VOGONS


First post, by Pabloz

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If you had to make a list of the TOP10 486 motherboards
from #1 as the best to #10
which ones would you choose?

would you choose the pcchips m919 even tho it has fake cache?
would you choose the ASUS PCI/I-486SV2 ?

Reply 1 of 15, by Anonymous Coward

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For PCI boards, I would think the Asus PVI-486SP3, the Biostar MB-8433UUD and Chaintech 486SPM should all be on the list.
There are lots of good VLB boards. The Asus Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4, Aopen VI15G and possibly ECS Elitegroup UM4980.
For EISA boards. I would say the AIR 486EI, Nice SuperEISA and AMI Enterprise III and IV.

PC chips would not be anywhere on my list.

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V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 2 of 15, by feipoa

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I have a list, as I'm sure many do; however, to publish such a list would drive up prices and make them harder for me to find.

I can say that the PC Chips M919 is not on that list. It does have some collection value in that it is the only socket 3 system which had a proprietary COAST module and had traces which went nowhere for fake cache. It wouldn't be such a crappy board if they didn't use an automatic 2/3 PCI multiplier for FSBs 40 MHz and greater. There is a switch work-around for this, but I still found the board unreliable.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 3 of 15, by feipoa

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Anonymous Coward wrote:
For PCI boards, I would think the Asus PVI-486SP3, the Biostar MB-8433UUD and Chaintech 486SPM should all be on the list. There […]
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For PCI boards, I would think the Asus PVI-486SP3, the Biostar MB-8433UUD and Chaintech 486SPM should all be on the list.
There are lots of good VLB boards. The Asus Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4, Aopen VI15G and possibly ECS Elitegroup UM4980.
For EISA boards. I would say the AIR 486EI, Nice SuperEISA and AMI Enterprise III and IV.

PC chips would not be anywhere on my list.

Asus PVI-486SP3 uses VLB-PCI bridge and has been shown to have rather crummy VGA performance. Reference, Performance comparison of 486 motherboards with VLB-only, PCI-only, and PCI+VLB

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 4 of 15, by FGB

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feipoa wrote:

[...] to publish such a list would drive up prices and make them harder for me to find.

Your mimimi is kinda selfish... maybe you're overestimating your influence on global prices a bit 😉 ?

Well, out of a ton of boards I tested during the years, here is my list:

1. VLB / ISA : ASUS VL/I-486SVG2GX4 (PS/2 mouse header, great PCB layout)
2. VLB / ISA: Shuttle HOT-419 R3 (fast OPTi 895 chipset, excellent stability, not the best board layout for long ISA cards though)
3. PCI / ISA: Biostar MB-8433UUD (PS/2 mouse header, fast UMC8881/8886 chipset)
4. PCI / VLB / ISA: Gigabyte GA-486IM (fastest VIP board)
5. PCI / ISA: ZIDA 4DPS (PS/2 mouse header, small form factor, smart PCB layout)
6. PCI / ISA: Abit PB4 (superb speed for 320x200 DOS games, smart PCB layout)
7. PCI / VLB / ISA: ASUS PVI-486SP3 (PS/2 mouse header, not the fastest VIP board though)
8. PCI / ISA: MSI MS4144 (great board layout, 8 fullsize cache sockets)
9. ISA: Elitegroup UM486 (a the classic one, ISA only, LIF socket for 5V SX / DX type CPUs only)
10. EISA: ASUS EISA-486A (for a good reference EISA/ISA board)

There are much more capable boards that may deserve a place in my list, but of course such list also reflects personal preference. Do you like to built a classic 486 VLB system with a VLB video card or do you want to go with those late 5x86 CPUs as available from AMD and Cyrix and pair them with PCI cards? Not in my list but worth to present are the Gigabyte GA-486AM/S, a nice PCI / ISA board and the Gigabyte GA-5486AL PCI / ISA board. The ECS UM8810PAIO is also a good board but a bit of a jumper nightmare. There is also a nice 486 ISA-only board from TMC, the PAT48PM with its onboard 486SX25 CPU. There are many more good boards, it always depends on a. what you want and b. what is available.

www.AmoRetro.de Visit my huge hardware gallery with many historic items from 16MHz 286 to 1000MHz Slot A. Includes more than 80 soundcards and a growing Wavetable Recording section with more than 300 recordings.

Reply 5 of 15, by firage

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The VL/I-486SV2GX4 has a sister model that's equally good, VL/I-486SVGOX4. The SIMM layout is different, with additional support for 30-pin FPM memory.

I also like the Elitegroup/ECS UM4981 well enough, but it doesn't have PS/2 mouse support, maxes out at 512KB cache, and seems to be a little more limited in late CPU support. Those kinds of things matter when ranking these things.

Last edited by firage on 2017-04-29, 02:26. Edited 1 time in total.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 6 of 15, by feipoa

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FGB wrote:
feipoa wrote:

[...] to publish such a list would drive up prices and make them harder for me to find.

Your mimimi is kinda selfish... maybe you're overestimating your influence on global prices a bit 😉 ?

Not my influence, but Vogons in general. If there is a thread on vogons and you search for a few terms in it, it is almost always in the top 5 google search results. Forums certainly alter eBay price trends.

If you are looking for a particular item on eBay or elsewhere and want it for a decent price, does it make sense to start a thread on it and advertise its grandeur? Perhaps if you are the seller that would make good sense, but not as a prospective buyer. Is this being selfish or is it trying to save money and increase chances of obtaining the item(s)?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 7 of 15, by clueless1

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list 10 486 motherboards, then guess the one you never owned. 😉

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 8 of 15, by Deksor

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If only I had 10 working 486 boards, I'd be so happy 🙁 even if I count the dead ones I have, I'm only halfway ...

To me the best 486 are the ones that still works today, unlike most of those that came with that bs varta battery ...

For now the two working 486 motherboard I have are the Aopen/acer AP43 : maybe a little weak on the memory speed side in comparison to the other chipsets (my L2 cache is "only" ~50MB/sec with a 33MHz fsb though this might be caused by the fact that I only have 4 cache chips instead of 8, I don't know if the repartition of data on those chips is changing the performance), however the IDE seems to be one of the fastest of the 486 era when drivers are used. Only vlb IDE with cache memory seems to outperform it (according to speedsys)

Maybe one little problem with it : you only have 3 pci slots. I know that it couldn't feed with data the really fast cards, but just if you want some more expansions needing PCI, to me having a 4th pci slot could have been an improvement, but this is just a small detail in general. Also if you find this board, don't forgive to update the BIOS if you want to install a 5x86 because I, meljor and probably many other people had issues with it until the bios was updated where now it's completely fine ^^

The second working board is the unfamous PcChips m915. It's not a terrible board, but if you want to make it good, you'll probably have to do some soldering job on it as most of them have soldered fake cache chips. Unlike the m919 that has trace that don't go anywhere, this board have traces that actually go to the chipset. Before I soldered sockets and then put some real cache chipd, I measured if there was a voltage or not and there was actually a voltage ! I felt that it was stupid to make cache connected to nowhere and still power them. As I knew some of these boards came with real cache and that I had power on my fake cache chips, I put real cache and boom it worked ! I was quite surprised by that ! You don't even need to put a newer bios as this board seems to autodetect if there's cache or not and use it if there is.

Once that is fixed, it should be just like other UMC based boards with 4 PCI, 4 isa and 2 vlb, because other than the fake cache thing, this board is actually quite good IMO. In fact, the m919 is disliked because of this and that the coast module is becoming rare, but since that board use regular SRAM chips, the soldering job is the only thing you have to do with it. And it's easier than it sounds : usually when you desolder a component like a chip, you want to keep it so you can put it back safely. There, it's just plastic so you can do just like I did : cut half of the pins so you can lift the fake cache chip and move it back and forth (not sure of how you write that 😒) so the other half breaks. Then you take pliers to hold the remaining part of the pin, use the soldering iron to heat it up and then removing it using the pliers. Then use solder wick or whatever you want to clean the hole where the pin was.

Repeat that a few hundred of times and all the fake cache chips would be gone. Then all you need to do is to put new sockets and the cache chips ^^. Like I said, it's not hard, it's just a bit repetitive and a bit long (it took me ~ half an afternoon to remove all of them)

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 9 of 15, by FGB

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feipoa wrote:
FGB wrote:
feipoa wrote:

[...] to publish such a list would drive up prices and make them harder for me to find.

Your mimimi is kinda selfish... maybe you're overestimating your influence on global prices a bit 😉 ?

Not my influence, but Vogons in general. If there is a thread on vogons and you search for a few terms in it, it is almost always in the top 5 google search results. Forums certainly alter eBay price trends.

If you are looking for a particular item on eBay or elsewhere and want it for a decent price, does it make sense to start a thread on it and advertise its grandeur? Perhaps if you are the seller that would make good sense, but not as a prospective buyer. Is this being selfish or is it trying to save money and increase chances of obtaining the item(s)?

If you weight your desire to obtain a piece of hardware for less money higher than sharing your knowledge with others it is of course kind of selfish. It's totally ok since you don't owe to share your knowledge with anyone. My response wasn't meant to sound like an accusation.

But isn't sharing knowledge, helping others, getting help/ inspiration from others, learning new things including gathering information about what hardware is trash or treasure (often totally subjective of course..) what vogons is about? The abstact risk of rising prices seems a natural thing when you share some specific information like a benchmark chart, a review video of certain piece of hardware, a pros- and cons list, a thread with nice images of a running retro system [...].

Btw I really appreciate your CPU benchmarking work - it's outstanding and surely you are providing valuable information also to those who are then willing to spend more money if they can get one or another item that scores best in those comparisons. Following the logic of your initial claim you indirectly participate in driving up the prices, don't you? 😉

www.AmoRetro.de Visit my huge hardware gallery with many historic items from 16MHz 286 to 1000MHz Slot A. Includes more than 80 soundcards and a growing Wavetable Recording section with more than 300 recordings.

Reply 10 of 15, by feipoa

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I just don't want my top ten 486 boards in a list like this at this time. If you search my past 4k posts, one can determine such a list for themselves. I feel that this thread is too google search catching. I still need some boards on my top list.

Not many people chimed in here, so I suspect others are in the same mimi boat. In retrospect, I should have not commented from the onset, but am happy to offer my opinion on specific boards if anyone has questions.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 11 of 15, by kixs

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I can't name even my top 3... Although I have many different 486 boards I haven't really judged them. The one I like and use most is Gigabyte GA-486AM/S with fully upgraded cache to 1MB. Otherwise I also like 386/486 hybrid boards.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 12 of 15, by feipoa

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kixs wrote:

I can't name even my top 3... Although I have many different 486 boards I haven't really judged them. The one I like and use most is Gigabyte GA-486AM/S with fully upgraded cache to 1MB. Otherwise I also like 386/486 hybrid boards.

Which revision do you have? This board is easy to add variable voltage to the onboard VRM. I have eventual plans to attempt a PS/2 adaption for this board. The issue is that it uses the UMC 8881/8886 chipset for the KBC. The Biostar MB-8433UUD also uses the UMC 8881/8886 chipset for the KBC and the 8881/8886 for the PS/2 mouse controller. I'd like to determine if I can use the configuration that Biostar used to get PS/2 mouse working and adapt it to the GA-486AM/S. There seem to be two principal revisions of the UMC 8881/8886, AF suffix or BF suffix and I'm not sure if the BF suffix added the PS/2 mouse controller, or if it was also available in AF. GA-486AM/S contains AF, whereas the Biostar contains BF. The lack easy PS/2 mouse adaption for the GA-486AM/S is a big bummer for me, but otherwise, my initial impression of the board is good, however I have not done extensive testing like I have on some other PCI 486 boards.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 13 of 15, by FGB

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feipoa wrote:

I just don't want my top ten 486 boards in a list like this at this time. If you search my past 4k posts, one can determine such a list for themselves. I feel that this thread is too google search catching. I still need some boards on my top list.

Not many people chimed in here, so I suspect others are in the same mimi boat. In retrospect, I should have not commented from the onset, but am happy to offer my opinion on specific boards if anyone has questions.

I totally respect your motivations.

My main problem with all kind of those lsits is the inherent subjectivity. For example the endless quests for the perfect soundcard or graphics card for DOS games, as if there is or ever was one...

www.AmoRetro.de Visit my huge hardware gallery with many historic items from 16MHz 286 to 1000MHz Slot A. Includes more than 80 soundcards and a growing Wavetable Recording section with more than 300 recordings.

Reply 14 of 15, by kixs

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feipoa wrote:
kixs wrote:

I can't name even my top 3... Although I have many different 486 boards I haven't really judged them. The one I like and use most is Gigabyte GA-486AM/S with fully upgraded cache to 1MB. Otherwise I also like 386/486 hybrid boards.

Which revision do you have? This board is easy to add variable voltage to the onboard VRM. I have eventual plans to attempt a PS/2 adaption for this board. The issue is that it uses the UMC 8881/8886 chipset for the KBC. The Biostar MB-8433UUD also uses the UMC 8881/8886 chipset for the KBC and the 8881/8886 for the PS/2 mouse controller. I'd like to determine if I can use the configuration that Biostar used to get PS/2 mouse working and adapt it to the GA-486AM/S. There seem to be two principal revisions of the UMC 8881/8886, AF suffix or BF suffix and I'm not sure if the BF suffix added the PS/2 mouse controller, or if it was also available in AF. GA-486AM/S contains AF, whereas the Biostar contains BF. The lack easy PS/2 mouse adaption for the GA-486AM/S is a big bummer for me, but otherwise, my initial impression of the board is good, however I have not done extensive testing like I have on some other PCI 486 boards.

Motherboard rev. is 2.21. It has UMC UM8886AF chip. I don't really care about PS/2 mouse support. Maybe because I just play with the hardware and not games 🤣

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 15 of 15, by feipoa

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I don't really play games, with the exception of running them to see how well they work. I might play it for 10 minutes, then wanting to do hardware again. For me, I want to optimise every board as much as I can, so a working PS/2 mouse is just one more item to check off the list. Also, I hate having multiple mice on my desk, so a PS/2 mouse port is very high on my priority list. My KVM 2/audio also has a PS/2 mouse port.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.