I always had good luck with Micronics motherboards, but typically
I stuck with ISA or VLB version,

I never had good luck with the PCI 486s but the “gateway “ pci 486 I used for a time was decent and had a rebranded micronics board inside.

Lucky star ls-486

i don't know but, the pcchips m912 is a good option for an all ISA 486/586, if you put real cache chips in the sockets
the 919 is a good board and somewhat compatible for a pci board, but has no cache (unless you can find a cache module for it (not COAST)) and some revisions are better for overclocking/higher than 33MHz FSB

I have a DX4-100 on my ASUS PVI-486SP3. This board has onboard multi IO, ISA, PCI and VLB slots and a CR2032 battery.

second the Asus sp3, it's my favorite.

But other good boards come from biostar, Gigabyte and I agree on the the luckystar board. Basicly I would prefer boards based on the UMC chipset or the SiS chipset.

meljor wrote:

second the Asus sp3, it's my favorite.

But other good boards come from biostar, Gigabyte and I agree on the the luckystar board. Basicly I would prefer boards based on the UMC chipset or the SiS chipset.

I like the ALi M1487/89 chipset for its good PCI VGA performance (in memory access it's somewhat slower than SIS496 or UMC888*). Also I found Abit AB-PB4 and GUS 3.74 (or a Primax clone this time) as a combo of good demo compatibility. VGA is another interesting question, with late 486 rigs (5x86 preferred but a DX4 may be OK as well) running low res high/truecolor is not entirely out of question. Now I'm leaning towards putting a vanilla S3 Virge/DX in my new build, with or without VBE2.0 support. S3 is known for its decent compatibility too and performs well in AB-PB4.

For VLB you may include OPTi895 based boards in your search too, they're not the fastest but still solid performers. VLB VGAs have issues with VBE2.0 compatibility, though, especially at the LFB department. And my QDI board showed me unpecedented ISA VGA performance with the right settings (VLB is still much faster of course).

Edit. Oh, I forgot about Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4. It's a SiS471 based VLB speed demon for DX4. Really.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll see what is available on eBay.

does anyone use socket 7 boards for this? or super 7?

mrau wrote:

does anyone use socket 7 boards for this? or super 7?

For a socket 3 486 cpu ???? Eh.... you could be the first! 😎

Asus SP3. Mine has been bulletproof

Gigabyte GA-486AM/S.

I'm using a First International Computer (FIC) 486-PVT which I flog the ever-loving crap out of with an AMD Am486 DX4-100 SV8 in it (writeback with 8K L1 cache), and 512GB of L2 Cache, it's VLB though. It's not the fastest motherboard but it is among the most stable I've owned. Biostar MB8433UUD was another good one, that one was PCI. The FIC has a CR2302, but I installed that because it was silkscreened where the tiny and dead hearing aid battery originally was.

creepingnet wrote:

I'm using a First International Computer (FIC) 486-PVT which I flog the ever-loving crap out of with an AMD Am486 DX4-100 SV8 in it (writeback with 8K L1 cache), and 512GB of L2 Cache, it's VLB though. It's not the fastest motherboard but it is among the most stable I've owned.

I have this one as well, not sure yet how good it is though, I only recently got it up and running:

FIC 486-GVT not POSTing

I would recommend you get a PCI based 486 though, VLB would be a nice to have.

Just keep in mind, that whatever is recommended here, you can't just get in the shop. I.e. you might not be able to find any of the boards recommended here.

Edit: Oops, PVT, not GVT... Still as dyslexic as ever... 😀

pan069 wrote:

Just keep in mind, that whatever is recommended here, you can't just get in the shop. I.e. you might not be able to find any of the boards recommended here.

Yep, this will be the deciding factor over all.
for a 486 I would shop differently and decide what's important to you, common deal breakers are

Coin battery vs Dallas RTC
PS2 or Serial Port for the mouse
ISA only or do you want VLB or PCI as well

As you cant have all 3, Prioritise accordingly and see what's available

chinny22 wrote:

ISA only or do you want VLB or PCI as well As you cant have all 3

Yes you can. The ASUS PVI-486SP3 I recommended earlier supports ISA, VLB and PCI:

PC-Chips M919 as well, which was already mentioned earlier.

derSammler wrote:

PC-Chips M919 as well, which was already mentioned earlier.

Ah OK. I missed that. A quick Google search on this board seems that it might have a problem with fake cache?

You need the COAST module for (real) cache. But it's a nice, fast and stable board otherwise; using it myself in one of my builds.