VOGONS


First post, by lavadrop

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Hi.

I just got my hands on a 486 MOBO from eBay. 50ish bucks from a guy in Ukraine, apparently they are a good source of old electronics. Anyway, this is the MOBO:

GMB-486UNP Socket3 motherboard + Intel 486 25 Mhz + 4 RAM + 256 cache VESA ISA

Now, on another auction site I found a Texas Instruments 486DX2 66 Mhz for 10 USD including shipping.

Here's the thing: the manual states the board supports up to 256k cache (which comes with the board), and in 2 configurations: 25ns for 25 Mhz processor and 20ns for 33-50Mhz. It never says anything about 66 Mhz for cache, but it mentions support up to 66 Mhz processors. The seller doesn't know what speed they are. The pictures from the auction show the following numbers on the cache chips: UM61256CK-20 9348S N91474. I can't find any info on those chips.

Could there be issues if I have the wrong type of cache/processor?
Do you think that the serial number is describing a kit of UM61, 256Kb, 20ns chips?
The manual never mentions TI processors, are they incompatible?

Reply 1 of 7, by PhilsComputerLab

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The 66 MHz processor is a clock doubled chip. Runs internally at 66, but externally at 33. So the board will run at 33 MHz.

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Reply 3 of 7, by clueless1

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lavadrop wrote:

Thanks Phil, you're always on point.

Do you think 8 Mb RAM should be enough for 1990-1993 games?

8MB is absolutely enough. Back in the day when 486/66 systems were sold, 8MB was considered a premium configuration. 😀

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OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
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Reply 4 of 7, by PhilsComputerLab

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Yup, I always use 8 MB. That works well for the things I do, which is run DOS. For Windows you might want to get more RAM 😀

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Reply 5 of 7, by tayyare

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The chips are 20ms. "-20" means it's speed is 20ms.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
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Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
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Reply 7 of 7, by tayyare

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:
tayyare wrote:

The chips are 20ms. "-20" means it's speed is 20ms.

ns (nanoseconds) 😊

Exactly! Thanks for the correction. 😊

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000