A M919 with an appropriately fast processor (Am5x86) would still be too fast for Space Quests anyway. M919 is considered junk, Pentium Pro is a higher degree of rarity and value (and performance 😀) so there's that

i'd ditch the m919 IMO

It would depend how different the PPro boards are if I were in that situation. If they are similar, or the same, I'd get rid of one of those as you could probably net a nice profit. Otherwise, if they differ considerably, get shot of the M919 somewhere, if you have the cache module in, people will probably fight over it a little bit and there are still a strange band of people that actually like the board - it's neither here nor there to me, the 486 board I like best is far, far cheaper and "bodge-ier" than the M919.

See how low can you slow down those systems. If the 486 can go down low enough for you to play those games, it might be a good idea to keep it. Also, no point on getting a super fast 486 if all you wanna do is play those older games. A DX2-66 or even a DX-33 can be installed on that board and, although it supports much faster processors, if those prove to be more useful why not?

leileilol wrote:

A M919 with an appropriately fast processor (Am5x86) would still be too fast for Space Quests anyway. M919 is considered junk, Pentium Pro is a higher degree of rarity and value (and performance 😀) so there's that

i'd ditch the m919 IMO

I agree the Pentium Pro is faster and higher quality but I think there's a bit of a misconception on the M919 being a terrible board, I certainly wouldnt call it "junk".

Yes, PCchips was pretty unethical with the fake cache thing but its still a PCI 486 board and they don't exactly grow on trees these days. I've been running a machine with a Cyrix 120mhz cpu and a M919 w/ 256 l2 cache chip for about 4 years and to be honest its not a bad board. If you use the right ram and set it up it really does run fine. actually with the Cyrix 5x86 and the 40mhz overclock trick on the PCI bus the thing is pretty damn fast and so far stable.

I'm not saying its a great board and it certainly is buggy but its not as horrible as many people make it out to be. The BIOS options aren't half bad either and its the only board that actually has options to re-enable a few features on a Cyrix 5x86 in BIOS

Personally I find the serial port buggage worse than the cache dilemma. I've taken my M919 to the edge before (AM5x86 @ 160mhz with 0 wait states, 59.79 speedsys 😀) and while it was fast I got fed up with the freezing on soft reset and my mouse failing to work. If I had to desperately downsize, this computer would be the first to go, then the Pentium 4s 😀

To be fair to the M919, if you play with ANY 486 board long enough you'll find something broken. My PCI Aquarius (Which would have competed with the M919) has no problems with serial ports, cache or anything that the M919 does. But the PCI implementation makes it difficult to get some cards, such as an Ethernet adapter, to work at all. The MSI I have has a very nice PCI implementation, but is lacking in CPU support (No WB). The FIC is pretty bad and the Micronics (i420 based, I am probably selling it at some stage - not yet) has horrible CPU support (No POD, no 5x86 even with interposer, no nothing past DX2-66 - no 40MHz BUS), non-standard headers (read; pretty much no serial unless you want to solder your own) and I never got it stable long enough to test the PCI out properly... It's probably horrible too, the throughput was. One nice feature of the last board though, it does have 128K of REAL cache soldered onto it and takes regular chips to double that amount, memory is its strong point.

As I said earlier, the M919 is "just another board" to me, it has some horrible design quirks, but then so does everything else and therefore, logically, hasn't done anything in particular to offend me. Now that Biostar everyone loves, on the other hand, that did, but they were from a repairs standpoint as opposed to an operating standpoint so they don't really count for the purpose of this discussion. As for the Micronics, you probably think I hate it and you're right, but I sure loved trying it out, it was really quite fun seeing how easily it could be upset to a point it would not POST; Install Cyrix CPU (Oddly, these perform very well in this board) and... Woohoo! Install Intel OverDrive DX4 and... -LOW BUZZ- Oh, dear, it's not working; funktioniert nicht, gebrochen. Yeah, I use German words when something is really broken, they seem to have more weight than their English counterparts.

The pentium pro boards are essentially the same. The one I'm using has a 200mhz processor and the other board has a 180mhz and less ram. But the boards themselves are the same model. The 486 board has a 486DX50 (not the 2/50), and I'm guessing because of the bus speed I was never able to get a pci video card to work without some kind of problem. Once I put a VLB video card in it, it worked fine. I currently have the 486 mounted in an ATX case, using an ATX PSU, as I had no good alternatives. The pentium pro boards are both ATX, which made things much easier. I guess I just haven't fully decided if the 486 is worth the extra trouble that comes with going that far back. The board doesn't have the cache module (seems to run OK without it), and no way I'd spend the kind of money people want for it.

486 board really aren't a hassle, try messing with something really old that literally has nothing built in to the motherboard. The cache module isn't a big deal. It runs fine without it, all it does is give a performance boost. its a noticeable boost but the machine is just fine without. They can be found for less then the outrageous Ebay prices if your patient. I found a sellar on a forum that was selling a m919 board w/ cache module and asked if I could buy the module separate for a reasonable price and he agreed so it can happen.
swapping out the 486dx50 with 66mhz dx2 or a AMD 133mhz 5x86 will solve all your fsb related incompatibility issues. either of those CPU's are pretty cheap and available. or you could always downclock the dx50 to 40mhz or less.

there both kind of cool boards. since you already have the 486 in a case and you have 2 of the PPro board I would personally just sell the spare PPro board. but then for me there's nothing like actually playing golden era dos games on an actually 486 machine. I've also read the PPro's performance in DOS is really less then stellar. you did mention games like Space Quest, Kings Quest so just downclock the 486 to 33mhz and you should be good.

I would probably use my M919 if I had the cache stick for it.

But I don't. So I wont. 😜