smeezekitty wrote:

One annoyance if you haven't found it already is there is no output for an HDD light. I am thinking of soldering the HDD light to my CF card adapter to make it work

It's near the front panel connectors.

RacoonRider wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

One annoyance if you haven't found it already is there is no output for an HDD light. I am thinking of soldering the HDD light to my CF card adapter to make it work

It's near the front panel connectors.

Where?

I found the power led, speaker, key lock, reset, turbo switch, turbo led. Cannot find a hdd light output

JP31, but I'm at work now and can't say for sure which 2 pins of 4 you connect the LED to. http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/m/A-B/33389.htm

RacoonRider wrote:

JP31, but I'm at work now and can't say for sure which 2 pins of 4 you connect the LED to. http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/m/A-B/33389.htm

Woohoo! It works. Despite no marking on the silkscreen and no marking in the manual

My new 486 build in action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uSMDtZkkLQ

In case you ever want to try AMD 5x86-133, use settings for 486DX4-100SV8B and set JP12 to 1-2. Opening JP12 will make the system work as SV8B, closing - as 5x86.

RacoonRider wrote:

In case you ever want to try AMD 5x86-133, use settings for 486DX4-100SV8B and set JP12 to 1-2. Opening JP12 will make the system work as SV8B, closing - as 5x86.

I am not sure how fast a 5x86-133 would be. Especially since doesn't the FSB operate at 33 MHz
instead of 40 MHz?

Does anyone know the maximum hard drive size on this board.

BTW posting from it now -- just upgraded the RAM to 64 MB

smeezekitty wrote:

BTW posting from it now -- just upgraded the RAM to 64 MB

Cool!

On my board 5x86 is stable at 4x40MHz and at 3x50MHz it is one of the fastest 486 available.

Wait...How is the multiplier changed? I thought it was internal to the CPU?
I loaded 98 on a second CF card and its running fairly well (even USB). Opera 9.6 handles
just about any site although the bloated ones take minutes to load.

BTW Out at the thriftstore, I saw what else but a 3DO controller! Sadly no console

Motherboard tells the CPU which multiplier to choose at startup, from then on the CPU runs on it. DX4 has 2x and 3x options, not sure about 1x. In AMD 5x86 2x has been replaced with 4x for compatibility with older motherboards - AMD needed every customer they could manage to get. So in most cases you just set jumpers for DX2-66 and get 5x86-133.

However, this board is late 486, and in some way more like modern boards - the BIOS has to recognize the CPU to work. So 2x setting on 5x86 results in 3x as well as 3x - the BIOS thinks the CPU is DX4. When JP12 is positionned 1-2, the BIOS recognizes the CPU as 5x86 and gives the desired 4x multiplier although the board is set to 3x. Fun, isn't it?

P.S. did you get the controller? 😀

RacoonRider wrote:

Motherboard tells the CPU which multiplier to choose at startup, from then on the CPU runs on it. DX4 has 2x and 3x options, not sure about 1x. In AMD 5x86 2x has been replaced with 4x for compatibility with older motherboards - AMD needed every customer they could manage to get. So in most cases you just set jumpers for DX2-66 and get 5x86-133.

I always thought that 486 chips had fixed multipliers.

However, this board is late 486, and in some way more like modern boards - the BIOS has to recognize the CPU to work. So 2x setting on 5x86 results in 3x as well as 3x - the BIOS thinks the CPU is DX4. When JP12 is positionned 1-2, the BIOS recognizes the CPU as 5x86 and gives the desired 4x multiplier although the board is set to 3x. Fun, isn't it?

Yeah you can tell its a newer board. It has a lot that is only found on pentium boards
usually. I guess I could look for a 5x86 and see if it will work at 4x160
This board does not support 50MHz

P.S. did you get the controller? 😀

I went back for it. New in box including the $4.99 new price. I attached a picture (I hope)

I am still posting from the 486 including plugging my digital camera in to USB to get the picture
and uploading it. Its the most modern 486 I have ever used

I think my memory timings might be a bit on the tight side. Every once in a while
a program crashes with invalid page fault in 98. Its rare enough that its not a big deal though

Program crash not a big deal? Living on the edge 🤣

smeezekitty wrote:

I think my memory timings might be a bit on the tight side. Every once in a while
a program crashes with invalid page fault in 98. Its rare enough that its not a big deal though

Is it program dependent? What is the crash interval? Do you still get random crashes if you loosen the timings?

It really depends on how much the crashing bothers you personally. For me, I strive for rock solid very fast 486 systems whereby even if I get a memory fail on Memtest after 30 hours of testing, I will not be satisfied. If I run mp3s in a loop using Winamp at 100% CPU usage and there is a crash after 8 hours, I am not satisfied. It is my opinion that randomly crashing systems are hypothetical, temporary, or were not something which could have been used in an everyday 1-computer home. My build criteria are specific to my twisted personal desires and you need not follow them.

I share the same view 😀

smeezekitty wrote:

This board does not support 50MHz

As a matter of fact, it does. JP 25 2-3, JP26 1-2 is for 50MHz, JP25 1-2, JP26 2-3 is for 40 MHz. The manual and PCB prints are wrong.

Program crash not a big deal? Living on the edge

It really isn't a big deal for me. Just restart the program. AFAIK crashes
don't actually damage hardware.

Is it program dependent? What is the crash interval? Do you still get random crashes if you loosen the timings?

It happens most often on Opera 9.60 on Windows 98 but it happens on other programs too.
It affects W98 much more than 95. Crashes tend to happen about once every 1-4 hours
in Opera browsing. I haven't tried loosening the timings yet

It really depends on how much the crashing bothers you personally. For me, I strive for rock solid very fast 486 systems whereby even if I get a memory fail on Memtest after 30 hours of testing, I will not be satisfied. If I run mp3s in a loop using Winamp at 100% CPU usage and there is a crash after 8 hours, I am not satisfied. It is my opinion that randomly crashing systems are hypothetical, temporary, or were not something which could have been used in an everyday 1-computer home. My build criteria are specific to my twisted personal desires and you need not follow them.

I would prefer more stable, but I also like fast. I will tolerate crashes if
they are infrequent. If it passes 2 passes of memtest its fine by me. And I have used
computers that notoriously crash as my main system on several occasions.

What happens when the program crashes? Is it a program lock-up? A Windows protection fault-type of error? The whole computer needs to be restarted because it is frozen?

What happens when the program crashes? Is it a program lock-up? A Windows protection fault-type of error? The whole computer needs to be restarted because it is frozen?

Its almost a invalid page fault or general protection fault and of course the program crashes. I have had a few hard locks.
But in most cases I just restart the program and be on my way.

These symptoms seem typical of running a 40 MHz bus on a PCI 486. Such crashes are often attributed to running the PCI bus at 40 MHz or having your cache timings set too tight. Is there a PCI bus divisor option in the BIOS? If not, there is still a possibility that the motherboard is auto implementing a 2/3 multiplier. I think it is slightly more probable that your cache timings are too tight though. Relax those to the slowest setting and see if the crashes still occur.