It's possible they are of a newer pci standard and won't work on that motherboard.

I just tried four PCI network cards, different vendors and age. None of them will show network boot prompt. For example 3COM 3C905-TX is quite widely supported on 486 boards, I think. I remember I use these a lot back in the days.

When connecting RJ-45 LAN cable, the LED lights will show uplink (green) and orange led is showing network data is being transmitted (probably some low level negotiation with router).

There must be something else going on. I also tried to play with jumper for SCSI add-on card (which is not present, but has been enabled by jumper). Disabling does not yield any difference.

Just got some advice to download RSET8139 utility and try to change memory and IRQ setting for XT-IDE. That might be the way to go...

A lot of nics had jumpers to enable the boot from option and some had to be configured with their software to enable the boot from option.

any chance to test with an ISA VGA and the pci nic in the first slot ?

weedeewee wrote on 2021-05-28, 16:13:

any chance to test with an ISA VGA and the pci nic in the first slot ?

Yes, that's where I am at now. But I found out this SiS chipset is strange. North bridge and south bridge is 487 and 486 and no additional letters, so I guess it is ver 1.22 revision A. The first one. So there is problem with BIOS. Actual version is 301. I think someone update wrong bios on this board and nothing is working. CD-ROM is not being detected (tried 3 drives already and have the old school NEC CD drive as well). Of course cannot boot from CDROM, but it should at least detect the drive.

It does not detect CF to IDE adapter with 8GB flash card. I know maximum size is 2GB. The IDE drive has 13.5GB, but it detects 2GB only (no matter if 2GB cap with jumper is set or not on the drive). Yay, I forgot this fun.

So I think there will be more stuff going on with this board. I guess revision A can have only the basic BIOS version and there is some problem with IDE controller (probably need to have separate controller in ISA or VLB slot).

Right now I use second PC to install FreeDOS on the hard drive, so I can use Realtek or 3COM configuration utility to change NIC flash rom BIOS address and perhaps also IRQ.

I have an FIC VIP motherboard with a VT82C505 VL to PCI bridge

I tested a bunch of cards. The ones built before 1997 all work. None of the ones built after 1997 work.
1994 -Kia Mach32 PCI ✓
1994- Tseng 4000w32p PCI ✓
1995 - S3 Trio64V+ PCI ✓
1995 - ATI Mach64 CT PCI ✓
1996 - ATI Rage II PCI ✓
1996 - Matrox Mystique PCI ✓

1998- Permedia 2 ☹
1999- ATI Rage 128 AIW (109-53000-00) ☹
2000 - Diamond Stealth S60 (Radeon 7000 ) ☹
2003 - Jaton MX4000 ☹
2003 - ATI Radeon 9250 ☹
2005 - ATI Radeon x1300 ☹

I wanted to re-test on my other socket 3 PCI board that has an i420ex chipset, but it won't wake up today. ☹☹☹

I don't have any cards from the 1997 period.

Anyone have a PCI Voodoo Rush, Riva 128, Rage Pro, Virge MX or Millennium II they can test on a socket 3 mobo?

I had hit-and-miss success with my PVI-486SP3 similar to @douglar above. Some cards wouldn't work, but others did.

Fortunately the cards I really wanted to test (S3 Trio64, Voodoo 2000 and an Intel Pro 100 NIC) all worked fine.

I think I had trouble with a Voodoo 3000 and a Radeon 7000.

douglar wrote on 2021-05-29, 12:14:

I have an FIC VIP motherboard with a VT82C505 VL to PCI bridge […]
Show full quote

I have an FIC VIP motherboard with a VT82C505 VL to PCI bridge

I tested a bunch of cards. The ones built before 1997 all work. None of the ones built after 1997 work.
1994 -Kia Mach32 PCI ✓
1994- Tseng 4000w32p PCI ✓
1995 - S3 Trio64V+ PCI ✓
1995 - ATI Mach64 CT PCI ✓
1996 - ATI Rage II PCI ✓
1996 - Matrox Mystique PCI ✓

1998- Permedia 2 ☹
1999- ATI Rage 128 AIW (109-53000-00) ☹
2000 - Diamond Stealth S60 (Radeon 7000 ) ☹
2003 - Jaton MX4000 ☹
2003 - ATI Radeon 9250 ☹
2005 - ATI Radeon x1300 ☹

I wanted to re-test on my other socket 3 PCI board that has an i420ex chipset, but it won't wake up today. ☹☹☹

I don't have any cards from the 1997 period.

Anyone have a PCI Voodoo Rush, Riva 128, Rage Pro, Virge MX or Millennium II they can test on a socket 3 mobo?

I can test Voodoo 1 (4MB version) or Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3 (PCI) for you.

Anyway I found out the revision is B4, so I upgraded bios 301 to 306. I think this BIOS should add option to boot from CD-ROM, but it is not there. Strange. I guess I will use Sound Card for CD-ROM controller.

Next I can run Realtek DOS configuration utility. It will show the Realtek NIC and I can configure stuff. It shows IRQ 9 and some base BIOS address. But I cannot change these! I can change only link speed and type and WakeOnLan stuff. Enable/Disable BIOS rom and choose BIOS size (default is 32kb). But no IRQ or address settings and also this board does not have any jumpers and manual does not say anything about configuration. I did pull out a 2nd Realtek (have 4 of them) and it happened to have IRQ 11 instead of 9 and different BIOS address as well.

But still 486 does not show this network bios rom from this PCI card. I guess it still have some IRQ/address config. And XT-IDE flash rom has 28 pins. I could use 3Com Etherlink, but need to order XT-IDE flash rom on 32 pins flash for 3Com.

I'm happy I did install MS-DOS and could upgrade BIOS at least, after 2 days.

Voodoo 3 works on the ASUS PVI-486AP4

cyberluke wrote on 2021-05-29, 16:20:

Next I can run Realtek DOS configuration utility. It will show the Realtek NIC and I can configure stuff. It shows IRQ 9 and some base BIOS address. But I cannot change these! I can change only link speed and type and WakeOnLan stuff. Enable/Disable BIOS rom and choose BIOS size (default is 32kb). But no IRQ or address settings and also this board does not have any jumpers and manual does not say anything about configuration. I did pull out a 2nd Realtek (have 4 of them) and it happened to have IRQ 11 instead of 9 and different BIOS address as well.

But still 486 does not show this network bios rom from this PCI card. I guess it still have some IRQ/address config. And XT-IDE flash rom has 28 pins. I could use 3Com Etherlink, but need to order XT-IDE flash rom on 32 pins flash for 3Com.

It's PCI, irq is determined by bios. maybe possible in bios set which ISA irq gets assigned to PCI IRQ.
realtek bios rom address will need bios (e)(e)(p)rom on network card to function, otherwise is just address with no rom there.

douglar wrote on 2021-05-29, 12:14:

I have an FIC VIP motherboard with a VT82C505 VL to PCI bridge […]
Show full quote

I have an FIC VIP motherboard with a VT82C505 VL to PCI bridge

I tested a bunch of cards. The ones built before 1997 all work. None of the ones built after 1997 work.
1994 -Kia Mach32 PCI ✓
1994- Tseng 4000w32p PCI ✓
1995 - S3 Trio64V+ PCI ✓
1995 - ATI Mach64 CT PCI ✓
1996 - ATI Rage II PCI ✓
1996 - Matrox Mystique PCI ✓

1998- Permedia 2 ☹
1999- ATI Rage 128 AIW (109-53000-00) ☹
2000 - Diamond Stealth S60 (Radeon 7000 ) ☹
2003 - Jaton MX4000 ☹
2003 - ATI Radeon 9250 ☹
2005 - ATI Radeon x1300 ☹

I wanted to re-test on my other socket 3 PCI board that has an i420ex chipset, but it won't wake up today. ☹☹☹

I don't have any cards from the 1997 period.

Anyone have a PCI Voodoo Rush, Riva 128, Rage Pro, Virge MX or Millennium II they can test on a socket 3 mobo?

Thanks for the list !
I have a Mill2 and Rage XL (8Mb PCI dated 2000). Also found a Riva 128 (Viper V330 4Mb) and a Cirrus GD5446 and a S3 Virge 4mb all three from late 1997 in my box of tested cards,,,,
my only soc3 PCI mobo's are a Giga GA486IM, FIC 486PIO2 and a Amptron 9200. Have a Cirrus GD5434 from mid 1997 but am 99% sure it worked in the Giga board but can retest it as well as any other 1997 or later PCI vid cards stumbled on but it may take a while to dig it all out...
edit: fixed my cards list....

Finally got it working:
1) Upgraded BIOS to 306
2) Loaded default BIOS setting to CMOS (according to bios upgrade instructions)
3) Moved Realtek network card to PCI slot #2. I guess the first slot is reserved for graphic card. It just does not work there.

XT-IDE started to work and large hard drives are detected. CDROM is detected in MS-DOS and FreeDOS, not in BIOS (that's normal).

But FreeDOS installation on 486 has some bug! Lack of runtime memory or some cache. It took 3 hours to figure this out. It tells something about cannot read file from CD or cannot write file to HDD. I googled some person had same problem and solved it by installing FreeDOS on Pentium, then moving the drive back to 486. And that's what I did and that's the only solution that did work for me.

So right now even CompactFlash IDE is finally detected. FlashFloppy USB emulator working as well. I'm getting happy where this is going 😀

Replaced old NEC CD drive (probably 4x speed) with modern LG DVD drive and even the CD-RW FreeDOS LiveCD is faster now.

Next thing will be probably bigger CompactFlash card or SATA to IDE bidirectional adapter for SSD to get rid of moveable parts and install original CD-ROM games easily. Also need to discover the Samba FreeDOS networking and perhaps VNCViewer or WWW browser in FreeDOS.

Now I'm waiting for my PC AT to USB Teensy smart converter with USB HID support to connect a modern mechanical USB keyboard on this 486.

That TSENG 4000/w32 in ISA slot have much nicer colours (even not VLB) than S3 Trios64V2 in PCI. That S3 has too much brightness, the black screen in boot menu is gray. Interesting. Bought 486 for 300 Eur, spending 200 Eur more on it and still not done 😀