barleyguy wrote on 2020-02-26, 05:33:

Maybe I should just shut up for a while and try to figure this place out. Or maybe I just don't fit in here, and will never figure it out. Is this a matter of wanting to build a comprehensive list of every PC ever? Or do people have nostalgia for certain eras and want to relive that nostalgia? I'm just really trying to understand the motivation.

I always find the back-and-forth between members to be one of the more meaningful aspects of joining a community like this. So, I for one take no offense at somebody asking "but.... why?" if you're genuinely curious. I'm a little less enthusiastic with the "why do you insist on running a mechanical hard drive when flash is so much better" opinions, since everything here is subjective and like pretty much none of it is rational, so why should I defend my foolish self-imposed requirements?

I have a VLB build because my first DIY build was a DX2/66 with VLB. I wanted to rebuild that computer, and that's how I got started again. I rebuilt that one.. and then pretty much all of the other ones I owned.. and then a bunch I never owned before. This hobby has a way of getting out of hand sometimes...

I would say my VLB build is one of the least useful but most sentimental that I own. I love it to bits. I find that era to be the one I most enjoy building from parts. It was the "tween" years, where things were faster and more sophisticated than the "who even made this board?" 386/ISA era, but not quite as solid as the PCI/PnP era where cards could be conclusively identified by their PCI IDs, and manufacturers were no longer too ashamed of their product to put their name on the PCB.

Is it stable? God no. But c'mon, we were using DOS and Win 3.x, with no memory protection, and drivers that might or might not actually be written for this particular version of this video chipset, etc. It was the PC's college years, and the engineers were drunk and looking to plug their cards in to any slot where it would fit. It's amazing that any of it worked at all. Every boot-up BIOS *beep!* is a blessing.

My own build has a VLB ATI Mach64 video card, VLB I/O card, and VLB Adaptec SCSI card. Three VLB cards! And it works fine! Well, I did have to experiment with slot order to get it to boot successfully, and the other day I turned it on and it locks up after the memory count, but I was in there fooling around with drives and may have just left a power connector unplugged. Who knows. See? Adventure!

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-02-26, 19:13:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-26, 12:05:

People arguing against the 'fact' that VLB was not a very stable bus probably need to test out more boards than the few they got lucky with. Shit gets incredibly annoying as soon as you try to add a VLB Multi-I/O to the system or try a 40MHz or above FSB.

The VLB boards I own are made by ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Acer/AOpen and Biostar. All of those work stable at 40MHz with 2 VLB cards (video and I/O) after setting the appropriate jumpers. Granted, my experience is mostly based on SiS, UMC and Bioteq chipsets, so I can't say anything about VIA or Opti chipsets for example, but I tend to avoid those as they're generally slower (I also have a nameless Unichip based board but it sucks regardless of whether I'm using the VLB slots or not).

Those are all high quality boards with high quality chipsets (well, except UMC which is mostly hit and miss for me).

I had an ECS VLB board with UMC chipset for example that was more of a headache than it was worth, so I sold it off.

It's not a bus implementation you can trust to work 99% on any board you buy.

barleyguy wrote on 2020-02-26, 05:33:

My perspective on this is that I built computers for a living when this stuff was cutting edge, and had to sell it to customers […]
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Doornkaat wrote on 2020-02-26, 05:18:

I can not relate to this opinion at all. The bus is not as reliable as PCI but it's not bad. I have had very little trouble with […]
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barleyguy wrote on 2020-02-26, 04:29:

This is a curious topic for me, because VLB was never very stable, even when it was brand new. It was a stopgap between ISA and PCI, only lasted a couple of years, and none of the cards for it were very good. So a thread asking about a stable VLB setup is very odd.

I can not relate to this opinion at all. The bus is not as reliable as PCI but it's not bad. I have had very little trouble with VLB setups as long as I kept it somewhat conservative. There are lots and lots of stable VLB builds. What's odd about wanting one yourself? And why would you say there are no good VLB cards?

barleyguy wrote on 2020-02-26, 04:29:

That said, the 33 Mhz clock doubled chips like the 486 DX2/66 seemed to work the best. They had a separate 33 Mhz FSB, so matched the speed of the VESA bus perfectly.

Do you mean an external 33MHz bus? The 66MHz DX2 is simply a popular choice because it offered a good price/performance ratio at the high times of VLB. I don't see a reason why a clock tripled 100MHz i486DX4 would work less reliable.

My perspective on this is that I built computers for a living when this stuff was cutting edge, and had to sell it to customers and support it. I never felt VLB was stable enough to bet on. Maybe I just never found the perfect combination of parts, but IMO both ISA and PCI were way more stable than VLB was. (As was EISA for that matter, but it was most common in really expensive workstations so wasn't for mere mortals.)

From the perspective of building a machine for yourself and tinkering with it until it does what you want, I guess VLB could be considered "stable enough". But that was never my experience with it when I had to build it as a product for other people.

BTW, there's no reason a clock tripled 100 mhz chip would be any less stable. Didn't mean to imply that. I simply meant processors with a 33 Mhz bus, and preferably faster than 33 Mhz.

As far as my comment about wondering why people do what they do: I just joined here very recently, and personally I would never choose to build a VLB system. I'd either go slightly older than that, or slightly newer. Specifically because of the reasons I stated about not wanting to mess around with finding a stable combination of components for VLB. So I wonder why someone would choose to build something from this era.

EDIT (additional thoughts): Maybe I should just shut up for a while and try to figure this place out. Or maybe I just don't fit in here, and will never figure it out. Is this a matter of wanting to build a comprehensive list of every PC ever? Or do people have nostalgia for certain eras and want to relive that nostalgia? I'm just really trying to understand the motivation.

I don't have nostalgia for any particular era of computing really. My very first computer as a kid was a TRS-80 model one with 16k of RAM and a cassette player. And I've used or built virtually everything since then. When I look towards building a retro machine, I would tend to choose something I see as "good" in both the hardware realm and the OS realm. I'm genuinely not criticizing, but trying to understand what's up around here. Also, sorry for the topic hijack.

Hey dude, I hope you didn't get me wrong. I didn't mean to invalidate your experience and I'm certainly not saying you're wrong to share it. I was just trying to express that I had a totally different one and I'm actually interested in why yours was so bad.
I think most users come to the Marvin section of VOGONS to discuss their hobby of retro hardware or get support with their older systems. I also think most users are interested in reasoned opinion no matter who it's coming from and I do not think people should have to learn to conform before posting. (Apart from basic netiquette of course. 😉 )

As for VLB issues again, I just can't say anything really bad about VLB. Maybe I just got lucky but I've had five or six random VLB boards, more than ten graphics cards and I think six or seven drive controllers, and for me it always worked right away and just as stable as the average 4/586 ISA/PCI DOS build I did. Of course you'd get an occasional hang but then again I remember motherboard tests where a board that crashed only(!) twice in 48hrs of game testing would be considered "very stable". In any case I know a "90's-PC-stable" 😉 VLB build is very possible and the VLB 486 system my mother used from '93 to 2001 for office work and basic 2D games hardly ever crashed if at all. Maybe seeing as you were involved with PCs professionally we simply have a different standard?
Anyway, I do also prefer PCI even on 486 because it's just much cheaper and there's a better selection of parts. 😁

having any system I own crash twice in 48hrs is a level of "stability" I do not tolerate, even in retro hardware

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-02-27, 12:51:

having any system I own crash twice in 48hrs is a level of "stability" I do not tolerate, even in retro hardware

Yeah dude, me neither. Not today. But this was cutting edge technology back then. Often driver or BIOS updates would dramatically increase stability later on and you'd be wise to use them today so your experience is better than the authentic 90's cutting edge experience.
Maybe this wasn't even the boards' fault. Maybe it was the sound card driver that didn't handle the new chipset well?
Stuff would just randomly crash back then. At least that's how I remember 90's computing. And I can't be the only one - don't you remember Windows 9x bluescreen jokes? 😁
Iirc this was some 440BX or LX mainboard test with this board being among the winners.

That's why I have never at any point in my computer history (which dates back to the late 80s) been a user of bleeding edge equipment. Always wait to buy 1 or 2 generations because the newest stuff always costs a fortune and generally sucks for reliability

You should be good then. VLB is waaaay older than 1 or 2 generations back now ... =)

douglar wrote on 2020-02-27, 20:43:

You should be good then. VLB is waaaay older than 1 or 2 generations back now ... =)

Lol yeah I'd be open to a VLB system in the stable. I don't have one currently but I do support my dads 486 with VLB cirrus card and multi io. It runs fine

I'm messing with my vlb system once again, I noticed that with the cirrus logic vlb video card the system is more stable compared to when I use the ARK Logic ARK1000VL card.
The first allow me to have lower cache settings and use 0 ws for ram, while with the 1000VL I have to add the wait state.
This at 40mhz, so far no success with 50 mhz, I will try an ISA video card just in case and use a faster cache tag chip (the others are labelled 10ns already).

VLB is awesome.

For being the greatest hardware hack made into a standard since the original IBM PC. The sheer length of the cards, makes all the VLB cards appear bulky and powerful. The sheer audacity of just connecting the 486 data/address bus to some slots electrically and calling it a standard. Just tell the users not to push it too much and she will be right.

Now, I've had a pretty good run with VLB, very few issues on the boards I have tried. But it does not surprise me that VLB can break in weird and wonderful ways.

Always remember to look for master/slave vlb slots. Yes, it is a thing. One master slot, two slave slots. Populate master and then populate whatever slot you want. Some boards do not have writing on the slots.

Next rule:
33 mhz FSB = 3 cards.
40 mhz FSB = 2 cards.
50 mhz FSB = 1 card.

If you can run 2 cards at 50, then you have quality hardware.

brostenen wrote on 2020-02-29, 07:34:

Always remember to look for master/slave vlb slots. Yes, it is a thing. One master slot, two slave slots. Populate master and th […]
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Always remember to look for master/slave vlb slots. Yes, it is a thing. One master slot, two slave slots. Populate master and then populate whatever slot you want. Some boards do not have writing on the slots.

Next rule:
33 mhz FSB = 3 cards.
40 mhz FSB = 2 cards.
50 mhz FSB = 1 card.

If you can run 2 cards at 50, then you have quality hardware.

If the master slot is not identified is there a way to find it?
Is it better to put the video card or the i\o card in the maste slot?
Thanks

Nemo1985 wrote on 2020-02-29, 08:00:

If the master slot is not identified is there a way to find it? Is it better to put the video card or the i\o card in the maste […]
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brostenen wrote on 2020-02-29, 07:34:

Always remember to look for master/slave vlb slots. Yes, it is a thing. One master slot, two slave slots. Populate master and th […]
Show full quote

Always remember to look for master/slave vlb slots. Yes, it is a thing. One master slot, two slave slots. Populate master and then populate whatever slot you want. Some boards do not have writing on the slots.

Next rule:
33 mhz FSB = 3 cards.
40 mhz FSB = 2 cards.
50 mhz FSB = 1 card.

If you can run 2 cards at 50, then you have quality hardware.

If the master slot is not identified is there a way to find it?
Is it better to put the video card or the i\o card in the maste slot?
Thanks

I have no idea on how to identify it. Some manuals have it mentioned. However, back in the mid-90's, someone explained it to me. That is a long time ago, and was something with speed/performance. Normally it is just the slot closest to the CPU, and if you look at the traces on the board, it should give a hint to what is master and what is slave on 3-slot boards.

Master slots only matter for bus mastering capable things which probably are only SCSI cards, certainly not any video or IDE based IO cards. Furthest away slots should be populated first to reduce signal reflections on the bus.

I'm running an OPTi 895 based board at 50MHz with a VRAM based Mach32 + Promise EIDE2300Plus IO card and AMD DX2-80 at 100MHz. I'm not sure what the CPU voltage is exactly, probably 3.45V. It will play a role on stability of the VLB bus, higher voltage should be better since signal slew rates increase and propagations delays decrease on most devices as voltage increases.

Sheesh... overclocking and overvolting a 486 CPU with two VLB cards running at 50MHz? I bet you swim right after eating, don't you? 🤣

AMD CPUs want 3.45V, intel ones 3.3V, Cyrix ones 3.6V, and many motherboards have 3.45V as their 3V rail for the CPU since it is within spec of all 3. Overclocking I have no explanation for, I just like 50MHz and big heatsinks 🤣

I remember as a teenager I had a DX-50 486 with two VLB cards - the controller, and AFAIK a Mach32 video card. I somehow never had stability issues. 50 MHz bus!

Well you are lucky 😜
I tried the Tiido advice to populate the slots from the farthest one from the cpu but still the pc doesn't boot at 50mhz.
Furthermore with the very same system, with the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 card I can use cache timings as 3-1-1-1, while if I swap it for a ARK Logic ARK1000VL I have to use 3-2-2-2.
Maybe it's the UMC cpu that is unable to reach 50mhz, but I doubt...
I will keep trying with isa cards instead of vlb.
Out of curiosity is there any VLB motherboard with integrated ide ports?

That particular ARK Logic card puts a higher capacitance on the bus, slowing it town to a level you need to increase timings to reach stability.
FIC made some VIA based boards with PCI, VLB and onboard IDE and other peripherals.

Back in the day it indeed was quite hard to get a stable VLB system if you weren't some popular manufacturer of complete systems. Remember that the information provider called the "internet" was pretty limited in access back then, so we had to do with what we could gather from friends, computer shops and magazines, and perhaps early websites or more likely usenet. Furthermore, the cards available in a certain location was limited by the available shops, and mail order was quite expensive.

The golden rule was no more than 2 (high-performance) VLB cards in a system, even if there were 3 slots.

That said, my 40 MHz OEM system was pretty stable with a OEM Trident card, generic I/O controller, and VLB network card. Crashes could usually be blamed on unstable Windows programs or DOS extender protected mode faults.