Don't know about that one but found an interesting pic of one from a Gateway for comparison.

You would need a serious OS to run with any dual 486 motherboard, though, as no consumer version of Windows does anything with dual processors so any vision you might have had of this being the basis of the ultimate 486 gaming rig are now destroyed. 😁

I'd probably need Linux or some (true) workstation OS to take advantage of 2 CPUs, at least that's what I was thinking when I said I wasn't sure if it would effectively use them. If only there were a way to tie them in as 1 CPU for windows 😉 .
I like the Gateway one due to it's lack of riser card and the presence of VLB. But I like the DEC for it's PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors... and it's serial and parallel... and the fact that it's not a Gateway (pretty much everyone I knew growing up had a lot of bad experiences with the older Gateway machines). As far as vision of the ultimate 486, I'd say I'd probably be building that around either a Shuttle HOT-433 or an Asus SP3, if I ever could get my hands on one for anything that even resembles a reasonable price.

The DECpc LP is not a dual CPU system. You can only use one CPU at a time, and you switch between the sockets by way of these three jumpers on the daughtercard:

I guess the idea was that you could upgrade to a new CPU without having to wrangle the old one out. A bit of a strange approach to the issue, for sure, but all of their x86 systems were a bit... odd.

I like the Gateway one due to it's lack of riser card and the presence of VLB.

What do you really need VLB slots for, though? The DEC machine already has a decent onboard VLB video setup (at least once you put in the extra 512K VRAM), and I think the IDE is on VLB too. And since it's already got all the other I/O stuff onboard, the only thing that'd really need to be added would be a sound card... and you have the ISA slots for that.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

The DECpc LP is not a dual CPU system. You can only use one CPU at a time, and you switch between the sockets by way of these th […]
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The DECpc LP is not a dual CPU system. You can only use one CPU at a time, and you switch between the sockets by way of these three jumpers on the daughtercard:

I guess the idea was that you could upgrade to a new CPU without having to wrangle the old one out. A bit of a strange approach to the issue, for sure, but all of their x86 systems were a bit... odd.

I like the Gateway one due to it's lack of riser card and the presence of VLB.

What do you really need VLB slots for, though? The DEC machine already has a decent onboard VLB video setup (at least once you put in the extra 512K VRAM), and I think the IDE is on VLB too. And since it's already got all the other I/O stuff onboard, the only thing that'd really need to be added would be a sound card... and you have the ISA slots for that.

That's... interesting. The slot 1 and socket 370 motherboards which were uniprocessor only boards made sense to me, but this does not. Since both of those sockets are identical, it seems like overkill to have two identical sockets on the board. Then again, if one were to make some jumper wires and bring them to the front panel, that might mean it could be the ultimate 486 gaming motherboard. Forget turbo, you've got two cpu's to choose from (but if you forget to power down the box before switching, bad things will happen).

Does that DEC board throw a fit if a normal PC compatible ISA card gets installed though? That could hamper things a bit. I've never been lucky enough to get near anything DEC made so I haven't got a friggin clue 😀. [/i]

sliderider wrote:

Don't know about that one but found an interesting pic of one from a Gateway for comparison. […]
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Don't know about that one but found an interesting pic of one from a Gateway for comparison.

Wow, I have 2 boards edit:somewhat endedit similar to this one, except both are Alpha...and both won't even post 🙁
Ah....well atleast they look nice...or something

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Don't know about that one but found an interesting pic of one from a Gateway for comparison. […]
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Don't know about that one but found an interesting pic of one from a Gateway for comparison.

Wow, I have 2 boards edit:somewhat endedit similar to this one, except both are Alpha...and both won't even post 🙁
Ah....well atleast they look nice...or something

Alpha!!!

Hells yeah. You can get Linux to run on them. Well, if they worked you could.

Does that DEC board throw a fit if a normal PC compatible ISA card gets installed though?

Nah, other than the strange motherboard layout, it's a pretty bog standard 486 system. IIRC it gives you three full-length ISA slots to play with.

What do you really need VLB slots for, though?

Options... I like options. However useless they may be.

The DECpc LP is not a dual CPU system.

Thank you for that information. It still gives me some ideas where it might be even more useful than a dual cpu unit... well.. kinda. For example the switch option to beat turbo.
By the way, I don't even have the rest of the equipment to boot this up yet... I'm too lazy to dig around anymore for them at the moment. It might not even work.
As a side note, I love Alpha although I didn't get to do much with their technology.
I know someone that used to work with various Cray and Alpha supercomputers and workstations from the 80s into the 90s. He hated comming home to his PC because it was so much slower (he wasn't much of a gamer).

After a bit of scouring in the depths of the HP/Compaq site, I managed to turn up a service manual for the thing... it gives all the jumper settings and such.

Thanks! I now have something to read up on before I go to bed. 😀
And I was just complaining that I don't read enough anymore 🤣 . But seriously, that should help me quite a bit.