Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-17, 02:49

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Superwave Super-10b. Late 8088 Turbo XT motherboard. Very high level of integration. Basically a single M1101 chip which i believe is Acer Labs (ALI) silicon. PCB is in great condition. Came with standard Intel CPU and no FPU. 30MHz oscillator for 10MHz system. Mix of 120 and 150 ns chips for 640Kb …

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-16, 22:46

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes you either hold the heatsink or put the opposite corner of the cpu on stable surface. Thise way there is no force applied whatsoever on the pins holding the cpu to the adapter. For soldered on board cpus i had to do it only once. Technique vas similar in general but only insert the knife in ther …

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-16, 21:30

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The way separate heatsinks from bl3 and p24d/t cpus is by using a knife gradually inserted at one ofvthe edges. With a bit of pressure and tilting/twisting the knife the heatsink separates without me damaging or scratching the ceramic surface of the cpu. The more unpleasant part is the cleaning of …

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-11, 15:55

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good point about the BL3 voltage thread. 3.815V for the 16-bit BL3 CPU in Alaris Leopard. With this voltage it runs really well at 2x40 MHz.

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-11, 05:46

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Keep in mind that Cougar + BL3 is not fully stable at 3x33 MHz with default voltage and air cooling. Will know soon if Peltier takes care of things otherwise no idea how to increase the CPU voltage if more than 4V are needed for improved stability. Will check the Alaris Leopard's CPU voltage …

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-10, 22:24

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Following up on my previous message - Alaris Cougar supplies 4V to the BL3 chip.

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-10, 21:48

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Not sure if new bios will help, but give that a try. Something else must be going on. To clarify - did you confirm that each and every jumper on your motherboard was setup like the photo-reference i provided early ? --- My interest in Turbo-XT machines culminated in putting together an 8086 based …

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Re: So many choices so little time - VGA/SVGA graphics card decision (yet another best of question)

Posted on 2022-10-08, 04:26

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

early pci video cards have been studied extensively. lots of posts with benchmarks here and elsewhere on the internet. reality is that performance-wise the different virge models are kind of the same really. not much different than trio64 at dos and windows graphics. but the same applies to most …

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-08, 03:15

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I will check on Monday Alaris Cougar and IO-Data. Out of town currently.

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-06, 22:54

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok then. I am convinced. Thanks for the info. Doing so many tweaks in such a small area that is further confined by CPU socket, cooling, etc., - you will need a really good plan in place and little room for error during work. I don't know. Personally i wouldn't do it if don't have at least 2-3 more …

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Re: Creating a voltage regulated 386 BL3 module from existing parts

Posted on 2022-10-06, 21:33

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I am unclear about something. Datasheets for BL3 are not available. User @ph4nt0m mentioned in a reply in the linked 3+3 thread that BL3 is 3.3V design, but i am not sure about that. The chip gets super hot in Alaris Cougar motherboard which is specifically designed for BL3. With that said - i have …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-04, 22:34

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

No worries. We are all in the same boat really. It is best to go with an image reference for these things. Take a look at this one - https://www.petershipkov.com/temp/retro_pc_images/components/motherboard_486_asus_vli-486sv2gx4_rev_2.1.jpg Jumpers are configured for Am5x86 and 4x40MHz. Is that how …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-04, 21:02

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Try this instead JP16 1-2, 5-6 short JP17 1-2, 5-6 short JP18 1-2, 5-6 short JP19 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 short JP20 1-2 short JP21 3-4 short (WB) JP22 1-2, 4-5 short

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-03, 21:20

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hey CoffeeOne, Bring your hardware bag and welcome to the "486 party". 1.jpg A good motherboard you have. That's for sure. I don't know why, but more CPUs lit up on VLI at 200MHz (4x50) than any other board. But so far no one succeeded to run any of them stably. To my knowledge at least. You will …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-03, 15:54

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Didn't give-up on that chipset. The contrary. Hope to find one day a motherboard with the qualities of Octek Jaguar V, but with CPU socket. With that said, i am going to pencil down for some time on 286/386. Some cool late XT boards are staring at me more and more intensely.

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-03, 05:57

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Caching Tech Corporation C386MX revision 1.0 based on Macronix MX83C306FC/MX83C395FC chipset. ... with a bit of contradiction between the company name and the L2 cache-less nature of the motherboard. https://www.petershipkov.com/temp/retro_pc_images/components_lo/motherboard_386_caching_tech_corp_ …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-03, 02:05

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Hold on. It just occurred to me - i have POD100 in the VLI computer while you are running Am5x86 i think. Can this be the difference ? Worth checking ... --- @WJG6260 When i got into the retro hobby i was quite period correct, but over time that was kind of forgotten. It is good you guys brought it …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-03, 00:07

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

search online for Phil' benchmark suite or something like that. you can do it for the fun of it, but you wont see much performance difference, if any. your computer is hard cpu limited. also, good chance the card is set by default to the optimal config.

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-02, 21:15

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I looked at enough Trident ISA cards to see the pattern from your low-res image. The DIP-28 RAMDACs are 90% 8-bit, or less. In your particular case the RAMDAC is actually 6-bit, but that still results to maximum of 256 colors on screen. Many CL models come with 8-bit DACs. Some with 16-bit. The D …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2022-10-02, 18:48

by

by pshipkov

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

You picked a card with 8-bit RAMDAC which means maximum 256 colors on screen. Not ideal, but not the end of the world really. Look at the jumpers on the card - some of them control "wait states" of the video card. It is probably JP1. You can check this by running some of the simple DOS interactive …

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