retro games 100 wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Hey RG100, I tried removing the SIMM's on one of those Contaq boards...works fine just using my fingers 😜

Same here. But they're not all the same though. Some are much harder to remove than others. On one of them, it was very easy. On a couple of them, it was practically impossible.

Lol, if we ever end up 80 years old and happen to live in the same old people's home, we'll still be talking about those Contaq boards with those memory modules and the nurses will say "Uh boy, here they go again..." 😜

@ topicstarter

I also want to buy this board, because it is the own avaible upgradeble motherboard to get..

Does it fitt in a BABY AT case tower?

Does this board has an 3 pins turbo jumper on this board?

Over the past week or so I've finally gotten around to working on my own 386DX40 a bit. Pics and full specs of it can be found here, so I won't bother restating all that... though there is one minor update: I discovered that the original cache wasn't working, so I borrowed 128K worth off a 486 board until I can get around to testing the old chips and weeding out the bad one(s).

Anyhow, now that I've got all that squared away, I ran a couple tests on it. Here's the first Speedsys result I got:

Not too shabby... my memory bandwidth is a little higher than most others I've seen in this thread, but I'm also using a completely different board with a different chipset.

I noticed that my CPU score is much better than what DonutKing was seeing, but still nowhere near the CPU speed numbers RG100 was getting. So I got to investigating the discrepancies a bit. I had a bit of a suspicion about what was going on, and on that hunch, without changing anything else, I pulled out the coprocessor and re-ran the test:

Fuckin' aye, that did it. 😳
Looks like RG100 has a bit of competition now. 😁

As for the difference between my and DonutKing's CPU scores with the coprocessor installed, his being around 5.80-5.90, and mine being 6.83... that could be accounted by the fact that my copro is quite a bit faster... I have a Cyrix 87DLC, whereas I believe he's running an Intel 387.

So, I think we can safely call that mystery solved. Speedsys just runs a different test on FPU-enabled systems, and doesn't bother to make any mention of that fact. 😒

I also ran 3DBench both with and without the copro installed, and despite the significant differences in Speedsys CPU scores, I got the exact same 3DBench result both times: 15.6. That number is perfectly in line with what others have been getting at 40mhz CPU / 10mhz ISA.

Robin4: it is a baby AT board so it should fit in a tower case.

It has a 2pin turbo header but you simply use 2 of the pins on a 3 pin connector- the middle pin is common, one set of pins enables turbo when the button is on, the other enables turbo with the button off.

@thrashbarg : interesting results. I suspected the coprocessor was slowing the benchmark down but I never bothered to try it... I need to clean out my computer room because I have a heap of crap on top of my 386 so I can't open it's case at the moment without making the tower of Pisa fall down :p

All around the world, millions* of 386 users remove their coprocessors, and discover the difference!
*perhaps not 😉

It's not as if the difference in numbers means anything, though... best I've been able to tell, there's no actual performance difference from having an FPU installed (except, of course, in FPU-enabled software, where it provides a benefit).

It did get me a bit curious about something... does Speedsys show a similar sort of FPU-related discrepancy on 486 chips? I.e., higher scores for an SX33 than for a DX33? I can't seem to find any direct 1:1 comparison of the two, and I don't believe I have any SX chips to try it myself either.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

It's not as if the difference in numbers means anything, though... best I've been able to tell, there's no actual performance difference from having an FPU installed (except, of course, in FPU-enabled software, where it provides a benefit).

It did get me a bit curious about something... does Speedsys show a similar sort of FPU-related discrepancy on 486 chips? I.e., higher scores for an SX33 than for a DX33? I can't seem to find any direct 1:1 comparison of the two, and I don't believe I have any SX chips to try it myself either.

I've just replied to someone (sorry, forgot the name!) who did notice a speed increase while playing Sim City classic though 😉

But otoh, maybe I just "want" the 387's to be practical hehe! 😜

I think you completely misread my post. I stated specifically that the FPU provides a benefit in FPU-enabled software. Whether that includes SimCity, I dunno.

My point was that, the Speedsys numbers can be ignored... despite the lower CPU scores, the FPU doesn't actually hurt performance in applications that can't use it, and it helps performance in apps that can use it. So there's no reason to exclude a 387 from a 386 build if you feel like putting one in.

it was me actually, I found that Simcity classic uses a math-co extensively. You gain about 50% performance by having one!

Interesting. I guess their city simulation aspects use floating point math? It's surprising that they didn't try harder to stick with integers in those days.

I can also confirm the lower CPU score with the fpu, strange.

I FINALLY cleaned up my computer room so I had a bit of space to work on the 386 again, and I pulled out the 387. Speedsys went up to about 9.2 without the copro installed. 😀
3dbench score was unchanged.

I'll probably leave it out since I'm not playing anything that actually uses it, and its kind of a pain in the arse to install it because it sits right under the 5.25" drives in my case.

Anyway, now that I've done all that I feel like playing a bit of Fate of Atlantis 😀

DonutKing wrote:

Anyway, now that I've done all that I feel like playing a bit of Fate of Atlantis 😀

Awww such a great game!

This game has fantastic MT-32 music, although it also sounds very good with a plain Sound Blaster.

There is a talkie version as well, with full speech and very well done...

Yeah I've got the CD talkie version, is it better with MT32 or General MIDI?
I played through Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle recently with the MT32 but a couple of people have said those games better with General MIDI.

Its not a big deal since I used to play them with a sound blaster when I was a kid so MT32 sounds heaps better already 🤣

Monkey Island 2 and Fate of Atlantis are MT-32 only. No General Midi support. Well, obviously, a GM device will play music, but you will get wrong instruments and none of the custom sound effects.

Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle support both, though I don't know which one would be the better option. I think General Midi, but I'm not sure!

They might just use the MT-32 in GM mode... (Not that the MT-32 had such a mode, they simply mapped GM instruments with MT-32 substitutes)

Hmm well the setup util for Fate of Atlantis has options for both Roland and General MIDI. I'm using the MT32 and it sounds fine though.

DOTT/S&M sounded fine with the MT32 as well, I think the games were composed with general MIDI in mind, but I read somewhere that it does some sort of on-the-fly translation from GM to MT32, when Roland is selected in the setup util. I've played through these games enough with Adlib music to know pretty much how every song is supposed to sound from memory and nothing sounded odd.

With Fate of Atlantis, it will just use the MT-32 driver. You can try it with the GM option and when you adjust the volume inside the game it will say MT-32. And the instruments will sound weird as well.

Or type in Atlantis X and will list all the command line options. And looking at the directory, there are only speaker, adlib and roland drivers (.ims files).

So yea MT-32 for Fate of Atlantis hands down...

Well done on the 8 MHz underclocking competition!

8 MHz with a POD? WOW!

heh, thanks 😀

I'm apparently 3rd slowest in the world on CPU-Z http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php

I did get down to 4MHz but the validator wouldn't take it 🙁

Does someone have an copy of that motherboard manual for me? I have bought it form the same seller but didnt get any manual..
A copy or PDF file is also fine..