It doesn't mean that average prices will drop. It just means that this particular seller actually wanted to sell his stuff in a few days, and not someday in a very distant future, after waiting for ages to find a fool willing to pay an insane price.

Yeah, I saw them but I have too much stuff already.

batracio wrote:

It doesn't mean that average prices will drop. It just means that this particular seller actually wanted to sell his stuff in a few days, and not someday in a very distant future, after waiting for ages to find a fool willing to pay an insane price.

Why must you rain on my parade? 🤣
Oh well, it appears all 4 sold already.

My point was that at least some people are starting to list items at more reasonable prices. This isn't the first moderately priced item that I've seen. I'm just trying to be a glass is half full kind of person, rather than a looks like there's too much glass kind of person.

I'm a glass half empty kinda person myself, I reckon this stuff will go up, and up... etc. 😀

Hi Guys... I remember seeing it, but I thought the price was still high (and I am sure I will get some criticism for this, but I don't think shuttle boards are all that great.) Also, I'd stay away (1) boards with one of those Dallas chips, and (2) boards with varta batteries. Just my two cents.....

ncmark wrote:

Hi Guys... I remember seeing it, but I thought the price was still high (and I am sure I will get some criticism for this, but I don't think shuttle boards are all that great.) Also, I'd stay away (1) boards with one of those Dallas chips, and (2) boards with varta batteries. Just my two cents.....

I demand an appology for your opinion!
Ok, seriously, I agree that the Shuttle HOT-433 rev 4 has it's problems (I'd compare the earlier revisions if I ever got my hands on them), for example soldered on cache and Dallas, cache maxes at 512KB, mine don't have PS/2 keyboard port (I have to use an adapter or an old AT keyboard), cpu socket position can block some ISA cards, lack of VLB (ok, I guess that's just me), onboard PIO seems to have issues with some people, PCI divider only does 1:1 or 1:1/2, and it doesn't seem to have an 83MHz bus option.
That said, I've never gotten any other board to support 150MHz stable (until I screwed it up, but I'm hoping some day to get my hands on a working 8433UUD board to see if that one can pull it off as well) even in WIN98SE on an IBM 5x86 cpu, and even with those common issues, it's still one of the most functional boards in the socket 3 era.

It's one of the best 486 motherboards that I've ever used, and the fact that it's being sold for less than crappy boards were going for a month ago is a plus... I'm still hoping that others will pick up on this pricing trend. We all need pipe dreams.

Well I can maybe see replacing a varta battery, if the board has pins for an external battery (and maybe even if it doesn't).
But my understanding is those Dallas chips have more than a battery inside, and you can't simply remove them. So if it's bad and you can't get a replacement..........

ncmark wrote:

Well I can maybe see replacing a varta battery, if the board has pins for an external battery (and maybe even if it doesn't).
But my understanding is those Dallas chips have more than a battery inside, and you can't simply remove them. So if it's bad and you can't get a replacement..........

And that's why I'm partial to the CR2032 batteries. At least with the barrel batteries, you can pretty easily desolder them and add a socket for the "button" type batteries.

I still consider the Shuttle HOT-433 Rev. 4 to be on my top 5 list of socket 3 motherboards, but if you don't like it, I'm not going to try to talk you into buying one 😉 .

I was talking about ANY board with a varta battery or Dallas chip, not just that one 😀
I don't think I'm brave enough to try that Dallas chip modification 😀=

ncmark wrote:

I was talking about ANY board with a varta battery or Dallas chip, not just that one 😀
I don't think I'm brave enough to try that Dallas chip modification 😀=

I apologize. I wrote my reply rather hastily and skipped a good deal of my thoughts. I ment that I usually agree with you on the Dallas chip and Varta batteries, but that I still like the shuttle 433.

Nevertheless, I may consider the board to still retain worth to me because of it's strengths, while you may have no interest in it's overclockability for example.

No need to apologize - I was just offering an opinion (and we know what those are worth) 😀

ncmark wrote:

But my understanding is those Dallas chips have more than a battery inside, and you can't simply remove them. So if it's bad and you can't get a replacement..........

I've replaced 8 Dallas RTC modules with new ones. The RTC's are still made new by Maxim and you can get them on digikey. The desoldering and replacement of the RTC was pretty easy going for me. When replacing the RTC module, it is best to solder in a DIP socket so that the next time the RTC dies (in ~15 years), no soldering is required. All my 486 boards, which once had a soldered RTC, now have an RTC DIP socket and a new RTC. You can also probably find RTC's in China for less (~$3-6 each), but you probably won't get a new one. The newest RTC from China I received had a 2006 datecode.

@nemesis
Nope, didn't see that auction. I don't usually poke around on ebay.COM. $40 for a HOT-433 is probably reaching my upper and more desperate spending limit for a questionably stable motherboard. There is still a glimmer of hope in the back of my mind in finding a bug free HOT-433 though.

That guy had another batch of HOT 433's for sale after the first one but he sold those at $45 each and he has another lot on now for $55 each. I think he's testing the waters to see how high he can go before people stop buying then he is going to put a bunch of them up all at once.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SHUTTLE-433-Ver-4-0-M … =item2ebd746449

Considering nemesis' recent issues, I may be writing off this motherboard. Even $40 is starting to seem too expensive for me now. This guy would probably be able to double or triple his revenue if he shipped worldwide.

Item is sold as-is without possibility of return. From my experience with Shuttle socket 3/7 boards, once you've done something the board doesn't like (i.e. the wrong RAM, had the CPU inserted 90 degrees off for 1 second, looked at the chipset wrong...), it will always be buggy thereafter.

We have no idea what these motherboards have gone through. It will be much more economically sound for me to let you all buy'em up while I sit back and wait for the test results! A better buy might be a NIB HOT-433 v3 board which hopefully works with 1024 KB cache, has socketed cache, and a working PS/2 port header.

Those Dallas chips can still be found on-line very cheaply...wouldn't hurt to have 2-3 on hand if you were that worried about. In addition, you can carve out the plastic, disconnect the on-board battery and solder in a coil cell holder+battery. I did on an old 386 many moons ago.

7cjbill2 wrote:

Those Dallas chips can still be found on-line very cheaply...wouldn't hurt to have 2-3 on hand if you were that worried about. In addition, you can carve out the plastic, disconnect the on-board battery and solder in a coil cell holder+battery. I did on an old 386 many moons ago.

Some sockets would be a good idea, too, so you won't ever have to desolder/solder again the next time the battery dies.

I'm wanting to build an ultimate pci 486, just about got all but the HDD I want and a case (I NEVER have any AT cases, I always have to score a dumpster one or thrift store). I might bite on one of these.

I know a lot may think it a little high-priced, but I do pretty good at second hand stores (buying whole pc's for $7, for example) so it'll probably be a wash for me.

I was able to get ahold of one of these boards. If the PS/2 mouse headers work and the board is stable, it would be a good competitor to the Biostar MB-8433UUD. I couldn't stand the soldered cache and RTC, so I desoldered them and soldered in cache and RTC sockets, as well as the cache jumper headers. See images. I then filled the cache with '1024' pieces for 512 KB of L2 cache.

Speedsys, cachechk, and Memtest v4 all seem to pass, however the MS-DOS HIMEM memory test shows unreliable memory. I tried 1 and 2 pieces of 64 MB FPM RAM.

POST indicates 512 KB of L2 cache, and Speedsys and Cachechk are in agreement with this. So the board is definately upgradeable with a little time soldering.

At first Speedsys and Landmark showed a relatively slow graphics speed, however fiddling with the BIOS settings, and then eventually putting them back to where they were originally, seems to have corrected the graphics speed to where it should be. My only real concern now is the HIMEM failure. I'd also like to see if the PS/2 mouse port works, and to check for stability in Windows. I don't have any expectations for this board.

For anyone else who has this board and is interested in the DIP modification, the solder/desolder work too me about 3.5 hours.

EDIT: Booted into Windows2000 without much issue, however had some issues after installing the Matrox Millennium G200 drivers (the Biostar board has no issues with W2K and G200 drivers). It does not appear as if the PS/2 mouse port works. Again Shuttle failed to properly implement the PS/2 mouse feature. That's probably it for my testing.

I thought those boards had Dallas chips??? (I know I remember seeing one that did)....