Hi folks,

Looking at these three boards for a boring 486 system, just want it to run smooth, if I plug a card in and it acts weird, I want to know it's the card, not some chipset anomaly. Also want to use it for software testing and sampling for 486 and down. I have some higher performance VLB and PCI boards, which I would like not to damage with either accumulated slot wear, or a very very naughty card that gives them the kiss of death or something. So trying to pick the least unusual, most boring board out of these that I have on hand. I had an Asus board under consideration but it had some factors against it, one Redhill says it hangs the mousedriver if you don't have a mouse plugged in, which would get old real quick on the bench, also it has an RTC/Battery that requires "work" a benchmarq one, and is a bit longer than the other boards which also makes it less convenient, so unless all three of these are super bad for some reason, I am keeping it out of the race.

Candidate one:
Acer ISA486GXI ALI1419 Chipset
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/acer-i … gxi-model-i433a

Candidate two:
Seanix 486LC1 Contaq 82c596 Chipset
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/seanix-486lc1

Candidate three:
ECS UM486 II UM82C480 Chipset
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-um486-ii

I am probably just going to run with DX33 and 8MB of RAM, I am kind of pondering whether the Seanix gets an advantage for potentially testing 486DLC and 386 CPU in if any come across my bows. Or whether that is unlikely and I'll just run through my SX and DX and DX2 5V chips one time and that will be it.

Also a question on the Seanix, is that if it does writeback for the 386 socket 486, does it also do writeback for Cyrix DX2? But the CPU settings don't seem especially obvious as to which is setting writeback on or off, or whether it's just a BIOS setting.

Well, ideally I would have wanted to throw an Opti or SiS board in here, but anything handy at the moment seems "too good" for the bench or needs some attention and not sure which way that will go. I ain't planning to be unnecessarily mean to the board, but crap happens.

edit: Ali chipset number corrected.