VOGONS


First post, by Hudson187

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My workplace just got a shipment of scrap and inside one of the gaylords was a beige desktop beauty; unmarked case that was a little beat up. Upon opening the case, I found a fairly clean, VLB motherboard with 8mb installed, DX266mhz along with an unknown VLB video card.

Video Card:
The core is a S3 86C805-P and it looks like it has 1mb of ram installed and *may* be upgradable to 2mb. I think it may be made by Actix as searches of the FFC ID came back with that name. I've attached a pic - any ideas?

Motherboard

The board has model number 4DMU-HL3S which seems to be made by EFA, however I can't find any other information on said board. Was hoping to find a jumper guide or, best case scenario, a manual.

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http://www.hudson187.com

Reply 1 of 6, by Stiletto

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Video Card: Actix GraphicsEngine 32+ VLB 1Mb, GraphicsEngine 32VL, GraphicsEngine 32VL Plus... something like that. 😀

Motherboard: Nice photo here:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/A18pPru … bL._SL1500_.jpg
You can make out the jumper settings screenprinted on the PCB.

Good news: EFA's website is in the Internet Archive and you can get latest BIOS:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010208085909/htt … wnload/bios.htm
(second source: http://www.updrivers.com/bios/Motherboard/EFA … -BIOS/8506.html )
You can also get a "jumper setting program": http://web.archive.org/web/19990508181948/htt … oad/jumpers.htm
Download links seem to work too! 😀
According to this, you need GOEFA: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/showthread.php … -Identification
Haven't found a manual yet but I haven't been trying hard.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 4 of 6, by 1nanoprobe

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I know this is an old thread, but this will hopefully help someone out. The 4DMU-HL3S is also known as the 4MHL3S.

Jumper settings are available here:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/E/E … 486-4MHL3S.html
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/public/motherboard/ … anual/31754.pdf

Mine came with (a poor photocopy of) the manual, which I've scanned and uploaded to archive.org here:
https://archive.org/details/efa-4mhl3s-4dmuhl … herboard-manual

Reply 5 of 6, by jakethompson1

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1nanoprobe wrote on 2021-07-21, 05:50:
I know this is an old thread, but this will hopefully help someone out. The 4DMU-HL3S is also known as the 4MHL3S. […]
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I know this is an old thread, but this will hopefully help someone out. The 4DMU-HL3S is also known as the 4MHL3S.

Jumper settings are available here:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/E/E … 486-4MHL3S.html
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/public/motherboard/ … anual/31754.pdf

Mine came with (a poor photocopy of) the manual, which I've scanned and uploaded to archive.org here:
https://archive.org/details/efa-4mhl3s-4dmuhl … herboard-manual

Guessing we might have bought from the same ebay seller?
How do you like it? Main issue I've run into is the board uses an "always dirty" L2 cache strategy. So L2 cache is slower than it would otherwise be.

Reply 6 of 6, by 1nanoprobe

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2021-07-22, 03:02:

Guessing we might have bought from the same ebay seller?
How do you like it? Main issue I've run into is the board uses an "always dirty" L2 cache strategy. So L2 cache is slower than it would otherwise be.

We probably did. I bought mine maybe 14 months ago. The slower cache doesn't bother me. With a DX2-66 installed it's already quite a bit faster than I require, but that's just me and this is a pure nostalgia build.

The build quality is above average for a generic 486 board. Compared to my others (all non-working I might add) the PCB is a bit thicker and it's noticeably heavier. However, the big selling point for me was the layout. Most boards I've seen put the CPU socket behind the ISA slots, so if you want to install a heatsink on the CPU and have a longer card or two, your slot options are limited.