrote:

Performance where exactly?

CPU and hard drive, naturally. Duh.

blabla, explain a real world example where this actually matters

Explain a real world example where a powerful/high performance 386 actually matters in 21st century.

SCSI was and is faster/more reliable than any ISA EIDE controller/IDE Drive combination, period.

Plus SCSI drives are heavier and make more noise which makes them "manly".

Plus the word "SCSI" sounds much nice to ears of anybody. You hear? "eideee": lame, "scuzzy" : cool!

Who cares a bout "real life examples"? What the f. is "real life", anyway?.. 🤣

VLB does work on a pure 386 CPU. I had a board based on OPTI495SX that did it. However, it wasn't a whole lot faster than ISA, and only certain cards would function with it (ATi Mach64 was one of them). I have also seen Trident, Cirrus Logic and Tseng cards that have jumpers for 386/486 mode. Hell, I've even seen a 386SX board with VLB slots (used an ALD chipset), and Alaris made 16-bit 486SLC motherboards with VLB slots too....I think that was using an OPTi 295 chipset. What it all comes down to is how much effort was made by the chipset vendor and board designer to get it working.

SCSI doesn't matter for games though does it? I found a big difference in load times between my future domain enhanced IDE controller and a generic controller, that's why I don't see the value in SCSI because I have a good controller might be a different story if you don't have a good controller as their are plenty of SCSI cards for sale on ebay.

tayyare wrote:

HighTreason wrote:

I love SCSI but it is rare and expensive in the UK. Finding drives that aren't inches from death is difficult and finding them at a reasonable price is nigh on impossible.

You can find 20 USD 73GB NOS ones in US, but probably shipping price will be high.

In UK, used ones (73 - 146GB) are all around 13-15 GBP (I think this is reasonable but, well, it's me). I have more than 10 SCSI HDDs in use, all grabbed as used (from old servers), and none of them failed me to date.

I have never, ever seen this when buying them. The cheapest I managed was a few years ago when I grabbed some ~10GB WD's for £25 each, but none of them worked. Right now I need a SCSI CD drive, which is also proving difficult. Cabling is a pain too, especially terminators. Don't even get me started on finding VHDCI gear here either. Newer server gear is even harder here, I think we only just found out the Xeon E3/5/7 exists. I called a place to enquire about a Xeon E3 and the guy said "Uh? What's that? You mean E5600 right? We got some coming in soon." he also didn't know what I meant when I asked about SuperMicro, he said they had "Super MicroStar MSI" boards if I wanted those, as it's apparently "The best, mate!", but added "Those are for the Core i7, not the Xeon." and then started getting ratty as he denied Intel had ever made an E3v2, let alone any previous versions "You mean the L3000 or W3000, I keep telling you, we have those, there isn't an E3000. Where you work at?" he seemed to think I was some kind of technician who didn't know what he was doing. Another distributer had to tap his keyboard for a long time and would sell me a CPU (Original 1270) at a bargain price of £799 excluding VAT. but would have to order it in from Germany, he was cool as he swore at it and said I'd be better to wait a few weeks and get a v3 online (As they weren't out yet, they were about a week from launch) to which I said that was my plan at that stage... Needless to say I just ordered from the US in the end, though after a long delay.

As for the 386, one thing I have consistently seen is 128K L2 perform better than 256K. Many boards also freak out and lose their floppy drive with 256K installed. I really want to play with an Intel RapidCAD as I have never used one (at least, knowingly).

Great Hierophant wrote:

At what point is a 386 no longer a true 386 but a nerfed 486? Internal cache? 486 instructions? Working VLB support? Integrated math coprocessor? The 386DX40 is the purist's choice, 128-256KB of external cache, perhaps a math coprocessor, 8MB of RAM, a 1MB ISA video card and a SCSI disk system was probably about as powerful as anyone ever got.

I second that. When you start to plug CPU's with level 1 cache on a 386 motherboard, you start moving into 486 territory. The same could be said for VLB slots.
Not saying there is anything wrong with it (since many people were back in the day trying to squeeze the maximum performance out of their existing hardware) but, from a purist point of view, a CPU with level 1 cache is not a 386 CPU (regardless whether the CPU can be plugged onto a 386 motherboard).
If you are going to plug a Cyrix 486SLC/DLC CPU on your 386 motherboard, then you can just as well go for a 486DX-25 or 486DX-33.

jesolo wrote:

If you are going to plug a Cyrix 486SLC/DLC CPU on your 386 motherboard, then you can just as well go for a 486DX-25 or 486DX-33.

I don't think it is that clean a cut. At least SLC/DLC will make your PC an exotic/interesting 386 variation, but a 486DX-25 or 33 will just be common (boring?) 486 and nothing much.