brostenen wrote:

What would be a good 486 motherboard to look for? […]
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What would be a good 486 motherboard to look for?

Need to be able to run from sx-25 to dx2-66 and amd dx2-80.
Need to have PCI and ISA. No VLB.
Need to have coin cell battery.
Need to have good chipset.
Possible Ps/2 header, not required.
Possible onboard controller, not required.

Anything else? Looking for a unicorn? 😊

Add boards with RTC to the list, they also don't leak. I think they all have onboard IO, PS/2 will be hard though.

If you have the time you can find a bargain, but going prices can be quite steep, starting at around $200 it seems...

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

If you have the time you can find a bargain, but going prices can be quite steep, starting at around $200 it seems...

Do you know why? Who's buying them at those prices? Someone must be, otherwise the boards wouldn't sell and the prices would be lowered. Either that, or eBay sellers are among the stupidest people alive (that's actually not a bad hypothesis imo...).

200 dollars are indeed a rip off.
I am not looking for a board to buy though.
What I am looking for is to make a trade.
So I need to know names of good 486 boards.
Shure I know about good stuff from the Slot1/SS7 era.
I have just little to none knowledge on the 486 era.
Don't want to get ripped off by an extremely bad trade.

I could name boards I have that are listed at 150 dollars
on eBay in this tread, though I feel this will be the same
as setting up an salesadd/tradeadd here on Vogons.

So I am purely seeking help to get info on 486 boards.

I don't know much about PCI boards, but they shouldn't cost much more than good VLB ones I should think, like $60. Check eBay.de for some better deals in Europe.

keenmaster486 wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

If you have the time you can find a bargain, but going prices can be quite steep, starting at around $200 it seems...

Do you know why? Who's buying them at those prices? Someone must be, otherwise the boards wouldn't sell and the prices would be lowered. Either that, or eBay sellers are among the stupidest people alive (that's actually not a bad hypothesis imo...).

Tech millionaires and other people who don't care that much about money but want things quick and easy?

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Anything else? Looking for a unicorn? :blush: […]
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brostenen wrote:

What would be a good 486 motherboard to look for? […]
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What would be a good 486 motherboard to look for?

Need to be able to run from sx-25 to dx2-66 and amd dx2-80.
Need to have PCI and ISA. No VLB.
Need to have coin cell battery.
Need to have good chipset.
Possible Ps/2 header, not required.
Possible onboard controller, not required.

Anything else? Looking for a unicorn? 😊

Add boards with RTC to the list, they also don't leak. I think they all have onboard IO, PS/2 will be hard though.

If you have the time you can find a bargain, but going prices can be quite steep, starting at around $200 it seems...

I don't think so... good boards might go up to 100€

brostenen wrote:

I just thought that it was a reasonable trade.

Just seen you offered him a Pentium board... Any Pentium board for good 486 board is not reasonable trade at all in my book 😉

Zida 4DPS has all the features you want (not sure how "good" is the chipset, its made by SiS).

kixs wrote:

brostenen wrote:

I just thought that it was a reasonable trade.

Just seen you offered him a Pentium board... Any Pentium board for good 486 board is not reasonable trade at all in my book 😉

FIC PA-2013?! It's a SS7, going for the same or more as his board on eBay. Both overpriced on eBay. Though they should both carry the same value. He even refused a complete build with an K6-II-500, using that specific board. I think that's actually more than fair.

adalbert wrote:

Zida 4DPS has all the features you want (not sure how "good" is the chipset, its made by SiS).

Thanks. As long as it's a decent chipset. Looking for a good chipset. Just not the worst or the best.

brostenen wrote:

kixs wrote:

brostenen wrote:

I just thought that it was a reasonable trade.

Just seen you offered him a Pentium board... Any Pentium board for good 486 board is not reasonable trade at all in my book 😉

FIC PA-2013?! It's a SS7, going for the same or more as his board on eBay. Both overpriced on eBay. Though they should both carry the same value. He even refused a complete build with an K6-II-500, using that specific board. I think that's actually more than fair.

I said "in my book". I just don't value Pentium that much... But that's just me 😉

The MS-4144 is a really nice board and a bit rarer than an FIC PA-2013. The MS-4144, with some minor modification, can even be outfitted with a ps/2 mouse. For me, the MS-4144 has a collection value of 4x that of the PA-2013. With how things are going, $150 USD isn't all that crazy. I have both boards.

kixs wrote:

I said "in my book". I just don't value Pentium that much... But that's just me 😉

Ahhh.... I was a bit too hasty in my reply. We are all different. 😀 The reason for me comparing values, are looking at eBay.
Selling an item, I look at eBay and slash off 70 to 75% of the price on single items (not bundles or complete systems).
So I can only really use eBay for looking at how close values match, whenever I do a trade.

I have a Lucky Star LS-486E (there were different revisions), but apart from not having a PS/2 header (many 486 motherboards didn't), it meets all your requirements.
It is one of the 486 PCI motherboards that has given me the least hassles (I use mine mainly for testing purposes).
Supports practically all Socket 3 based CPU's (including AMD 5x86 & Cyrix 5x86) and utilizes the SIS 496/497 chipset.

The last time I checked, they weren't that expensive.

brostenen wrote:

Ahhh.... I was a bit too hasty in my reply. We are all different. :-) The reason for me comparing values, are looking at eBay. S […]
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kixs wrote:

I said "in my book". I just don't value Pentium that much... But that's just me 😉

Ahhh.... I was a bit too hasty in my reply. We are all different. 😀 The reason for me comparing values, are looking at eBay.
Selling an item, I look at eBay and slash off 70 to 75% of the price on single items (not bundles or complete systems).
So I can only really use eBay for looking at how close values match, whenever I do a trade.

When looking on eBay check sold items. Sometimes BIN prices are wishful thinking.

feipoa wrote:

The MS-4144 is a really nice board and a bit rarer than an FIC PA-2013. The MS-4144, with some minor modification, can even be outfitted with a ps/2 mouse. For me, the MS-4144 has a collection value of 4x that of the PA-2013. With how things are going, $150 USD isn't all that crazy. I have both boards.

Did not know that they were that expensive. Oh well.... I did indeed offer him a complete build for that board.
Something in the range of this:

Fic PA-2013
128mb Ram
K6-II-500
TNT2-Pro
AWE64 Standard
80gb HDD

I am not really looking for that specific 486 board, only something a bit in the mid range.
If it can only do 5volt CPU's then it's ok too. Those Tomatoboards seem like ok enough boards.

How do these tomatoboards perform with something like an dx2-66?
And what cpu are the fastest, that these boards can handle?
The reason for asking on these boards, are that they seem to have good reputation here on Vogons.
Or is it me, who have completely missed out on something?

jesolo wrote:

I have a Lucky Star LS-486E

Check... Thanks. 😀

jesolo wrote:

the least hassles

Noted.... Thanks. 😀

The Tomato 4DPS board has issues running with an Am5x86 at 160 MHz when using the tightest cache timings and 512 KB cache. If that combination of CPU and speed is not important to you, then I think the 4DPS will be just fine. Last I checked, they were still selling for around $50. Beware that many of them have either a bad diskette controller or a serial controller. That has been my experience anyway. The 4DPS more than others for whatever reason.

jesolo wrote:

I have a Lucky Star LS-486E (there were different revisions), but apart from not having a PS/2 header (many 486 motherboards did […]
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I have a Lucky Star LS-486E (there were different revisions), but apart from not having a PS/2 header (many 486 motherboards didn't), it meets all your requirements.
It is one of the 486 PCI motherboards that has given me the least hassles (I use mine mainly for testing purposes).
Supports practically all Socket 3 based CPU's (including AMD 5x86 & Cyrix 5x86) and utilizes the SIS 496/497 chipset.

The last time I checked, they weren't that expensive.

^This. I have a couple of these Lucky Star LS-486E and they are awesome. They support FSB from 25 to 66, voltages of 3.45, 4 and 5v, and are compatible with all socket 3 CPUs and overclock great. Pretty fast too. PCI, ISA, EDO, up to 512kb of cache, coin cell battery, etc - the only downside is lack of PS/2, but serial mice work fine for 486 games. I highly recommend this board.

There's also the Shuttle HOT 433. Some revisions come with a coin cell battery, but regardless of revision you can solder one on the board in the pre-defined area and you're good to go. They don't OC very well, and the AMI bios can be tricky to set up, but if you don't plan on fiddling with it too much it's a decent board. I've heard rumors some revisions have a PS/2 header as well.

We also have the Biostar MB-8433UUD - great performer, has PS/2 (but it's wonky on early boards), PCI, ISA , up to 1MB of cache, FSB 25 to 66, supports all CPUs, it's fast (PCI performance is a little slower then the Lucky Star LS-486E in my experience) - but it uses a Dallas RTC. Some boards have a coin-cell holder silkscreened onto the board under the AT connector. One can solder a vertical RTC battery holder there.

Lastly, there's the late revision FIC 486-VIP-IO2 (1996, greenish PCB). It has PS2, PCI, VLB, ISA, Coin cell battery and 586 support. Good speed, noticeably faster then older FIC boards. Average memory performance (40-70mb/sec in speedsys). PCI performance is on par with VLB so it's a decent PCI board, but if you want pure PCI speed, look for a FIC 486-PIO2 or early 486-PIO3 boards. These have PCI, ISA, PS/2, RTC coin cell holder, are compatible with 586 CPUs. The only downside here is the PIO3 board has only two SIMM slots, and the PIO2 has pretty poor memory performance for a late 486 board.

feipoa wrote:

The Tomato 4DPS board has issues running with an Am5x86 at 160 MHz when using the tightest cache timings and 512 KB cache. If that combination of CPU and speed is not important to you, then I think the 4DPS will be just fine. Last I checked, they were still selling for around $50. Beware that many of them have either a bad diskette controller or a serial controller. That has been my experience anyway. The 4DPS more than others for whatever reason.

Now that you mention it, I had a 4DPS back in 1995-96 with an AMD DX4, and when copying files to floppy disks the data would get randomly corrupted. It was OK for reading operations, but writing to floppy was highly unreliable. It was a decent performer though.