Did you create and then delete this thread a few days before? I feel like I have already seen it.🤔

Deja vu is the OP's specialty.

More Photos:

Dude, nobody bought or built ISA only 486 PCs in 1993. ESPECIALLY not for multimedia. If you could afford a CD-ROM in 1993 you could afford a VLB.

I like the idea. An ISA 486 was very common in 1992 and early 1993 if you had the money.

Some remarks to your setup:
- the showed SB16 version is a very late revision, you should stay with CT1730/1740/1750
- the 3Com isn‘t the correct revision too
- the Mitsumi 4x CDROM was released in 1995. The first 4x CDROM where for SCSI interface in early 1994.
- your cache is 128kB only - but it is enough for this setup.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-23, 12:01:

Dude, nobody bought or built ISA only 486 PCs in 1993. ESPECIALLY not for multimedia. If you could afford a CD-ROM in 1993 you could afford a VLB.

VLB was mainly a 1993/94 motherboard. But mostly only available to computer builders and NOT used by computer manufactures like
IBM, HP, and Dell until some in 1994 and 1995.
Many computer manufactures were still building and selling ISA motherboards in computers in 1993.
Affordable Multimedia computers for the home computer consumers mostly came out in 1993.
Not well thought out or engineered but computer manufactures just added a sound card and CDROM drive.
Yes, VLB motherboard with 32-bit BUS was better but came along mostly for computer builders and NOT by
Computer Manufactures like IBM or HP or Dell.
To get a VLB motherboard you mostly had to build a computer yourself.
Later with Win95 came PCI motherboards.

So ISA Motherboards were still very popular in 1993.
This is when Multimedia computers first came out and computer manufactures were still trying to figure out
How to build a computer to support the 32-bit BUS to support high data rate transfers that the CDROM required
For best performance of video playback.

Also there may have been a motherboard supply issue for VLB and PCI for computer builders and Manufactures.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-12-23, 13:31:

I like the idea. An ISA 486 was very common in 1992 and early 1993 if you had the money. […]
Show full quote

I like the idea. An ISA 486 was very common in 1992 and early 1993 if you had the money.

Some remarks to your setup:
- the showed SB16 version is a very late revision, you should stay with CT1730/1740/1750
- the 3Com isn‘t the correct revision too
- the Mitsumi 4x CDROM was released in 1995. The first 4x CDROM where for SCSI interface in early 1994.
- your cache is 128kB only - but it is enough for this setup.

Thanks for your input.

Yes, I want to be period correct.
1) I have a Sound Blaster 16 CT1770 and CT1740 I will use one of those.

2) 1993 2x CDROM’s are hard to find and many were plagued with cheap capacitors which leaked on the PCB and caused these
CDROM drives to go bad. Thats why there are so few 2x CDROM drives around today.

3) The 3com 3C509b is a 1993 cards.

4) Yes, 128kb of Cache is enough. Actually my old computer from 1993 only had 64kb of onboard Cache.
I thought it was 265kb of onboard cache. I will change these Specs in description.

In '93 or so I had a 'Comtrade' I think it was.
Hint something eisa/vlb 486dx33 8MB.
DTC3292 scsi, 240 Quantum, Pioneer 602 CD changer.
STB vl24? 1-2MB?
It was the last pre-built computer I've purchased.

Some more Photos.

Otoh, my pre-built dx2/66 came with vlb for graphics and IIRC also multi I/O board. That was 93 or 94. Didn't get CD-ROM or sound until late 95 or early 96 ..

I am just test fitting everything before I hook everything up in a test bench and try it out.

I found a 1993 Sound Blaster CT1770 and hooked it up. I also have a CT1740 somewhere in boxes but I could not find it.
I have a 4x Toshiba SCSI CDROMs I can try out in this sound blaster card.

I may have to modify the Dallas Battery with a coin adapter.

Does anyone know where I can find a good coin adapter for the Dallas battery ?
My motherboard does not have an optional battery hookup jumpers.

Well, it works at 33mhz but not 50mhz ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-12-26, 03:01:

Well, it works at 33mhz but not 50mhz ?

You have a 66Mhz oscillator, so to get 50Mhz on your CPU you have to swap out the oscillator with a 100Mhz oscillator. Then you need to set your jumpers accordingly. From the manual pics you posted, some combo of J12 and J8 it seems.

Yeah, I think I will keep this build as my original in 1993 which was a 486dx-33
I want to relive the performance differences with high speed 486 CPU’s.
Also I only had 4mb of ram so I want to relive that too and see if I could have fine tuned the settings better
For better DOS game play.

Do you think I will have any “NOT enough memory” issues with DOS games ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-12-26, 10:34:

Yeah, I think I will keep this build as my original in 1993 which was a 486dx-33 I want to relive the performance differences wi […]
Show full quote

Yeah, I think I will keep this build as my original in 1993 which was a 486dx-33
I want to relive the performance differences with high speed 486 CPU’s.
Also I only had 4mb of ram so I want to relive that too and see if I could have fine tuned the settings better
For better DOS game play.

Do you think I will have any “NOT enough memory” issues with DOS games ?

4mb of ram was pretty standard for a 1993 486. It shouldn't give to much issues and will/should be enough for the vast majority of DOS games. E.g. even DOOM can run on 4mb of ram.

Yes, back in early 1990’s the hardware was expensive so we were educated on how to run the computers with optimal settings
For the OS/programs we were running. Thats the main difference between computers today. Today you really don’t have to
Configure the settings much for optimal performance.

We could do allot with a Pentium 100mhz computer and 32mb ram.
It would run almost everything back in 1997.

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