Decided to add another 486 board that fills a gap, I have both ISA and PCI 486 boards but dont have a board that has VLB, so I picked up a dataexpert-exp8046 that has all three slot types along with supporting 3.3 and 5 volt CPUs. Its been modded with the Dallas RTC battery mod which is good.

I think I may end up using this one as my daily 486 board, seems it'll handle pretty much any socket 3 CPU I have here along with being able to take a wider range of cards so it will make for a good PC to test cards in.

Comes with a nice AMD DX4-100 and 8Mb of ram too. Has anyone here got any experience with this board, if so how does it fair against the competition for tinkering with bus speeds and such?

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-26, 03:55:

Decided to add another 486 board that fills a gap, I have both ISA and PCI 486 boards but dont have a board that has VLB, so I p […]
Show full quote

Decided to add another 486 board that fills a gap, I have both ISA and PCI 486 boards but dont have a board that has VLB, so I picked up a dataexpert-exp8046 that has all three slot types along with supporting 3.3 and 5 volt CPUs. Its been modded with the Dallas RTC battery mod which is good.

I think I may end up using this one as my daily 486 board, seems it'll handle pretty much any socket 3 CPU I have here along with being able to take a wider range of cards so it will make for a good PC to test cards in.

Comes with a nice AMD DX4-100 and 8Mb of ram too. Has anyone here got any experience with this board, if so how does it fair against the competition for tinkering with bus speeds and such?

dataexpert-exp8046.jpgAM486 DX4-100.jpgPost.jpgBench.jpg

Very nice! Have you got a VLB ET4000 and a VLB multi IO cards to put in?

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-26, 05:27:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-26, 03:55:

Decided to add another 486 board that fills a gap, I have both ISA and PCI 486 boards but dont have a board that has VLB, so I p […]
Show full quote

Decided to add another 486 board that fills a gap, I have both ISA and PCI 486 boards but dont have a board that has VLB, so I picked up a dataexpert-exp8046 that has all three slot types along with supporting 3.3 and 5 volt CPUs. Its been modded with the Dallas RTC battery mod which is good.

I think I may end up using this one as my daily 486 board, seems it'll handle pretty much any socket 3 CPU I have here along with being able to take a wider range of cards so it will make for a good PC to test cards in.

Comes with a nice AMD DX4-100 and 8Mb of ram too. Has anyone here got any experience with this board, if so how does it fair against the competition for tinkering with bus speeds and such?

dataexpert-exp8046.jpgAM486 DX4-100.jpgPost.jpgBench.jpg

Very nice! Have you got a VLB ET4000 and a VLB multi IO cards to put in?

board has on board IO, no VLB VGA yet, but I have a few PCI cards that will work good, got an ARK 2000 and 1000 and a ET4000AX, wont worry about VLB yet till I can get a good deal on a GD5434 based VLB card with 2MB ram. May also hunt down one of them super fast VLB super IO cards with on board cache, or go silly and grab a VLB SCSI raid card ...that might be fun.

Seller even sent me a few pics confirming the board supports both EDO and FPM which makes throwing more ram into it easier, I have 64Mb of 60ns EDO memory I may put in it yet, might even look at seeing if there are faster cache chips for it too.

Just having VLB with ISA and PCI opens up a lot of opportunities to play with VLB stuff that I had no chance to even touch back in the day.

Edit - That ET4000 VLB card is one expensive little number about 300 AUD for the cheapest I see, no doubt the 5434 will be too. The WD Paradise VGA VLB is not a terrible price so might look at that if no good deals show for the other two.

Missed the fact that this board doesn't actually have on-board IDE ..just floppy and serial IO ..so will be pulling out a PCI IDE card I have.

Have a feeling this little gem I have should work just fine in a 486, super amusing to throw a 286 into a 486 to acts as a raid controller.

Jccwu wrote on 2024-04-25, 15:27:

I loved the boxed versions hardware

I have that WaveRider 32+ board myself and would love it if you could scan the manual and/or image the disks.

Got some Super IO cards, Octek Compact IO-B, DFI MIO-400KF these two cards are good and the information is perfect, the CY-573-V1 unknown card looks good, but I can't find any information on the Internet, can anyone provide its jumper setup information?

Sad to say the SC-88VL was a bust. Either it was a hijacked account, or the item got lost in the post but regardless - the seller never responded to my communication and eventually eBay refunded. So, still waiting on news of Popcorn.

I couldn't pass on some cards sold locally for a very good price. Among an ATI 9550 SE whose speciality I believe is being the slowest card in the entire 9000 series and a beautiful Audigy 2 that I just found out it never had official win9x drivers so it won't replace a Live!, there where these 2:

A Cirrus Logic GD5434 PCI that I intend to play with, supposedly its 64-bit memory bus is only enabled with 2MB of memory and I just have to measure this. I hope it works with EDO and doesn't require FPM because I don't have any to add and they don't seem terribly available.

And one that looked promising to be something interesting/out of the ordinary like maybe a Quadro, but probably it was just me not being very familiar with the Nvidia FX cards and judged by the heatsink, it didn't look like anything I know. It ended up being a very generic and cheap-looking FX 5200. The reason I'm posting it is because I hope the manufacturer is not completely unknown and someone recognizes it so I can find more pictures: it gets pretty hot even when doing nothing and I want to make sure it didn't have a fan in the past.

I have similar FX5200 built on a blue PCB by ASUS. I use it as my goto test bench video card because it works in older AGP slots and has a DVI out. Perfect for what I need it for.

Check the thermal paste on these old passive heatsinks. They are often dried out and the card, which already gets extremely hot, and can overheat to 100C or more as a result.

Passive GeForce 8400 GS running at 100C.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-04-26, 14:30:

Check the thermal paste on these old passive heatsinks. They are often dried out and the card, which already gets extremely hot, is often overheating to 100C or more as a result.

Passive GeForce 8400 GS running at 100C.

Jeez 100C! I did change it as part of the initial cleaning, you can't really know if it's 2 or 20 year old paste under the heatsink.

I won the auction, which includes RAM, readers, cards, cables, the price was low, and there were no other bidders, I hope they don't cancel the auction, given the low final price.
Among the most interesting things, the 1.44MB floppy disk drive, black in colour, the RAMs are DDR, useful for bench tests, the cables as well, and also the CD players.

I'm sorta, kinda, maybe considering buying this old mystery PC as a project.

Anyone care to venture what the motherboard looks like from this very limited eBay listing?

Seller has no info about the PC.

I can see it's ATX, 4 dimms EDIT: Actually, looks like 2x2 different RAM kinds. (1 AGP?) 1 AMR. 5 PCI and and I think I see an ISA lurking in the shadows at the bottom.

ECS P4S5A rev 1.2A, printed right next to the PCI slots.

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-04-26, 18:57:

I'm sorta, kinda, maybe considering buying this old mystery PC as a project. […]
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I'm sorta, kinda, maybe considering buying this old mystery PC as a project.

Anyone care to venture what the motherboard looks like from this very limited eBay listing?

Seller has no info about the PC.

I can see it's ATX, 4 dimms EDIT: Actually, looks like 2x2 different RAM kinds. (1 AGP?) 1 AMR. 5 PCI and and I think I see an ISA lurking in the shadows at the bottom.

It looks like an ECS P4S5A:

It is, though an older revision than the one you posted. (yours uses the same PCB as PCChips M930DAFULR V5.1 aka P4S5A/DX+)

Thank you, saved me buying it - socket 478 is a little newer than the kinds of systems I like to work with.

Horun wrote on 2024-04-23, 22:43:

Yes a M1-DA or "EVC" connector. I have a cable (came with a Dell branded Radeon 7000 AGP) which should work if it does not have a DB 15 vga.
I ordered the card, they said they would email me back which connector type it has..has a 30 DOA return also.

Card arrived today, looks in good shape. Cost $54 plus a lil shipping. Came well packed in a Matsonic main board box 😁
Can't test until later, maybe this weekend....the cable from the Dell Radeon does fit perfect....
Thanks for all the info earlier...

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-04-26, 18:57:

I can see it's ATX, 4 dimms EDIT: Actually, looks like 2x2 different RAM kinds. (1 AGP?) 1 AMR. 5 PCI and and I think I see an I […]
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I can see it's ATX, 4 dimms EDIT: Actually, looks like 2x2 different RAM kinds. (1 AGP?) 1 AMR. 5 PCI and and I think I see an ISA lurking in the shadows at the bottom.

Got that exact case here, with the corpse of the house domain controller from ~20 years ago in it. It could do with some re-animation, was a Duron ~800 running Windows 2000 Data Center Server!

But that PSU is not screwed in properly, there needs to be a screw in the hole below the PASS sticker, or the PSU might bang-about.

progman.exe wrote on 2024-04-27, 02:54:

Dan386DX wrote on 2024-04-26, 18:57:

I can see it's ATX, 4 dimms EDIT: Actually, looks like 2x2 different RAM kinds. (1 AGP?) 1 AMR. 5 PCI and and I think I see an I […]
Show full quote

I can see it's ATX, 4 dimms EDIT: Actually, looks like 2x2 different RAM kinds. (1 AGP?) 1 AMR. 5 PCI and and I think I see an ISA lurking in the shadows at the bottom.

Got that exact case here, with the corpse of the house domain controller from ~20 years ago in it. It could do with some re-animation, was a Duron ~800 running Windows 2000 Data Center Server!

But that PSU is not screwed in properly, there needs to be a screw in the hole below the PASS sticker, or the PSU might bang-about.

I was always fond of Duron, even though PC Gamer said it sounded more like a contraceptive than a processor.

Heh, yeah I spotted the PSU. I might just point it out to him, I won't be buying that particular system.

Although I did snag 2 x Pentium 60 computers today for quite cheap, possibly non-running, we'll see 😀

Geforce 256 Asus V 6800 standard? Deluxe?

Abit NF7-S Barton 2500 + 3200, 1,5GB DDR

Ecs Combo Slot1 + Socket 370