No EISA SCSI?

Wow a really nice sys

No unfortunately no EISA SCSI. At least the EISA configuration utility can be used for setting the jumpers. Maybe adding an AHA-174* to the wishlist 😀.

Still not sure what Sound Blaster would be best to get. Would an AWE 32 be a good choice?

Very cool system!
I have a bit of a thing about transparent bay covers, don't know why any cover is annoying really, but they look cool!
Matching keyboard is nice bonus as well.

SB Pro would probably suit the system more but AWE32 will work fine as well, Worst case most games will treat it like a SB16.

Aaaaawwww waow!

Tremendous system you have there, and it's so good to see the pictures!

Looking at the motherboard I'm curious to find if this is can also be a dual CPU system. Looking at the board next to the RAM, there is a brown slot there which could be for another CPU card.

I have also the 386 module which you have, hoever, I did a slight modification by de-soldering the crystal oscillator and soldering in place a socket so that any crystal oscialltor can be installed i.e. changing the current 66.66 to a 80.00 with AMD DX40 CPU. After extensive testing I can confirm that there are no additional heat signatures and the cache on that ALR module is rated for (1/40,000,000 = 25ns) 40Mhz operation.

Good to see you found the config files well, thanks for the mention, just glad to be of help and get another retro system up and running, happy days!

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I will check the rated speed of my 64k cache module if it would support 40MHz.

Unfortunately I don't think the board has dual CPU support. The brown slot next to the RAM is for an memory expansion card. I have found pictures here:
https://www.recycledgoods.com/advanced-logic- … -card-12407480/
here is a description of the mainboard:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AD … NESS-VEISA.html

Curious on how adding a second CPU is supposed to work on your board, as the two connectors seem not to have the same length.

Just for reference here are pictures of the ALR 386 CPU module and cache module. Notice the "branded" CPU.

The 64k cache seems to be 20ns.

Is it possible to get 256kb cache modules for this system?

kalyke wrote:

Curious on how adding a second CPU is supposed to work on your board, as the two connectors seem not to have the same length.

I don’t yet know, but is does say in the manual that the system supports it.

kalyke wrote:

The 64k cache seems to be 20ns.

Interesting, this means in theory, you could clock the system higher with it still being stable, i.e. up to (1/50,000,000 = 20ns) 50MHz. The spare 486 board I have runs at 50MHz.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Is it possible to get 256kb cache modules for this system?

The 256K module I have in my system will be transferable, but there would be an increased latency as discussed above of 5ns, but hey, what’s 5ns between friends!?

I benched my system a while back but forgot to update it on Vogons. With the activity you're doing with the VEISA it has spurred me on to make an edit! 😁

Thanks

Thanks for the comments.

386_junkie wrote:

The 256K module I have in my system will be transferable, but there would be an increased latency as discussed above of 5ns, but hey, what’s 5ns between friends!?

If I look at the results of the cache check I wonder if I would even notice the 5ns. At least not at 33MHz. It would be interesting to see if the 486 architecture has a larger impact on using the cache memory.

I will post SST results and try 3D BENCHMARK VGA V1.0 over the weekend.

Wow. This thread brings back memories. I had a system just like this. Mine had a 486 cpu card. I had the ram expansion slot in my system, i think it added 4 30pin simm slots. Mine came with an ati vga wonder/ 28800-6. I replaced it with an ati mach32 eisa card. I no longer have the system. My mom threw it out when I moved away from home 🙁

Apologies if resurrecting this thread isn't the thing to do; however, this seems the best place to add the following:

I just acquired one of these machines, 386DX-33 with a 387 coprocessor, 4MB expansion RAM, no cache. It came with a Sound Blaster 16 and a Tseng Labs Super VGA card with 1 MB of RAM.

It wouldn't boot when I got it, so I did the usual unplug-everything-and-plug-it-back-in routine, and it Got Better. However, now it says that the CMOS configuration is invalid on every boot; entering setup and pressing F10 to exit fixes the problem, and it boots fine, but it complains again on the next boot. The Dallas clock module seems to have a working battery, as the time and date were nearly correct when I booted it. I don't see another battery on the motherboard, so I assume the BIOS configuration is either backed by the Dallas module or some sort of EEPROM (which seems unlikely).

Do you have any documentation for this system? You said you got a copy of the EISA setup utility; is it required to save a new configuration? Is it available somewhere?

elb wrote:

Do you have any documentation for this system? You said you got a copy of the EISA setup utility; is it required to save a new configuration? Is it available somewhere?

I found this:

http://108.59.254.117/~mR_Slug/pub/EISA/

I was also able to find the configuration files for the ALR Business EISA. I haven't tried it yet.

I've seen some EISA boards have two Dallas chips. One for the regular stuff, and another just for the EISA information.

hello. I have not found the manual for this motherboard. The link in a previous comment does not work. Do you have any reference where to find it?
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/alr-bu … ness-veisa-asic
I have one, yet to test, but I need all the information possible first. It's a shame I couldn't find the cache card.
I also have this other one, which like the previous one, I couldn't find the cache card.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/alr-ev … ution-iv-4e-33s