So, I got the isa videocard today, I tried to set the fsb to 50 mhz, but it doesn't boot despite my efforts: I took off the vlb i\o card, I loosen the timings of cache and memory to the slowest. The debug diagnostic card doesn't work with this specified mb...
I'm thinking the issue could be the cpu or the motherboard.

🤣 ... so my 486DX2 just decided to stop booting the other day. It would finish the memory count, then the cursor would stay on the last digit and blink at me forever. No floppy seek or anything else. Hung solid. If I was quick enough on the draw, I could hit DEL and get into setup. I finally noticed it was having trouble with the HDD (IDE auto detect would hang up in setup). After lots of card swapping and cable jostling, I determined my I/O controller had just decided it didn't want to be a controller anymore. It has a bunch of tantalum caps though, so I'll try to service it before counting it as a total loss.

Ah, 486s... Not strictly a VLB thing, but that box has always been a bit more finicky than others. 😉

because of this thread I've been continuously running the superscape "3dbench" program on my 486 for the past 3 days, no crashes