VOGONS


First post, by ratfink

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I am wondering what a 486 system would be capable of, and what the best cards to get for it would be. If I ever get round to putting the system together!

The motherboards I have are a tk8881, and a Jetboard 466B, both apparently unused. Processors are 486 DX50 and 486 DX25 I think. The boards have onboard cache [no COAST slot needed] and PCI and ISA slots - no AGP or VESA. So they are pretty late 486 boards. One has 3 pci and 3 isa, the other has 3 pci and 4 isa [one pci/isa slot shared].

What gfx boards would give me decent compatibility? I am not sure what games they would be for - so probably things up to but not necessarily including Doom, maybe running Win95 or maybe just DOS. Could add a Voodoo 1.

The sound cards would be a choice between GUS Pnp or ACE, SB Pro 2, or SB16.

Have a 3com ISA NIC, or could use PCI - what would be best there?

Reply 1 of 6, by 5u3

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ratfink wrote:

The motherboards I have are a tk8881, and a Jetboard 466B, both apparently unused. Processors are 486 DX50 and 486 DX25 I think. The boards have onboard cache [no COAST slot needed] and PCI and ISA slots - no AGP or VESA. So they are pretty late 486 boards. One has 3 pci and 3 isa, the other has 3 pci and 4 isa [one pci/isa slot shared].

What chipsets do these boards have? The "tk8881" name suggests that this one is based on the UMC 8881, which supports PCI 2.1 (this is a good thing, since most other 486 PCI chipsets only support PCI 2.0 or not even that and often cause problems with more demanding PCI cards).

ratfink wrote:

What gfx boards would give me decent compatibility? I am not sure what games they would be for - so probably things up to but not necessarily including Doom, maybe running Win95 or maybe just DOS. Could add a Voodoo 1.

This was the topic of several discussions on these forums, so I'll keep it short: 😜 I recommend a S3 Trio/Virge card for best compatibility and decent speed. Tseng ET6000 is also fast (especially in VESA modes), but has problems with some ModeX games. Matrox has good drivers for all kinds of Windows and a crisp VGA signal, but fails with many CGA/EGA and ModeX games.

ratfink wrote:

The sound cards would be a choice between GUS Pnp or ACE, SB Pro 2, or SB16.

Also featured in many topics here; I'd take GUS ACE + SB16 (depends on the SB16 model you have and the games you play, in some cases the SP Pro would be a better choice).

ratfink wrote:

Have a 3com ISA NIC, or could use PCI - what would be best there?

The ISA NIC would be perfectly adaequate, on a 486 a PCI NIC would only make sense if you run out of ISA slots.

Reply 2 of 6, by ratfink

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That's great - many thanks - exactly what I was after. I had read through some discussions here but wasn't sure of drawing a reasonable conclusion.

The tk8881 does have UMC 8881. The Jetboard manual says ithe 466b is PCI 2.0. Jetboard has 4 SIMM slots, tk8881 has only 2. Presumably old DOS games play in 1mb, and even early Win95 games don't need anything more than 32mb, so this doesn't matter.

So the tk8881 looks good for this, and an S3 virge...

Reply 3 of 6, by kreats

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et6100 in preference to et6000 - I use an apocalypse 5D (even though it does mess up a few demos, it's just so cool having a powervr and et6100 on a card). Diamond Stealth 3d 2000 Pro (virge dx) if you just want compatibility.

I use a pure3d for my 3dfx card - 6mb plus tv out gives it the edge.

Gus Max or ACE - either will do.

SB16 seems like the best choice, ct1770 or ct1740 I think.

Reply 4 of 6, by LCountach

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I don't really have a recommendation for a good video card on a 486 but I do know a little about the PowerVR PCX2.

kreats it is very cool you have the apocalypse 5D but the PowerVR PCX2 is VERY VERY CPU dependent. I used my Matrox m3D (a PowerVR PCX2 card) in a Pentium PRO @233 512k machine and it choked badly in Quake2 @ 17 FPS. It takes a well optimized 300MHz to max these cards at 23.1 FPS. I also popped the card in a 1.1GHz machine and achieved only 23.1 FPS. I would think a 486 DX50 would not be enough to use a PowerVR.

kreats I am also a PowerVR fan. I know the apocalypse 5D came bundled with Mechwarrior 2 PowerVR Edition. If you still have this game I would love to get a few files from you. The standard Win95 Mech2 can be converted with just a few files. As a fellow PowerVR fan perhaps you can help?

Reply 5 of 6, by kreats

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LCountach, yes I know the cpu that I have isn't up to it really - but given there are only about 4 et6100 cards out there, this is probably the best regardless. I actually haven't tried the powervr side of things (I wonder if a kyro 2 would be better to use anyway?).

Unfortunately I didn't get it with the box/docs - but you've got me interested now and I think I'll join your powervr quest in the other thread (I do remember seeing screenshots of ultimate race pro in 1027x768 on the powervr back in the day and going pfhwoah!).

Reply 6 of 6, by LCountach

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Yes I do remember ultimate race pro. When I first saw the PCX2 in action however it was on a friends PC. They bought the m3D because it was cheep. Unfortunately they had a 133MHz Pentium which didn't pair well at all. I later acquired the card FREE from them because it was out dated, slow, and incompatible. I was, am, and probably always will be a hardware junkie, so I still enjoy image quality and underdog status of the PowerVR PCX2.