I highly recommend either the MCCI /Nice SuperEISA, or the Tyan S1437. Both can accept 1MB of cache and 256MB of DRAM using sixteen 30-pin SIMMs, and are based on the SiS 411 EISA chipset. I have a small preference for the SuperEISA, as I feel that the build quality is slightly better, plus I had to do a soldering job on the Tyan board to get 1MB of cache to work with 300mil wide SRAMs. The advantage of the Tyan is that it has two VLB slots rather than the one on the SuperEISA, and it uses tag RAMs that are much easier to find, especially if you want 12ns.

The Tyan board is relatively rare. I've only seen two for sale in the last 12 years. The SuperEISA is relatively common for an EISA board, and there is currently one on eBay, though I think it costs $140. I think these days it might be difficult to get an EISA board for less than $100.

I also have some experience with EISA boards based on OPTi chipsets. These seem to work fine, but generally support less cache and memory. They're also a bit slower than the SiS chipsets. I've also seen a VIA based board floating around on eBay, but I have no idea what it's like. I believe it started life as the Symphony EISA chipset, but VIA bought out Symphony and gave it a new name. I only have one ISA board based on a Symphony chipset, and it's decent.

The Intel based EISA boards are supposedly the best ones to have if you want to run 50MHz, as they have an advanced cache design. I have no experience with these either, but they don't appear to be very common (I've never seen one for sale). They are probably also somehwat feature limited, as I believe they tend to be older. The first revisions of the chipset were also buggy.

There is one other board that is pretty good, and is also based on the SiS chipset. It's made by A.I.R. I think it's called the 486EI. This was also one of the more common ones. Unlike the other two I mentioned, this one can only accept *just* 512kb cache, but it CAN accept 256MB in 72-pin SIMMs, which are easier to get. It's also somewhat unique in being the only EISA board that can accept 3.3V CPUs (only in the final revision). Sadly, it does not support write back L1 cache.

Thanks for the pointers on these boards though they're all a bit steep for my limited budget and some don't ship to my locale (wish I'd held on to the Mylex now as well as the cards, but it was sold along with its original Viglen case - pic attached, though not mine). I'll keep looking for something more local though in my price range.

It's going to be pretty hard to get something cheap on ebay. You can always try asking on the vcfed forums. Some of the older guys have lots of crap sitting around and don't mind letting it go cheaply.

Am I missing something or wouldn't anything with a 16bit isa slot work?
Quick google doesn't seem to suggest the Mylex MNE486 was anything overly fancy
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/M/MY … stem-Board.html

If you can find the compaq part numbers that will help. Even if the power supply is standard you needed a special disk to access bios. Most are still available once you can find out what PC it came out of, but would still want to know for sure before purchasing the board

EISA is 32-bit, not 16-bit. The fact that it had EISA slots made it fancy.

I had a Mylex MAE486 with a 33 Mhz CPU that was really really slow for some reason. It was slightly faster than a 386DX, but a lot slower than any other 486DX/33 I have. Can't say if it had something to do with the cache chips or because the CPU was one of the early ones from the 80's or if the motherboard was just useless.

If you want to get fancy get a 486 EISA +VLB board. EISA for UWSCSI and 10/100 Ethernet and VLB for a decent 2 or 4MB video card plus you can use a good ISA sound card.

You are right with the Compaq boards. Do not go for one of these boards, try to look for a complete system. The Deskpro /M and Deskpro /XL were quite common a while back. As others mentioned before look for a EISA/VLB board if you want decend video, because EISA graphic cards are really hard to find. Most EISA cards available are SCSI controllers with and without cache or RAID and 10 Mbit ethernet cards. the 100 Mbit cards are rare, but you can try to find some FDDI boards if you really need fast network. I was running an ASUS VL/EISA 486 SV1 for quite some time and it performed well.

I was lucky enough to get a 3com 5 pack box of 10/100 EISA ethernet cards (OEM maybe with one set of install disks).

The most common EISA video card is that 1MB one Compaq used.

VLB video cards are the only decent ones for non PCI 486 systems.

There are VLB Ethernet cards (should be some on ebay now) from a couple manufacturers.

The EISA+VLB combo is the best 486 setup you can find.

EISA graphic cards are so slow.