I see your location is Virginia also... 🤣 🤣

Were you the guy selling the boxed NEC MultiSpeed a few months ago on eBay? 🤣

Yeah, apparently there's a few of us around 😀 I used to collect lots of old odd non-x86 gear, still have some of it.

I was not the seller, though, alas. I don't think I've sold anything on eBay since a batch of SGIs, Suns and Macs about five years ago.

I love it when a plan comes together. 😉

Best roommate EVER! Cheers, man. Keep us posted on your builds. And welcome to the forums 😀

Welcome aboard! 😁

You sure picked the right stuff jade_angel, I found the GA-5AX a pleasure to work with!
I wish I had gotten more of these back when they were still cheap.
The 512MB memory should work pretty much fine using your K6+ CPU, but imo 256MB should suffice.

I can't say much specific about your s3 rig, except maybe to ask you if your 16MB FPM are the ones with 8 chips (or maybe 9 if parity modules) or just 2 small thinner chips. I used 4x16MB FPM with 2 chips each FPM module and looking back these might actually have caused stability issues with my own DX4-100 build (never got around to actually swap modules and see if stability improved because of this).
There were also many SIMMs using fewer very large fat memory chips but whatever.

Perhaps 2x16MB FPM will suffice for your rig. Having too much memory might cause extra problems by themselves without giving you any real benefit.

How much cache does your 486 board have?

And you don't happen to be related to jade falcon by any chance? 😜

clueless1 wrote:

Best roommate EVER!

^This 🤣!

I like the 486 set more so.

P.S I hope no one gets us mixed up. Are names are not the far apart.

Jade Falcon wrote:

I like the 486 set more so.

P.S I hope no one gets us mixed up. Are names are not the far apart.

Ahh I see you also already figured out how to add a custom avatar! Looks kinda familiar though, no idea why 😁

Tetrium wrote:

Welcome aboard! :D […]
Show full quote

Welcome aboard! 😁

You sure picked the right stuff jade_angel, I found the GA-5AX a pleasure to work with!
I wish I had gotten more of these back when they were still cheap.
The 512MB memory should work pretty much fine using your K6+ CPU, but imo 256MB should suffice.

I can't say much specific about your s3 rig, except maybe to ask you if your 16MB FPM are the ones with 8 chips (or maybe 9 if parity modules) or just 2 small thinner chips. I used 4x16MB FPM with 2 chips each FPM module and looking back these might actually have caused stability issues with my own DX4-100 build (never got around to actually swap modules and see if stability improved because of this).
There were also many SIMMs using fewer very large fat memory chips but whatever.

Perhaps 2x16MB FPM will suffice for your rig. Having too much memory might cause extra problems by themselves without giving you any real benefit.

How much cache does your 486 board have?

And you don't happen to be related to jade falcon by any chance? 😜

clueless1 wrote:

Best roommate EVER!

^This 🤣!

Thanks! No relation to Jade Falcon, no, and I hope the similarity won't cause undue confusion.

The 486 board has a full complement of cache chips, but I haven't gotten to fire it up yet beyond verifying that it POST-beeps (it does, with the 5x86 on it). I think it's 256k, but it might only be 128. Maybe I can google the actual SRAM chips. The RAM modules are 9-chip parity modules, and the manual says that the board needs parity RAM, so hopefully these work. If they don't, I have a line on some others I can try.

I'm certainly gonna bang on the memory extensively before doing anything heavyweight, but my thinking is this: unless there's some actual downside to having too much (and I know there can be, between cache issues, electrical loading, timings and the occasional game that freaks if it sees too much RAM, etc), go for the moon if you can afford it.

If it's stable, I wanna try bumping the FSB on the Socket 3 rig up to 40MHz - apparently the 5x86 at 160MHz is nearly the most skookum Socket 3 chip available that doesn't require tons of fiddling.

You definitely did well People dream of getting a 486 VLB based system for a 1/2 decent price and you just get given one, nice!
And the SS7 is good all rounder

For the most part maxing out the ram wont cause any major problems, You'll just take a slight performance hit going beyond the cacheable limit.
Even still I max out all my PC's. I get that warm happy feeling knowing that its maxed out the hardware then benchmark results.

Look forward to seeing the systems up and running

jade_angel wrote:

Thanks! No relation to Jade Falcon, no, and I hope the similarity won't cause undue confusion.

If we keep different avatars I don't think there would be any problems. Your English is a lot better then mine witch will stand out on its own.

2 very nice systems, well done.

Just missing a VERY critical component in the super socket 7. It begins with a 3 and it ends with dfx 🤣

You don't even need to use it, it just needs to there. 😎

meljor wrote:

2 very nice systems, well done.

Just missing a VERY critical component in the super socket 7. It begins with a 3 and it ends with dfx 🤣

You don't even need to use it, it just needs to there. 😎

Oh, if I could just find a Voodoo-anything for a price I'm willing to pay... The Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo3 are kind of annoying in that they don't support 24-bit color, though. I suppose I still have enough PCI slots left to use a Voodoo2 with that G400. Of course I've still gotta find one.

Actually, what I'd like to put in it is a Quadro2 Pro plus a Voodoo2 for glide games, but I can't seem to find a Quadro2 Pro (or even a GeForce2 GTS) for a reasonable price, either.

its 32bit they don't support and I don't see it being a big deal. Not like most monitors can even display 16bit color

EDIT:
They sort up support 24bit, but its really 22bit.

Jade Falcon wrote:

its 32bit they don't support and I don't see it being a big deal. Not like most monitors can even display 16bit color

EDIT:
They sort up support 24bit, but its really 22bit.

Good point, and for gaming, going to 32-bit color is a big hit unless you had one of the more skookum GPUs of the day, so maybe no big loss. (OTOH, the Quadro2 Pro can probably handle 32-bit well.)

Well, heck, I can't rule out a Voodoo3 if I can find one for a reasonable price. I used to have two - an AGP one and a PCI, and I have no idea what ever happened to them. If only I'd had the space to keep all that stuff back in the day 🙁

Well, update part the first: bogotissimo. The first AWE64 let out the magic smoke. I may be able to replace the blown caps. The second is fine, though. I really want an AWE64 in the SS7 machine, so I think I'll be sticking a Yamaha Audician32 in the 486. Gives me an excuse to check out the cool Dreamblaster boards, though. I'm not sure if I can justify the price premium for the X2 over the S1, but dang does it sound sweet, so it sure is tempting.

However, everything else seems to work so far, and amazingly, the RTC battery on the 486 board isn't dead. I have a new one ordered anyway, just to make double-sure, but that surprised me. Got the video up, the only issue before was a little corrosion on one pin that was easily removed. The 486 board has 256k of cache, which is the max listed in the manual, and it recognizes all 64MB of RAM without a problem. As soon as my GOTEK floopy drives get here, I'll memtest86+ it.

The K6, OTOH, is still waiting for a case and PSU to show up 😒

What happened to your first AWE64?

I powered up the machine, heard a bang, but it didn't shut down. When I hunted for the blown cap, I found it, on the sound card. Not sure why that kablooied, there was nothing plugged into it. I did stick the K6 board's guts into the case, though, so that I could test out the second AWE64, and a Linux boot CD was able to find it and play some .oggs through it, so that card definitely at least works as an SB16. But, I'm waiting for the Yamaha to get here (tomorrow, I hope), and the second AWE is staying with the K6.