Doornkaat wrote on 2020-02-26, 05:18:I can not relate to this opinion at all. The bus is not as reliable as PCI but it's not bad. I have had very little trouble with […]
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barleyguy wrote on 2020-02-26, 04:29:
This is a curious topic for me, because VLB was never very stable, even when it was brand new. It was a stopgap between ISA and PCI, only lasted a couple of years, and none of the cards for it were very good. So a thread asking about a stable VLB setup is very odd.
I can not relate to this opinion at all. The bus is not as reliable as PCI but it's not bad. I have had very little trouble with VLB setups as long as I kept it somewhat conservative. There are lots and lots of stable VLB builds. What's odd about wanting one yourself? And why would you say there are no good VLB cards?
barleyguy wrote on 2020-02-26, 04:29:
That said, the 33 Mhz clock doubled chips like the 486 DX2/66 seemed to work the best. They had a separate 33 Mhz FSB, so matched the speed of the VESA bus perfectly.
Do you mean an external 33MHz bus? The 66MHz DX2 is simply a popular choice because it offered a good price/performance ratio at the high times of VLB. I don't see a reason why a clock tripled 100MHz i486DX4 would work less reliable.
My perspective on this is that I built computers for a living when this stuff was cutting edge, and had to sell it to customers and support it. I never felt VLB was stable enough to bet on. Maybe I just never found the perfect combination of parts, but IMO both ISA and PCI were way more stable than VLB was. (As was EISA for that matter, but it was most common in really expensive workstations so wasn't for mere mortals.)
From the perspective of building a machine for yourself and tinkering with it until it does what you want, I guess VLB could be considered "stable enough". But that was never my experience with it when I had to build it as a product for other people.
BTW, there's no reason a clock tripled 100 mhz chip would be any less stable. Didn't mean to imply that. I simply meant processors with a 33 Mhz bus, and preferably faster than 33 Mhz.
As far as my comment about wondering why people do what they do: I just joined here very recently, and personally I would never choose to build a VLB system. I'd either go slightly older than that, or slightly newer. Specifically because of the reasons I stated about not wanting to mess around with finding a stable combination of components for VLB. So I wonder why someone would choose to build something from this era.
EDIT (additional thoughts): Maybe I should just shut up for a while and try to figure this place out. Or maybe I just don't fit in here, and will never figure it out. Is this a matter of wanting to build a comprehensive list of every PC ever? Or do people have nostalgia for certain eras and want to relive that nostalgia? I'm just really trying to understand the motivation.
I don't have nostalgia for any particular era of computing really. My very first computer as a kid was a TRS-80 model one with 16k of RAM and a cassette player. And I've used or built virtually everything since then. When I look towards building a retro machine, I would tend to choose something I see as "good" in both the hardware realm and the OS realm. I'm genuinely not criticizing, but trying to understand what's up around here. Also, sorry for the topic hijack.