First post, by flakes
Hi
So I decided I wanted a 486 like I had as a teenager. My requirements were for a simple setup 486DX2 ~66MHz 4-8MB ram, SB16, 1GB HDD and Network. I thought it would be easy to find the parts as who would want them these days! This led me to look on the net and find this site amongst other information.
So I started searching for parts. Gumtree and Facebook ads and weeks of people offering me P4 items even though I asked for old items and am not interested in P4 or newer.
I managed to assemble the following parts:
• Intel DX2ODPR66 (486 DX2 66 Overdrive)
• Creative SB16 value
• Trident TVGA 8900B 512KB
• Crappy ACER Motherboard (Stuffed)
• SCSI Card
A Month later I managed to find the following:
• Octek “Hawk” 486 Motherboard (More about this later )
• Fitted in socket 486DX 33
• RAM! More on this as well
• Goldstar Prime 2 Controller
So all items sitting on the bench looking Promising…. Cant wait to start the build.
I Hit Ebay and grabbed a few items after reading a few of the forums here. I ordered a ATX to AT power cable, IDE to SD adapter, BIOS POST ID, USB Floppy, Gotek Floppy.
All parts arrived after a while of waiting on China EBay sellers and good old Aust. Post.
Excitement for build couldn’t hold me back. I assembled the Motherboard and VGA with the new power adapter on the bench to start testing. Signs were very positive, Motherboard Flashed up and a Display was shown on my test LCD.
So I started doing a check out of the “System”. I noted that the Memory total was showing only 256KB. This was alarming as I thought (and had been told by the bloke I bought it off) that there was 8 x 1MB sims installed. I had never actually checked. Turns out that there was 4 x 1MB sims and a mix of something else that the motherboard wouldn’t detect with it installed. I am yet to work out what the sims are but I am happy with 4MB at the moment. It shows the correct Value of the 4 x 1MB sims.
With it successfully posting I decided to change the CPU to my Overdrive DX2 66. This posted and seemed to be working well. I hooked up a Floppy drive and was able to boot into Windows98 Dos boot Disk. All good, Ripper I have a 486 that I was after….. OR NOT!
I then powered it all down and put in My Sound Blaster, Network and SD to IDE. It all booted up nice. There was noise from the SB in the speakers, (Have to look into that!) and all seemed to be working (No Smoke signals).
Time to run some Diagnostics and see what is actually working. I ran NSSI and was looking at the benchmarks, it was running just slower that the 486DX2 66 that it was comparing it against. The FPU was about 10% off what it should have been. I then ran DR Hard to see further in depth what I had. I noticed it said that there was a statement about No cache! WFT!
Back to Vogons…. “486 Cache” oh Crap, I remember now, the issues with fake cache on cheap Motherboards. Surely I can’t still be finding motherboards with it. They must all be dead by now!
So out came cachechk. Sure enough “There appears to be no cache on the Motherboard” error (Something Like that). S#!t.
I have installed DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 and it seems to run. I am not sure if it’s because I know its missing the cache making me think it’s slow and crap or just what I should expect!
So I am thinking do I go ahead with the build or scrap it and look for another board.