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Tempest wrote:

I'm wondering if I should bother with any upgrades to it.

That all depends on exactly what you want to do with it and whether you're satisfied with its ability to do those things, does it not?

PeterLI wrote:

I owned many IBM VPs over the years. The best upgrade is a Pentium OverDrive 83MHZ. Or a 486DX CPU. […]
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I owned many IBM VPs over the years. The best upgrade is a Pentium OverDrive 83MHZ. Or a 486DX CPU.

Upgrading VGA will not make much difference.

With a POD heavier games will still barely work. A Pentium 166/200/233MMX would be a better choice for that era.

Cache would make a huge difference but finding the OEM parts is near impossible unfortunately.

Actually I do have a Pentium 200MMX as well that I use for things that won't run well on the 486. The 486 is for things that run too fast or have problems on the Pentium (which is surprisingly a bunch).

What kind of Cache did this unit take? Like I said, I grabbed one out of a Pentium era IBM PS/2 and the card wouldn't fit. It was a few pins too long.

I would not bother with the RAM or CPU upgrade. I might not even bother with the cache, depending on benchmark results. Run the benchmarks in my signature link and compare to the database to see where your system falls in line. I say this because you have a Pentium 200MMX for faster gaming. I would use this system for games from 1990-1993. Use the Pentium for games from 1994-1997.

Depending on how the 486 performs, you then might want to consider finding a cache module. If it ends up performing about like the reference 486-33 on my list, then you are in good shape. You should try Setmul to see if you could get it to perform like a 386 too. 😀 that would cover the widest range of games for you.

I think I used my original 486 (a DX2) from 92-95 and my Pentium 120 from 95-99ish (although towards the end it was upgraded to a P-166) so those dates about line up with what you mention. I'll do that benchmark and see what it says.

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PeterLI wrote:

Here you go:
http://greyghost.mooo.com/pccbbs/valuepnt/s61g1423.pdf

Ha! That website is blocked by my company web filter. I'll have to look at that when I get home.

I managed to take a look at that document using a cached google copy (there's a cache joke in there somewhere), but it doesn't really answer my question. I need to know how many pins that socket it because all the cache cards I've run across in other machines are too big by about 6 pins or so. I think they have 38 pins on one side of the gap and 42 on the other (I might be wrong on that, but its close), and that doesn't want to fit in mine.

EDIT: I found this page which mentions the cache: http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/3aa2.htm

Looks like I have a Type 1 board and need 15ns write through cache. Looks like these may be proprietary IBM parts though as it says Available Only Through IBM.

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Meh, probably not worth it. I doubt it will make that much of a difference.

I've got one of these and I just finished maxing it out. I'm at work so I am short on details, but reach out to me if you need.

• I was able to get a 256 Cache chip by luck, found a seller on ebay that had the motherboard from an extremely similar Valuepoint unit like a DX or something and it had the cache chip in the picture. I messaged him and asked if we would relist just the cache chip... turns out the dude deals in this stuff and he had a 256k in his inventory. Not sure if i got super lucky and it was the last one, look up computertradeexchange.com and email Brian.
• The IDE Controller supports a CDROM (I had an old white 16x DVD ROM that I plugged in and it worked...) on the Slave using a newer CD Driver like the one on Dos 7.1 CDU or the driver that comes with the Windows ME boot disk.
• Pentium overdrive requires a bios upgrade, I can dig it up.
• I am running a Number 9 VLB card with 2MB of RAM. I had this card new in box by chance for years and then the computer fell in my lap
• You can use a hard drive bigger than ~500 with Disk Overlay software. Found an IBM branded Maxblast disk overlay driver. The original hard drive sounded like the bearings were about to be toast so I popped in an old 2.1GB Maxtor that didn't sound as bad.
• I maxed it to 64MB because i wanted to dual boot Dos, 3.1 and Windows 98. Getting memory to work in mine was pain, even when searching for the right FRU, I still had trouble with modules giving me SIMM errors. I can find the listings if you need.
• The other two slots run a Soundblaster 32 I had laying around and 3com network card that tops out at 100mbps half duplex.

The Valuepoint is extremely well documented vs my PS/1 consultant. I'd have to dig up the stuff, but there are even fixes for Windows 3.11 specifically for the Valuepoint.

So you can't use a hard drive bigger than 500MB in this system? I thought hard drive size limit was a DOS thing?

Also, do you know anything about the built in graphics? Are they better or worse than the Matrox Millennium card I'm using?

It's a BIOS limitation.

Really? Is there a BIOS update that can fix that or is it only fixable with special software (not sure I want to mess with that as those kind of things usually cause problems in the end)? I think I put a 2GB drive in there and although I doubt I'll need that much I'd like to have access to it.

Tempest wrote:

Really? Is there a BIOS update that can fix that

If there is, it would probably be buried on IBM's website somewhere.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/har … ze_barriers.htm and http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/res … ve_barriers.htm discuss the issue in some detail.

Jorpho wrote:

If there is, it would probably be buried on IBM's website somewhere..

Or was, I don't think any of the old files are up anymore. I did see a list somewhere that had the last BIOS file as v65. I should see what mine is.

As I said in my post, you can easily use a larger hard drive with Disk Overlay software. I didn't think about adding an an ISA Ehanced IDE Controller, but you could do that instead. I have the latest BIOS and any drive over 529MB or whatever the max number just gets recognized as the max size allowed.

Go here http://vintage-pc.tripod.com/hdd_utils.html and scroll to the bottom and download the disk image for IBM's Customized Ontrack Disk Overlay driver. This is what I am running with a 2.1GB Maxtor on my Valuepoint.

The latest BIOS is referenced here, it does not change the HD size limitation in the BIOS, but this BIOS supports the Pentium Overdrive http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/ceda.htm

Of course the link on that page is dead, but if you google the file you can find mirrors... like this one http://greyghost.mooo.com/pccbbs/valuepnt/

Either way, disk overlay software is what you want... specifically what I linked you.

Are there any problems using the overlay software?

Phil did a Video on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z15jdZEJiY

Another option is to get a CF card adaptor like this that mounts on an expansion slot

Get a couple of 500MB or less cards and simply swap the cards depending on what you want to play like old consoles. As long as you get the same size cards you don't even have to change anything in BIOS between swaps.

Cant find much about the on board video, just this really
VGA VLB S3 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 86C801/805, basic info

Matrox has some compatibility issues with games
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/