Been a bit busy this week, as I'm now back to uni. Been doing some testing, and it appears that the system just isn't stable with cache enabled. Some times it doesn't boot, some times it freezes during HIMEM test, some times it boots fine but reboots randomly, like when trying to play Wacky Wheels. I've tried with my full 64MB of RAM (2 x 32MB modules), 32MB or even 8MB (which isn't enough for my usage), and these problems show up regardless. Disabling cache again, makes the system apparently completely stable, so I have a feeling the cache might be faulty. Good thing I've got some more cache chips on their way in the post.
I guess I'll try memtest as well just to rule out faulty RAM, but as I've not had any trouble while cache has been disabled, no "strange and unexplainable" game crashes or anything, so I'm inclined to think it's not a RAM issue.

Received new cache chips yesterday, but didn't get a chance to install them until quite late in the evening. With the new chips, I can boot fine, it completes cachechk (it still says I've only got one?! cache, but now it says 256KB) and it gets a nice high result in 3DBench, at least compared to the results without cache. Oh, and speedsys shows that I've got cache as well. I've tried playing a race in Wacky Wheels and a bit of The Need for Speed and it appears to be working just fine. Hopefully I'll get some more time to test things today, but truth be told, it does seem like the old cache chips must have been faulty.

Also, after some googling concerning atcdwchg.com (that's from memory btw, if I got the name wrong, it's because of that) I tried changing the mode of two of my CF cards that won't boot. Error #7 it says for both of them, and no success. BUT after looking around a bit, I came across a post about using CF cards as HD where somebody says "oh, have you tried fdisk /mbr?", and I though "could it really be that simple?". Indeed it could. I can now boot from all of my CF cards. I'm going to reinstall my stuff (with an even more organized directory structure) on a faster CF. Any recommendations for a program to test drive transfer rate under DOS or Windows 3.x ?

If my system turns out to work stable with cache enabled from now on and running off of a fast CF card, then I'll finally feel relaxed about this system 😀

Glad to hear it's finally working, what an ordeal! But that's just how it goes with 486's, it was always no pain no gain building that era machine in my experience.

Yay!
Finally I got my D-Link DE220 to work in WfW3.11. Just had to use the generic NE2000 driver, and it suddenly worked.
I got TCP/IP set up and it's on the internet, so to speak. In Netscape Communicator 4.04, even google won't display well, but hey, what's to be expected? I mean, I don't want internet access on such an old system because I need it, just because I can. 😉

Ahh, disappointed. Just when I thought I'd managed to post a reply to this topic from my 486, it takes a nose dive after clicking on submit. Seems it couldn't send the form data how the forum expects it to. There really should be a retro-friendly version of this forum for old systems 😁 Seems IE 5.0 16-bit is just one version too old to use this forum successfully. Are there any more competent browsers to be had on WfW3.11?

Netscape Navigator?

See this thread for more info on webbrowsing on Win3.1x

Web browsing on 3.11 = NIGHTMARE

This rig is in for a small change soon. I've ordered a Seagate Decathlon 850 HD for this baby. Sure, the CF solution works just fine, but for some reason a genuine HD would just "sit" much better with a system like this.
850MB seems very appropriate for the time period when a system like this would've been in use, and the Decathlon drives used to have a very good reputation.
Still need to get hold of a more period appropriate CD-ROM drive as well.

Yeah I love the crunch and grind of a real hard drive, it's a sound that brings back a lot of happy memories for me.

CD-ROMs on the other hand I'm happy to settle for a more modern one - my old 4 spins are getting unreliable and sometimes don't handle burnt CD's very well.

I have this Sony in a couple of my older machines and it looks the part, isn't too loud, and seems very reliable:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CDU5211-DO-R

I found the best browser for Windows 3.11 is by far Opera 3.60
It renders pretty well. But for this site I had to switch on "User" rendering mode
though. Note that Opera 3.60 is much more stable than Opera 3.62

In fact I am typing this on my 486DX/33 with 24 RAM and Windows
3.11. No problem with Opera

Netscape is essentially garbage on the modern web

I just bought an Acer AP43 PCI motherboard because I am starting
on a PCI 486 build so if you could provide some information
it would be appreciated

smeezekitty wrote:

I found the best browser for Windows 3.11 is by far Opera 3.60 It renders pretty well. But for this site I had to switch on "Use […]
Show full quote

I found the best browser for Windows 3.11 is by far Opera 3.60
It renders pretty well. But for this site I had to switch on "User" rendering mode
though. Note that Opera 3.60 is much more stable than Opera 3.62

In fact I am typing this on my 486DX/33 with 24 RAM and Windows
3.11. No problem with Opera

Netscape is essentially garbage on the modern web

I just bought an Acer AP43 PCI motherboard because I am starting
on a PCI 486 build so if you could provide some information
it would be appreciated

I think I might need to reinstall Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on my 486, as I get an error message (missing files iirc) when trying to install Opera.

That Acer board looks quite nice. Easy to find documentation for, so it should be a pleasant build. My board was impossible to find any kind of documentation for, so I had to do a bit of trial and error... scary stuff with such old hardware. Luckily a lot of the stuff back then was built a bit more sturdily than today's stuff.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AC … C-486-AP43.html
This is the correct board right?
What kind of other hardware are you planning on putting in that system?

LunarG wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

I found the best browser for Windows 3.11 is by far Opera 3.60 It renders pretty well. But for this site I had to switch on "Use […]
Show full quote

I found the best browser for Windows 3.11 is by far Opera 3.60
It renders pretty well. But for this site I had to switch on "User" rendering mode
though. Note that Opera 3.60 is much more stable than Opera 3.62

In fact I am typing this on my 486DX/33 with 24 RAM and Windows
3.11. No problem with Opera

Netscape is essentially garbage on the modern web

I just bought an Acer AP43 PCI motherboard because I am starting
on a PCI 486 build so if you could provide some information
it would be appreciated

I think I might need to reinstall Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on my 486, as I get an error message (missing files iirc) when trying to install Opera.

Here is what I used to install Opera I think: http://home.comcast.net/~zerosky/freaked/16bitweb.html#opera
But it is possible you might have a bad windows install.

That Acer board looks quite nice. Easy to find documentation for, so it should be a pleasant build. My board was impossible to f […]
Show full quote

That Acer board looks quite nice. Easy to find documentation for, so it should be a pleasant build. My board was impossible to find any kind of documentation for, so I had to do a bit of trial and error... scary stuff with such old hardware. Luckily a lot of the stuff back then was built a bit more sturdily than today's stuff.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AC … C-486-AP43.html
This is the correct board right?
What kind of other hardware are you planning on putting in that system?

I made a thread here:
Re: Building a high end 486 but need advice
Yes that is the correct board. I bought a AM486DX4-120. Hopefully the board is stable at 40 MHz FSB but if worst comes to worst I will
run it at 100 MHz.
It is NEW OLD STOCK! it even comes with the original manual, driver floppy and the seller tested it and provided 16 MB RAM free!
I will be upgrading the RAM to 64 MB though. Still don't know about the video card. Going to try to get it working with a USB card
and I have a line on a cheap ISA network card.

The hardest part honestly will be getting a case

Oh and about build quality, when I cannot believe how heavy the board is. Last year I replaced the socket 775 board in my desktop and I would
guess that it was 1/3 the weight