I decided to see (or rather hear) for myself just how bad CQM really is compared to OPL3, since I have a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 CT4170 that I bought dirt cheap about 4 years ago. So I installed it in my Win98SE Tualeron Voodoo 3 Rig, disabled it in Device Manager since I only wanted it in DOS Mode, made DOS Mode files using Phil's starter pack, copied a few OPL2 & OPL3 trackers (along with their modules) over to the HDD, and proceeded to set up the whole thing. It all went with minimal trouble.
I tried it, and surprisingly it wasn't all that bad, some tunes even sounded the same! Some others sounded comically bad, and some others just slightly different. Still, I think the OPL3 sounds much better, although CQM isn't that much of an abomination either, just, different. Still better than AudioPCI's 'emulation', that's for sure. The thing is, most OPL2/3 Tunes are meant for actual OPL2/3 chips, not loose reimplementations.

I also noticed that my CRT monitor's display was a bit off, like the actual shape of the image was weird. I was kinda worried at first that it had somehow gotten damaged or magnetised beyond degaussing, but as it turns out, it just needed to be reconfigured in the OSD. It gave me some trouble, but I managed to get the image just about right.

Doom E2M2 will change your mind.

A while back, I de-heatsinked my Voodoo5, and yesterday, I finally got some new heatsinks for it from China.

While I don't have actual numbers to show the improvement they make temperature-wise, when I turned off my Pentium III-S machine it resides it after a few minutes in Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit and touched the back of the GPU where the dies are, it was only somewhat warm to the touch, versus hot before hand with the stock heatsinks. Worth all the risk IMO. The only thing left I can possibly think to do for the card is find better heatsinks for it - the diagonal hole distance for the V5's GPU dies are like 58mm, whereas the coolers I attached to it have the pushpins spaced 60mm apart. Thus, when mounted, the pushpins are bent inward to fit. Not a pretty sight, as are the coolers themselves, but they work, so for now I'm happy. 😀

After verifying my pricey investment is still functional, I then did some additional modding to the rig - I delidded my 1.4Ghz Tualatin, sanded the IHS down, and resealed it, using Kryonaut thermal paste between the die and IHS. Using Speedfan to monitor what appears to be the sensor underneath the CPU on the motherboard, I noticed a 3C improvement when running Prime95 v24.14. I'd hope that the actual improvement in temps are a bit more significant, but in any case, the CPU works, and runs a bit cooler now. "Neat" - Linus Sebastian

And then there were three...

Got a really good offer on a P/75 on e-bay so I grabbed that to be my portable Win9x Workstation/game machine. It's going to need some work too but at least the screen hinge is not cracked or showing any signs of stress on this one. So of course some hardware swapping has been going on. After the failed mSATA experiments with the Versas (including this one, tried that tonight), I've decided to bite the bullet and buy another 80GB PATA drive - after all, they're only like, $7 on E-bay, so it's worth it.

Just a little rundown on the P/75, it was dirty - as heck, still needs a good thorough cleaning, but it's better than it was. No Memory Card (looks like I'll be buying 2 32MB cards, one for the M/75, one for this one). My plans are to put in an 80GB HDD, check on the specs for the PCMCIA Slots (I think they are still only PCMCIA and not Cardbus) and maybe put Windows 95 OSR 2.5 on it. it came with a 540MB Drive with Windows 95 on it which kept locking up on boot, and I have no interest in conserving anything on it (it's got a new lease on life with me). The case is a little cracked in places, but that seems to be the normal thing for Versa...Versai...Versas.....

This will (should) be the last one, I just don't see a point in having an Ultralite (one of the early non-trackball versions).

A while back I ordered some Startech Ps/2 brackets. My ASUS PVI SP3 486 board didn't came with one and my KVM only supports PS/2 mouse & keyboard. I had to change the connector and to make sure I got the pin out correct and I found this helpful Vogons thread: PVI-486SP3 Documentation / Manual

Mouse is working perfectly!

On the same machine, the CPU fan was noisy, so I added some WD4 to that, hopefully this will quiet it down. One thing I noticed on this machine though, is that if I place my hand on the case (mini tower) the whole case is filled with a high frequency vibration. Its not that the case shakes or anything but there is a clear consistent vibration. Do we consider this normal for a 486 build with CPU fan?

Some time ago, I got hold of a KVM switch "MASTER VIEW PLUS CS-114A" for a good price (SVGA, 2x PS/2). I honestly did not know anything about it, I just thought maybe this will work better than my current KVM in my retro gaming setup (SVGA, RS232, DIN). I was rather dissatisfied with the current one, especially how it distored video quality but I dig the convenience. I finally got round to trying the new one today. It came with a 9V DC power brick and custom pass throug cables that combine SVGA and 2xPS/2 into a single strand cable. And it is great! There is some active logic behind the switching, it is not just a dumb passive switch as the old one was, and I am happy to report that it does not distort the passed-through video quality in any noticeable way! Supports all resolutions and refresh rates that I throw at it. Great! Also switching between running PCs seems seamless, and the custom cabling means less cable clutter. Change from RS232+DIN to 2xPS2 is no issue for my PCs, so what a great upgrade!

Cleaned this nice 386 AMD 386 SX/SXL 33Mhz motherboard. It boots. Added an aluminium heatsink on the CPU, but it still gets quite hot, so I will be placing a 4 or 5 cm fan on the PC case nearby when building a whole system.

Can you make a clearer photo ? 😀

I have the same board but mine is dead and I removed too many components to have it recognisable
Here's the corresponding uh19 page : http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/5411

Deksor wrote on 2020-09-19, 11:05:

Can you make a clearer photo ? 😀

I don't have a good quality phone or camera to make some really good pictures of the whole motherboard. But I can make better quality pictures of close-ups of the board. Maybe you could send me a PM with your e-mail, so I can send you some pictures.

The res is good enough, it's just the focus that's slightly off (maybe because of lighting or maybe the lens is a bit dirty ?)
Close-ups won't do, I simply want to add a good image on the UH19 page I linked ^^

Deksor wrote on 2020-09-19, 15:25:

The res is good enough, it's just the focus that's slightly off (maybe because of lighting or maybe the lens is a bit dirty ?)
Close-ups won't do, I simply want to add a good image on the UH19 page I linked ^^

I have a 8517 v3.3 took pics and posted BIOS here back in April: Re: 80386 BIOS image collection
Not sure if that helps..........

I think your board is related to this one http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2497 (these boards seem to have been sold under many brands)
(BTW your board isn't ECS, it's "Elite Technology Corp". ECS is "ELITEGROUP COMPUTER SYSTEM")

His board is exactly like my SER 386AS

Done a bit of good old fashion case modding with a Dremel today. Wanted to try and add some airflow to this AT case, and I also switched out the AT Power supply for a FSP 250watt PSU. It wouldn't fit with the PSU cut out the case had as it was orientated for AT PSU's. Cut out part of the plate to allow the ATX PSU in the correct orientation.

Also added a 120mm Gentle Typhoon fan at the front. It's running at full speed but it relatively quiet and pushes out some air!

Deksor wrote on 2020-09-19, 16:14:

I think your board is related to this one http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2497 (these boards seem to have been sold under many brands)
(BTW your board isn't ECS, it's "Elite Technology Corp". ECS is "ELITEGROUP COMPUTER SYSTEM")

His board is exactly like my SER 386AS

According to AMI code zz1218 is 1218 and is ECS (Elitegroup or Elitegroup Computer Systems), so the BIOS is ECS unless they have it wrong, have yet to find an error at Wims.
https://www.wimsbios.com/aminumbers.jsp points here:
https://www.wimsbios.com/biosupdates/ecs.jsp with links to this Elitegroup Computer System webpage:
https://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Index/EN/Home

ODwilly wrote on 2020-09-18, 22:43:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-09-18, 18:46:

Continued to work today on a PC containing the ECS P6BAT-Me v. 1.1 Socket 370/Slot 1 motherboard. Tried various different things, earlier Nvidia drivers as suggested above and a clean install of Windows 2000. Nothing changed, it still performs dreadfully.

I tested 1 game today - Quake III Arena and it struggled with that - FMV & Audio stuttering and frame drops, which is funny considering I can run it perfectly on a K6-2 at less than half the speed. Seriously something wrong with this system. Also spotted latency spikes which began occurring after the Via 4-in-1 chipset drivers are installed.

I guess there's probably only 3 things left for me to try - a PCI graphics card, rolling back to an earlier BIOS and also trying a different OS. But my thinking is that this board and/or the pre-133 Via Apollo chipset is just junk.

Do you have any other graphics cards to try with it? And have you tried older/newer versions of the Via drivers? I recall other people here having really dreadful performance until they found the perfect driver. Im also wondering if for some odd reason the fact that your Geforce is a 8x card might be an issue. Can you verify that it is running in 4x or 2x speed? Just spitballing ideas.

I've since tested a couple of other graphics cards -

ATI Radeon 9200SE AGP
Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 4000 AGP
Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 PCI

The Via drivers I've tried are 4.35, 4.49, 4.56 & 5.24.

No difference, same terrible performance. I couldn't go back to an earlier BIOS as it won't detect the 40GB HDDs I'm using, so I'm going to try a different OS on a spare drive/partition and see what effect that has.

Well here it says something different http://www.idhw.com/textual/guide/inst_mobo_ami_manu.html
ECS' is 1131
It's hard to tell who's correct and who's wrong 😒
Someone at wim's bios may have assumed that both were from ECS even though they're not ? Or maybe both are indeed ECS ... who knows.

Deksor wrote on 2020-09-19, 17:09:

Well here it says something different http://www.idhw.com/textual/guide/inst_mobo_ami_manu.html ECS' is 1131 It's hard to tell w […]
Show full quote

Well here it says something different http://www.idhw.com/textual/guide/inst_mobo_ami_manu.html
ECS' is 1131
It's hard to tell who's correct and who's wrong 😒
Someone at wim's bios may have assumed that both were from ECS even though they're not ? Or maybe both are indeed ECS ... who knows.

When I research http://www.elite.com.tw back in late 1990's all they made were Modems and software for them, not one mention of motherboards so my suspicion is they were not a motherboard maker OR could have been part of ECS since they both are Taiwan based as you say.

pan069 wrote on 2020-09-19, 07:44:

A while back I ordered some Startech Ps/2 brackets. My ASUS PVI SP3 486 board didn't came with one and my KVM only supports PS/2 mouse & keyboard. I had to change the connector and to make sure I got the pin out correct and I found this helpful Vogons thread: PVI-486SP3 Documentation / Manual

Mouse is working perfectly!

On the same machine, the CPU fan was noisy, so I added some WD4 to that, hopefully this will quiet it down. One thing I noticed on this machine though, is that if I place my hand on the case (mini tower) the whole case is filled with a high frequency vibration. Its not that the case shakes or anything but there is a clear consistent vibration. Do we consider this normal for a 486 build with CPU fan?

WD40 is metal coating to prevent rust. Due to this, the oil mixture it used thickens with time in few days your "lube" will turn into sticky, greasy paste-like stuff and fan may stop. If you like that fan, best way is take it apart and clean horrible stuff out and use baby oil (mineral oil) or engine oil if you have some around. I use clock and watch oils as I have it on hand due to my watch and clock hobby.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-09-19, 18:05:

pan069 wrote on 2020-09-19, 07:44:

A while back I ordered some Startech Ps/2 brackets. My ASUS PVI SP3 486 board didn't came with one and my KVM only supports PS/2 mouse & keyboard. I had to change the connector and to make sure I got the pin out correct and I found this helpful Vogons thread: PVI-486SP3 Documentation / Manual

Mouse is working perfectly!

On the same machine, the CPU fan was noisy, so I added some WD4 to that, hopefully this will quiet it down. One thing I noticed on this machine though, is that if I place my hand on the case (mini tower) the whole case is filled with a high frequency vibration. Its not that the case shakes or anything but there is a clear consistent vibration. Do we consider this normal for a 486 build with CPU fan?

WD40 is metal coating to prevent rust. Due to this, the oil mixture it used thickens with time in few days your "lube" will turn into sticky, greasy paste-like stuff and fan may stop. If you like that fan, best way is take it apart and clean horrible stuff out and use baby oil (mineral oil) or engine oil if you have some around. I use clock and watch oils as I have it on hand due to my watch and clock hobby.

Cheers,

Agree ! Sewing machine oil is also one of the best if you can find it, extremely light weight, does not thicken and generally safe on all metals and most plastics too.

Horun wrote on 2020-09-19, 18:10:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-09-19, 18:05:

pan069 wrote on 2020-09-19, 07:44:

A while back I ordered some Startech Ps/2 brackets. My ASUS PVI SP3 486 board didn't came with one and my KVM only supports PS/2 mouse & keyboard. I had to change the connector and to make sure I got the pin out correct and I found this helpful Vogons thread: PVI-486SP3 Documentation / Manual

Mouse is working perfectly!

On the same machine, the CPU fan was noisy, so I added some WD4 to that, hopefully this will quiet it down. One thing I noticed on this machine though, is that if I place my hand on the case (mini tower) the whole case is filled with a high frequency vibration. Its not that the case shakes or anything but there is a clear consistent vibration. Do we consider this normal for a 486 build with CPU fan?

WD40 is metal coating to prevent rust. Due to this, the oil mixture it used thickens with time in few days your "lube" will turn into sticky, greasy paste-like stuff and fan may stop. If you like that fan, best way is take it apart and clean horrible stuff out and use baby oil (mineral oil) or engine oil if you have some around. I use clock and watch oils as I have it on hand due to my watch and clock hobby.

Cheers,

Agree ! Sewing machine oil is also one of the best if you can find it, extremely light weight, does not thicken and generally safe on all metals and most plastics too.

How about silicone lubricant ? Not recommending, just asking .