First post, by keropi
- Rank
- l33t++
Hiya!
I decided to finally build a decent 386DX/40 pc after I dismantled a p1 machine and have a nice BabyAT tower free 😊
For the mobo I chose the Biostar MB-1333/40UCQ-A v1.1 (LINK) , soldered 386DX/40 and modded with CR2032 battery.
TheLastByte UMB driver works with the chipset so I also get hassle-free UMBs to use 😊
For VGA I had a choise of two 1MB cirus cards, a 5424 and a 5428. So I used the SPEA V7-VEGA CL-GD5428 one:
... and a 1320C with the CMS chips:
... and a SW-60XG for GM support (which btw I tested on the 8bit ISA slot and it works fine in games)
... and the much needed NIC for easy transfers with mTCP
for I/O I will be using this standard one, nothing special:
plus the usual storage devices, a 1.44MB floppy - 20GB HDD (with DiskManager ofcourse) and a DVD-ROM all installed happily together:
For sound I will keep those cards for now, I am planning though to get a series of external modules and connect them via a Roland MPU: a CM-32L , a SC-55 MK1 and a MU-80 (or MU-50).
Most likely when I get these modules I'll use them on my p1 build and install the LAPC-I it has on the 386DX build.
Maybe I'll also keep the SW-60XG on the 386DX so it has a GM synth too.
I am very satisfied with the 1320C but I'll try the 1350B with the CMS upgrade and see how that goes.
The only thing I found trouble with is Scitech Display Doctor and UNIVBE (same thing , just trying out versions)
The latest 6.53 version just freezes the machine.
The 5.3a version works but it freezes the machine in VBETEST -> quick compatibility test. Testing manually modes work.
I have gone to 5.1a but I still get this erratic behavior.
Changing VGAs does not help (tried the 2 CL ones and a WDC one) and I also left the machine to do a 16hrs memtest:
What I found is that changing the I/O card (had a different one installed before, now using the one pictured above) improved the univbe stuff but still not perfect. I also made tests with only vga/io installed and no memory managers at all, didn't made any difference in behavior.
I also found that the VGAs 0WS support was OFF, when I enabled 0WS the bandwidth in SpeedSYS went from 3892kb/s to 5604kb/s which improved things in games like Wolfenstein3D 😊 (tried disabling 0WS again in case it made a difference in univbe but no)
Is there a suggestion of the order the cards are installed? The ISA slots are numbered from top to bottom, does the order of the cards make a difference? I usually install the VGA and I/O in the first slots.
Other than this SDD/UNIVBE problem I had no other issues until now, I have been testing this combo on the bench for some time (with games 😁 ) and all seems fine...
As always any suggestions will be highly appreciated 😊