I wouldn't give PCI much advantage beyond the possibility to use more commonplace cards in your 486. This isn't even a given because 486 chipsets didn't implement PCI very well. VLB's main quirk is that you really can't use more than 2 VLB cards at once. Usually you have a VLB video card and VLB disk controller (IDE, etc).

Hatta wrote:

Plus PCI boards often have PS/2 mouse headers, which is a plus for my KVM setup.

They do? I don't think I've ever seen one. (PS/2 headers in general tend to be quite uncommon.)

Yeah sometimes PCI boards do have a PS/2 header. It's certainly nice to have PS/2 built-in.

Yes, and I don't know that there's another way to get PS2. I can't use a PS/2 to Serial adaptor, as it won't work with my KVM. This might be the deciding factor for me, unless I find some benchmarks suggesting that PCI will be slower than VLB. I know a lot of you like to run benchmarks on your old rigs, got any numbers to share?

benchmarks like 3dbench and pcpbench are very common to compare cpu + graphics performance. when you compare high end 486 vlb systems with pci systems there are only very minor differences when both buses are running @ 33mhz using common graphics cards from the 1993-1995 era (s3 porsche, s3 vision, s3 trio, tseng et4000, etc).

but one cannot say that pci implementation was bad with all 486 chipsets. sis (496/497) and umc (8881/8886) made very good pci chipsets, very easy to setup and very well performing. when it comes to good vlb systems you have to go either the faster (sis 471) or the more stable (opti 895) route, but both are very good for building a good vlb system.

for me it is the supreme discipline to built a decent yet stable vlb system. i really prefer it over a pci based system. but i don't know if there are any good boards that provide nice vlb speed and ps/2 header. there are more alternatives when you use a pci board. the zida tomatoboard 4dps has both pci and ps/2 and so does the biostar md4833-uud motherobard.

cheers

Oh, of course! I was thinking of PCI I/O cards with a PS/2 connector.

My vote is for PCI from a reputable manufacturer. Most PCI boards have built in I/O sections utilizing the PCI bus for faster transfer speed. With that out of the way, you can use a decent PCI video card which shouldn't give any hassle and will likely perform better than any VLB card. From there, for NIC and audio and whatever else, use ISA.

That and there are a few USB stacks for DOS. Imagine putting a USB card in and being able to just use the ever so common thumb drive?

I'd go VLB, building a 486 isn't about speed or minimizing hassle - for me anyway! VLB was a frankenstein bus which was pretty much 486 specific, and as such it's fun to play with. You've got PCI in your Pentium, and ISA in your 386, so you might as well give VLB a go too.

It's interesting that you say PCI is easier to find - where are you at? I've only come across 1 PCI socket 3 in the last couple of years, but have found a dozen VLB boards in that time.

Australia is not full of unwanted M919s?

486 era stuff seems pretty uncommon over here. We do have plenty of drop bears, venomous spiders and snakes, dingos with a taste for infant human flesh. But no, we're not tripping over M919's as we walk out the front door.

How expensive is shipping if you buy from other countries?

depends. i'm a commercial seller myself (ebay: amoretro) and shipping worldwide is from 12,60 euros up to 2 kilos with tracking and insurance or 17,00 euros for up to 5 kilos. small things up to 0,5 kilos are just 7,60 euros with tracking and insurace.

aah, 1 kilogram = 2,2 lbs (british pound)

I will be keeping an eye on this thread 😀
Anyone have any recommendations for any particular VLB graphics card and IDE/SCSI controller?

I decided to buy this VLB based board. Barrel battery and no PS/2, but it was cheap and I can use my VLB video card. I was lucky too, I was looking at this one earlier when it was $50, no one bought it and it got relisted for half the price. I had to buy a sound card and network card, but all together I should be out only around $80 for this box. A lot better than buying a complete 486 on ebay. Plus my dead board had 4 simms on it already, so I can fill up all the RAM slots.

The video card turns out to be a Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM T VLB. Not sure why I thought it was a cirrus logic. But that's a nice surprise I think, IIRC it's a pretty good card. The RAM slots are even populated.

BTW, this is the PCI motherboard I was looking at. I see they've been discussed on Vogons before. That dude must have a ton of those boards.

Edit: I'd appreciate thoughts on a VLB multi IO card too. The one from the dead board is just ISA. QD6500s seem available and supported by XTIDE Univeral Bios. I might do that.

Your diamond card is very ok for a VL card. 2MB, Trio64 with 135MHz RAMDAC installed gives you decent speed and compatibility in both DOS and Windows. And when connected to a TFT a 135MHz RAMDAC is sufficiant for most scenarios.

Otherwise I would recommend fast S3 cards like: S3 928, S3 Vision 86x cards, Vision 96x cards and S3 Trio cards. All are good for DOS and Windows. Of course there will always be cards from Tseng Labs, well known for their throughput under DOS. Go for the W32i or W32p cards with a good 135MHz truecolor RAMDAC. While the Tseng cards excell in DOS the S3 cards are better for Windows.

There are other cards that are OK, too, but not soo good for DOS like Cirrus Logic (compatible but slower than Tseng and S3) and ATi Mach32 and Mach64 cards (great for Windows, but slower than Tseng and S3 under DOS.).

I would avoid Trident cards or the very entry level Cirrus cards like the 5424. But the 5428 cards do their job OK. If you come across a Diamond Viper VLB - avoid it. It has the Weitek 9xxx Chipset, speedy under Windows but it has a seperate Chip for DOS compatibility (from OAK Tech.) which is very very slow. Such a card is only interesting for crazy collectors like me and a handful of others from Vogons 😁

When you ask for controllers you may look for cards with a BIOS installed for LBA support. These cards support at least 2GB HDDs, some even 4 or 8GB HDDs. These controllers of course work well with CF cards installed instead of real hard disks.

Promise:
http://www.amoretro.de/2012/09/promise-eide23 … i-io-karte.html

Side:
http://www.amoretro.de/2012/09/side-jr-plus-j … i-io-karte.html

Cache controllers are also a very nice thing. You don't need smartdrive or any equivalent buffering program if you have a cache controller. These are many variants, Tekram and Promise were most popular these days.

I have a Tekram myself, I like it alot. But it lacks a CD Interface, so you need to add another controller for that or have to use the sound cards CD-interface if available. The Tekram also supports mirroring via adress shifting (Like Raid 1 if you want). It has an onboard 20MHz 286CPU, it is a system in a system 😀

Tekram:
http://www.amoretro.de/2012/01/tekram-dc-680c … -local-bus.html

My favourite VLB board is the Shuttle HOT-419 R3. I love it! Maybe the SiS 471 might be a bit faster, the OPTi 895 based Shuttle board is more stable for sure. Works with Cyrix and AMD 5x86 CPUs and YES it does the 50MHz busspeed with 2 VLB cards installed (depends on the cards of cause)

Shuttle HOT-419 R3:
http://www.amoretro.de/2012/08/shuttle-hot-41 … otherboard.html

Well if you want to go PCI, I wouldn't recommend the HOT-433 if you don't want to build a "fastest 486 ever" system. The HOT-433 has its quirks and doesn't have a usable PS/2 header. I would recommend the Zida 4DPS or the BIOSTAR 8433-UUD. They both are also very fast and have working PS/2 headers.

Cheers,
Fabian

I have just bought FGB's Number 9 🤣

Fabian, I had a very hard time tracking it because the 1st time I saw the ebay auction I did not realize it was only available thru the German site, not ebay.com (at least the search engine could not locate it there)
Can this card utilize all its RAM in DOS or just 1Mb DRAM ?

Back to topic:
PCI:
I have a few Zida 4DPS boards, Lucky Star 486E rev.C2 s, one DTK PKM 0033
All of them work pretty well, stable both in DOS and Windows. No serious compatibility issues. These all work with my PCI cards (S3 Trio64, S3 Virge DX2, Riva 128, Riva 128 ZX 8MB) except the Savage 4 Extreme PCI which does not like the SiS chipset.

The DTK is a monster, is expanded to 128 MB RAM and 1 MB L2 cache with a 160 Mhz AMD 5x86 processor 😎

VLB:
I have yet to find the best, but for now I am using an Amptron DX-6900 (m912v17) clone. This one has taken so much abuse you would not believe. A dog evidently had taken a few bites of it, then it was left to die out in the sun.. was (not so gently) treated with motor oil and acids as well...
One of the VLB slots lost a few connector clamps so it is out of order. Other than that it is fully funcional 😳

Hmm it don't know why the offer was hard to track. I ship worldwide so my items should be listed around the globe.
Regarding your question: IIRC speedsys and univbe both see 3 megs of RAM but maybe only the 1MB DRAM is used in DOS. But I really can't tell you. But you can try out resolution tests via pcpbench by raising the resolution and color depth by using the specific modes (look for the available modes with the "/modes" switch after loading univbe.

Thanks, I will try a few benchmarks and graphic apps to find out!
I have a suspicion that the two types of RAM are handled separetly just like in the case of the Diamond Viper (Weitek POWER 9000-Brooktrout Bt485KPJ135-Oak Tech OTI087X). Will find out soon 😀

That may be true. Although the S3 928 is a single chip it can use either DRAM or VRAM configurations. When using 3dbench for example it made no difference at all if there is DRAM available or not. Maybe it will adress the DRAM in DOS when available and switch to VRAM in windows. Maybe not, just an educated guess 😀