My first thought is, is the the turbo button working...

Let's get some benchmarks first, can you head here and download the 486+ benchmark suite: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/486-benchmark-suite.html

Best to unpack, then burn onto a CD, then copy onto your PC. Just type bench and follow the menu system. You can then compare with other results from this database: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

philscomputerlab wrote:

My first thought is, is the the turbo button working...

Let's get some benchmarks first, can you head here and download the 486+ benchmark suite: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/486-benchmark-suite.html

Best to unpack, then burn onto a CD, then copy onto your PC. Just type bench and follow the menu system. You can then compare with other results from this database: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

The turbo button does appear to be working. Turned on, Doom is as you see in that video. Off, it's unplayable.

I'll run the benchmarks now and post back with the results.

Not exactly sure where I should be comparing my results. Seems to be a lot going on in that thread but no central collection for data? Point me in the right direction if I'm wrong.

My results:

3dbench - 305
PCPbench - 7.7 i think?
Doom - Don't know, says "bad command or file name - press any key to continue."
Quake - Don't know, nothing happens, just reloads menu.
CHKCPU -

All the data is in the spreadsheet (Google sheet) 😀

Ok...so i compared...i was faster than one with the same processor but slower than everyone else with the same processor. So, it's slower, but I knew that already. Not entirely sure what to do with this info.

Tells me a lot. The first score makes no sense. It's way too high. You computer having trouble with Doom and Quake is also of concern.

Do you have just this machine, or other parts you can use to test?

Maybe it's because I'm running it off a cd?

Oh, and that first score is 30.5, it's hard to see the ".".

What other parts should I use?

Yes, I mentioned to copy the folder from the CD to the drive. All the sub directories need to be included though.

Well you swap out all the main parts. Different controller. Different video card. The usual trouble shooting steps.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Yes, I mentioned to copy the folder from the CD to the drive. All the sub directories need to be included though.

Well you swap out all the main parts. Different controller. Different video card. The usual trouble shooting steps.

Not sure how I should go about doing that. My controller and video card are one in the same. I have a video card I could pull from a gateway 2000, but I'd have to keep the other video card in. This would create problems, no?

I think when I copied the files over, it didn't copy all of them. My mistake, I'll try it again.

Ok, so I ran the Doom benchmark. When it was done, there was no mention anywhere of FPS, so I don't know what the results are, but from watching it, it ran like garbage. Quake doesn't run at all. Says only 3.9 megs of memory reported, can't execute game, which doesn't make sense since I have 8mb of ram installed, but whatever.

Nevermind. Figured it out. Got less than 8fps for doom. Yeeeesh. 🙁

Anyone have any ideas?

More ram and a ET6000? 😀

leileilol wrote:

More ram and a ET6000? 😀

You might actually be onto something here. Here's another benchmark I ran.

Looks like the vid card might be the weak link here.

Just from what I am have read it might be a combination of a weak video card, and maybe the combo card has issues sharing bandwidth/and or runs out of bandwidth on the VLB slot? In any case to my mind a combo card like that would be considerably slower than two separate cards running in different slots 😀 just my 2 cents

Makes sense. I think I'll try that next, see how we do. Any recommendations on a good video card for such a system?

As leileilol suggested an ET6000 would not be a bad choice. I have read good things about the S3 based VLB cards like the 805. Which Vesa Local Bus graphics card? here is a good thread on Vogons to read through and see suggestions 😀

The only ET6000s I find (or even 4000s) are the AX model. Does that matter?

Nevermind, none of the ones listed on ebay are VLB. Can't find any S3 980s either. This is the only thing I could find that seemed highly recommended.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cirrus-Logic-VLB-Vide … =item23558ca992

Thoughts?

You've done cache and A20

The other possibles, maybe you can lower the DRAM wait state from 2 to 1 or to 0 - run a memtest to see if it holds up at lower WS.
Decoupled refresh enabled may be better.

Shadow RAM = main - what other options - if "main + Video/vbios" then that would be much better for anything accessing the Vbios.
Alternatively, running UNIVBE may improve video operations.

PS. The way the BUS works, I can't see there being any disadvantage in a combo card - but a CL5428 is more advanced than a 5424, though most significantly in Windows acceleration .... couple of cheaper option on Intl shipping from Ukraine - a 5428 and a WD90c33 - a great Windows accelerator, don't know about DOS though - I remember these old cards mostly from putting them through WINTACH.