Some additional pictures :

Still using the Seagate to boot (love the sound)

Some extra flash storage.

The Philips single speed CDROM with interface card

3COM ethernet card (great support / drivers / config)

Very nice system. I like the composition, very harmonious. Also the old Microsoft mouse and the Typhoon speakers fit very well into the picture. Maybe a S3 864, Mach64 or CL GD5434 would fit a bit better into the time context, but that's high level criticism.

The Philips CD drive was my very first, for 4 months until the host controller broke. I also remember that the cover of the drawer was also slightly bent, which annoyed me a lot at the time. But as I remember it was a double speed drive.

Speedsys and topbench.

Cool, that's the exact same CD-ROM and interface card as what I found in a recent 486 purchase!

When I bought the system I thought I was getting luck and it had a strange or exotic sound card, but nooooooo it was just the CD Audio output jacks on the Philips CD interface card. 😀

Good memories, That CPU, HDD combo matches what my mate got in mid/late 95. It was fast compared to our early 95' DX2/66 420 MB HDD although he's was a pure ISA machine and ours was VLB.
none of us had 16MB RAM till years later 😉

Phils benchmark suite used to have a corresponding post, not sure if it's still updated but means you can compare to other machines
Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

mostly people list the results kind of as a conclusion to their build post.

but yeh very nice machine it's not a best of everything build like most (including me) do with AWE's Rolands, 5x86's, etc, etc.
Rather it's a honest build that closer resembles PC's of the period. I wouldn't change a thing

If you posts your Speedsys and topbench results I can compare with my VLB 486dx4-100 build.

Oh, you have the write through version of the Am486DX4.

Can you post a picture from the bottom side of your ST3660A please?

Which SRAM and DRAM timing do you have in your BIOS?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-11-17, 14:40:

If you posts your Speedsys and topbench results I can compare with my VLB 486dx4-100 build.

SpeedSys 4.78 = 37.55
TopBench 3.8 = 192

Disruptor wrote on 2020-11-18, 14:20:

Oh, you have the write through version of the Am486DX4.

Can you post a picture from the bottom side of your ST3660A please?

Which SRAM and DRAM timing do you have in your BIOS?

Haven't done much tuning yet. Enabling the CPU->PCI mem post write buffer seems to have brought a lot of performance gain.

It's currently running so cannot take a picture of the hard drive ... but you might see it briefly here : https://youtu.be/SX2kbSIbpvM?t=315
Let me know if you need a better picture and I'll get it out of the PC.

Your ST3660A is a model without a chip from Creative Labs.

Oh you have lots of wrong settings.

Your ISA bus is overclocked to 11 MHz. ISA BUS clock should be 1/4 PCLK.
All timings below should be set to minimum.
You may enable DRAM Slow Refresh.
You may enable CPU Burst Writes.

PCI IRQ Activated By: Level
The last 3 IDE Settings: Enabled

However, when you see your board is running instable you may undo some speed bumps, starting with DRAM Read Options.
I'd start optimizing the cache timings first.

Disruptor wrote on 2020-11-18, 21:13:

Your ISA bus is overclocked to 11 MHz. ISA BUS clock should be 1/4 PCLK.

Bullshit, if it is working at 11MHz he should leave it be

I always overclock my ISA when possible, 11 is tame - it's when you get up over 12 that things stop working

Disruptor wrote on 2020-11-18, 21:13:

Your ST3660A is a model without a chip from Creative Labs.

Anything special about that combo ?

Disruptor wrote on 2020-11-18, 21:13:

Oh you have lots of wrong settings. […]
Show full quote

Oh you have lots of wrong settings.

Your ISA bus is overclocked to 11 MHz. ISA BUS clock should be 1/4 PCLK.
All timings below should be set to minimum.
You may enable DRAM Slow Refresh.
You may enable CPU Burst Writes.

PCI IRQ Activated By: Level
The last 3 IDE Settings: Enabled

With minimum you mean the lowest CCLK's values ( = should translate to higher throughput / performance) ?
Cause all the ones you see are the lowest values.

Haven't done much "tuning", just put everything to the lowest value and that gained me some percentage points in some benchmarks.
The biggest gain came from enabling the cpu->pci mem post write buffer (3dbench jumped from 51 to 58)

Disruptor wrote on 2020-11-18, 21:13:

However, when you see your board is running instable you may undo some speed bumps, starting with DRAM Read Options.
I'd start optimizing the cache timings first.

Haven't seen any instability yet with the settings below. Some BIOS combo's result in a failure to boot.
But haven't spent too much time on the performance front. Just looked around online at some benchmark results, noticed mine was underperforming in some benchmarks (even with aggresive timings in the bios), but forgot to enable the cpu->pci mem post write buffer. After that I get results that compare well to most what I find online.

Can you posts your benchmark results ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-11-19, 12:50:

Can you posts your benchmark results ?

Edited the original post with some numbers.

Those CPU benchmark scores seem low.
I have seen higher scores using the Lucky star LS-486 motherboard.
Even my VLB motherboard with Intel overdrive 486dx4-100 CPU scored a little higher.

Are you using EDO ram ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-11-19, 21:37:

Even my VLB motherboard with Intel overdrive 486dx4-100 CPU scored a little higher.

Any Intel 486 DX4 / 100 should be faster than the AMD 486 DX4 / 100 NV8T.

The Am486DX4 / 100 NV8T is the slowest of all 100 MHz 486 CPUs. (8 KB cache instead of 16 KB, write-through instead of write-back; and the Intel ones should have more IPC too)

RetroSpector78 wrote on 2020-11-19, 07:13:

...
With minimum you mean the lowest CCLK's values ( = should translate to higher throughput / performance) ?
Cause all the ones you see are the lowest values.

That is sad.

Disruptor wrote on 2020-11-20, 18:37:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-11-19, 21:37:

Even my VLB motherboard with Intel overdrive 486dx4-100 CPU scored a little higher.

Any Intel 486 DX4 / 100 should be faster than the AMD 486 DX4 / 100 NV8T.

The Am486DX4 / 100 NV8T is the slowest of all 100 MHz 486 CPUs. (8 KB cache instead of 16 KB, write-through instead of write-back; and the Intel ones should have more IPC too)

Well, I read the Intel 486dx4-100 overdrive CPU is actually slower than the standard Intel 486dx4-100 CPU.

The Intel 486 dx 4 - 100 with 16 kb write back cache is really good.