I'm also keen on the Octek HIPPO-VL+, it's indeed an interesting board. It has no cache, but I don't know how much DCA helps with that, or whether the 8MB 30-pin RAM that came on it is actual EDRAM or just regular FPM. It would be interesting to test.

The board's chipset is Headland HT340 and it apparently has a MR. BIOS chip on it. It came my possession in a somewhat poor condition: the chipset had some bent legs and one leg that had separated from the motherboard completely, I realigned and soldered that back on. It also had a battery leakage I cleaned with alcohol and neutralized with vinegar as I best could. I have not tested it after these fixes though.

It is an interesting board for sure, and has no VRM for 3.3V CPUs, so that limits my choices processor-wise; but I am not starved for choices either way, with a few Overdrive CPUs and several SX/DX CPUs to choose from. I don't mind LIF sockets, they are fine as long as you are careful. The U5SX and Octek do sound like they could be a fun (or terrible) pairing indeed.

The other board I am similarly interested in this bunch is the DataExpert EXP-8046. It has ISA, VLB and PCI all in one place, can accept 3.3V CPUs, is ZIF, has onboard IDE/FDD controller, full cache and 72-pin SIMM slots - it's a decent transitional board from the VLB era to the PCI. I don't know about the UMC chipset, however; UMC chipsets I've come across from the era mostly focus on being more affordable. A fast 486 is not what I am going for here, though, unless someone sways my mind..

One thing I did find with the AMD 486 DX 40 is that it runs really HOT, earlier SKU's of the Intel DX 33 do also, so be aware of that!
The UMC U5S Green CPU 33/40 is a great 486 CPU and shouldn't be underestimated, it's not like your gonna be daft and try and run Quake on a 486 anyway so the FPU is pretty much irrelevant for games, I did some testing ages back and it was on near par with intel DX/2 cpu's when I ran it at the 40 MHz, and ran cool as a cucumber at all times, no fan needed.
The WDC 90c30/31 series of ISA cards are great for DOS, no compatibility issues like the Tseng series, cheap enough if you can find one and I highly recommend.
My pal runs a UMC SX 40(soldered on) on VLB with a S3 805 VGA(VLB) and it is good as gold, he finds it does all he needs for DOS games of the era, has a Gateway Pentium 90 for slightly needier stuff with DOS, but those are few and far between so it gets little use in truth.

Oh, and if you decide to go PCI motherboard, and hey, why not, go Ark logic for the VGA, those things are super quick with no weirdness like matrox or tseng. My 486 uses a tomato 4DPS motherboard with PCI and I found the ark worked just dandy. But I do tend to have a taste for the weirder more obscure hardware, but I like it to work well too!

I do have an ARK1000... That just might not be a bad idea, after all.. Use the DataExpert motherboard and try weird things like the ARK1000, MX86200 vs CL and CHIPS VLB cards..

I was planing on building an all UMC 486 build once. With a UMC chipset VLB motherboard, CPU, Cache, VLB controller, and as many UMC components as I could find.

Just curious, but what were the other systems you (OP) build in the last 2 years...?

tincup wrote:

Just curious, but what were the other systems you (OP) build in the last 2 years...?

They are in my signature below (except the 486 of course).

I also refurbished and upgraded a Dell Dimension XPS D333, Dell Optiplex GX110 (which actually died a few months ago, still troubleshooting), a Compaq Deskpro EP and a Compaq Deskrp EN-SF in the meantime..

BSA Starfire wrote:

Oh, and if you decide to go PCI motherboard, and hey, why not, go Ark logic for the VGA, those things are super quick with no weirdness like matrox or tseng. My 486 uses a tomato 4DPS motherboard with PCI and I found the ark worked just dandy. But I do tend to have a taste for the weirder more obscure hardware, but I like it to work well too!

They are fast but the image quality on the few I’ve tried was pretty gross - after seeing Matrox it’s hard to go back.

badmojo wrote:

BSA Starfire wrote:

Oh, and if you decide to go PCI motherboard, and hey, why not, go Ark logic for the VGA, those things are super quick with no weirdness like matrox or tseng. My 486 uses a tomato 4DPS motherboard with PCI and I found the ark worked just dandy. But I do tend to have a taste for the weirder more obscure hardware, but I like it to work well too!

They are fast but the image quality on the few I’ve tried was pretty gross - after seeing Matrox it’s hard to go back.

Nothing from the era compares to the Matrox's DAC, I recently replaced a G450 PCI with a GF2MX PCI due to performance concerns in a Compaq OEM (no AGP) and the GF2MX is about to make me go blind, I can't stand it anymore, I will have to go back to the G450 and sell this.

OK so assuming all that need be said has been said on the matter, we are going with the Octek DCA motherboard. Here is what we have for the moment.

Now, let's pick a video card.

In terms of VLB, I do not have an extensive collection:

The same goes for ISA as well I'm afraid (and I have to save one of these for my 386SX build too..)

My heart goes out to the CL VLB cards (as they were what I had back in the day) but this build is shaping up to be nothing like what I used to have so I may as well try the CHIPS VLB card? I suppose going with ISA would be pointless?