My 486 machine is VLB, with a VLB ET4000/W32p and IDE/IO controller. I mainly like having VLB because its fairly unique to that era (with a couple of exceptions either side...)

PCI video cards will be easier to find and will usually perform better, plus most PCI 486 motherboards will have onboard IDE/serial/floppy etc.

It depends what you want to go for. If you want maximum performance go PCI.

My 486 is PCI but it has some stability problems. If I ever build another one, it'll also be PCI unless I have several PCI ones, then I might consider building a VLB for a change.

In my opinion, the classic 486s were those up to 66MHz. Anything faster released later, was a cheaper substitute for a pentium system. It was maybe a little faster than a dx2/66 but slower than the low-end pentiums. And I believe that VLB goes better with the slower 486s, while PCI is better on the faster. To be honest, I would recommend a fast 486 with PCI slots to someone that would like to have just a 486 for a retro gaming PC. But if someone is able to have several different computers, I would say it's better to have a dx2/66-VLB. The way I see it, if you want to have a complete range of retro computers, there's a smaller gap between a 386/40 and a 486/66 than on a 386/40 and a 486/133. And on the other hand if you happen to have a low-end pentium it's useless to have a fast 486, too.

No matter which you decide to go with, it's going to cost you a lot with the prices that people demand for 486 motherboards these days. You have to be very lucky and very fast to find a cheap 486 motherboard or complete system and be able to grab it before someone else does.

I wouldn't build a 486, I would go buying an OEM unit like with my Acer. Everything will just work and you get nice PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard.

486 parts are also very expensive, so it's likely cheaper to buy a whole unit.

For building I would go with a Super Socket 7 platform with a Pentium or K6 instead. Disable the L1 cache und have a nice 486DX2. Disable the L2 as well and it's a 386DX.

Here you get ATX which means you can use a modern case and modern PSU. You also get AGP and PS/2 ports and most boards have BIOS and drivers available from the manufacturers website.

Ive gone for both options with different CPU's

System 1

Cyrix 5x86 120
PCI voodoo 3

system 2

Pentium overdrive 83
2mb vlb cirrus logic 5429

P.S, system 2 is'nt up and running yet havent found a suitable working motherboard.

I like the idea of 2 machines, one represents a truer 486 platform whilst the other tacks on faster technology to an aging platform (circa 1995/1996). The pentium overdrive might be considered an unfaithful brain for a classic 486 system, whichever cpu you use it dont matter IMO.

BTW: Did you buy that Soyo off that ukranian dude? I was going to bid on it before the listing disapeared, im sure it finished early although I was'nt going to put a huge offer on it anyway, I planned to test the two boards together using A Voodoo3 to determine if their was any speed difference between a hybrid VLB/PCI vs PCI system that uses the same sis 496/497 chipset.

I'd prefer PCI/ISA boards. Simply as theres much more interesting cards for these. VLB was cool, maybe imma have a dedicated VLB machine one day, but lets face it - there were few useful VLB cards around.

My Preference would be for PCI, both of my DX4 boxes use PCI boards, it's easier to find parts for them, compatible with a wider range of CPUs, and usually have Button Cell 3V CR2032 batteries rather than the barrel type NiCad rechargables that are notorious for corroding on older boards. Though I would like to at some point have a good VLB system just to say I have one, I'd probably just put it in storage and use the 486PCI for Retro needs.

I dont know why VLB is so horny???

Most good games i want to play require more then 100Mhz processor from a 486 system....

DOOM,
HEXEN
QUAKE
ROTT
ect.. running better on a pentium rig, yes you could play it on a 486 100mhz, but it is more slowing down.. And mosty slower 486 games like 33 - 66Mhz i also could play it on my 80386 40Mhz rig.. So indeed, you dont need a 486 actually..

For me, for nostalgic sake, I would prefer to keep a VLB mobo.

Practically, I will get a VLB motherboard IF I also have a Tseng ET4000 w32/p. Otherwise, I prefer to tuck in a S3 Trio64V+, Trio3D/2X or a Virge in PCI.

My current 486DX2-66 is equipped with a Virge. (No VLB slots on this motherboard.) [I put the Virge in it since I have a couple of them, and they're very compatible with DOS and Win3.x.]

Good question: where did you find a Soyo SY-4SAW2?

It is pretty risky buying these PCI 486 boards online; you never know what abuse they have been under -- CPU inserted backwards, cache in backwards, wrong RAM voltage, etc. A lot of seemingly harmless testing can render your chipset unstable. It seems, for example, that the HOT-433 has no circuit protection against such activity.

I prefer to buy these boards from scrapyard boys if the CPU, RAM, and cache appear to be untouched and original. I'd be a lot more skeptical of a retro geek selling his boards.

If you indeed have a Soyo SY-4SAW2, would you mind benchmarking the Voodoo3 with the Matrox Millennium G200 using an AMD X5-133 or similiar speed CPU? 3Dbench, Pcpbench, Doom, and Quake are probably sufficient.

feipoa wrote:

Good question: where did you find a Soyo SY-4SAW2?

...
If you indeed have a Soyo SY-4SAW2, would you mind benchmarking the Voodoo3 with the Matrox Millennium G200 using an AMD X5-133 or similiar speed CPU? 3Dbench, Pcpbench, Doom, and Quake are probably sufficient.

I don't have either board yet - they are two that I've found for sale. I'd likely go for something like a DX4-100 or 120, as anything faster I have the PPro for.

I have an older Soyo 486 VLB board. I had a dx2/66 cpu on, and once I bought a heatsink/fan to place on it just to be safe. After a few days, while wanting to fix something and I removed the cpu. Then, by not paying much attention to what it's original position was, and since with the heatsing on the letters on the cpu were not visible, I inserted the cpu in the wrong position. When I powered it on, there was a small flash, and some smoke. The cpu broke into three pieces, and one of the pin sockets became black. But even after that the board works exactly as it should....

Markk wrote:

I have an older Soyo 486 VLB board. I had a dx2/66 cpu on, and once I bought a heatsink/fan to place on it just to be safe. After a few days, while wanting to fix something and I removed the cpu. Then, by not paying much attention to what it's original position was, and since with the heatsing on the letters on the cpu were not visible, I inserted the cpu in the wrong position. When I powered it on, there was a small flash, and some smoke. The cpu broke into three pieces, and one of the pin sockets became black. But even after that the board works exactly as it should....

I've had 486 motherboards survive the smoking CPU as well, but never a HOT-433. Btw, the CPU broke into 3 pieces? I've never seen that happen before. For how long was the power on?

If the CPU is in a smoking position for a very short period of time (e.g. 2 seconds), it can often survive the ordeal as well. At least my Intel DX4 did. Designers really should have keyed the CPU and ZIF sockets on socket 3 boards.

Markk wrote:

In my opinion, the classic 486s were those up to 66MHz. Anything faster released later, was a cheaper substitute for a pentium system.

I totally agree. If you want a system, which was high end in its days, DX2+VLB is the way to go. If you just want a fast 486 then you can build a >=DX4+PCI system (with a good PCI chipset, not bridged from VLB).

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I wouldn't build a 486, I would go buying an OEM unit like with my Acer. Everything will just work and you get nice PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard.

OEM 486s are easier to find, but the problem is they often use custom, non-AT parts which makes servicing them harder.

feipoa wrote:

Btw, the CPU broke into 3 pieces? I've never seen that happen before. For how long was the power on?

Well it wasn't much longer that 1-2 seconds. But it was enough to damage it... I remember that I took a picture of it, and finally I found it. It seems that I didn't remember it very well. It was four pieces actually...

What do you guys think of a VLB DX-50 system? Would that be worthwhile? I have an SiS 85C471-based VLB mobo that can handle a 50MHz bus speed, and it works with both a VLB video card and VLB I/O controller at that speed too, which I understand is a bit unusual.

On my 486 VLB board (Soyo) I tried once to compare a DX/50 to a DX2/66 and while the first seemed to perform really good, the results showed that the DX2 was faster.

retro games 100 wrote:

What do you guys think of a VLB DX-50 system? Would that be worthwhile? I have an SiS 85C471-based VLB mobo that can handle a 50MHz bus speed, and it works with both a VLB video card and VLB I/O controller at that speed too, which I understand is a bit unusual.

Early DX50 boards were usually unstable. They weren't quite ready to make motherboards at that speed back then and RF interference was also a problem with them. A later board with the 50mhz bus setting would probably be OK but if you're going to use one of them, then there are better chips to use than a DX50, that's assuming you can find one with a 1x jumper setting.