I will look for the scanned manual I have when i get home, it's from the Internet so it does exist online.

By the way I did get the email you sent me through Vogons but as you did not write your email address in the message I could not reply. Sending a PM is a much better option if you want to send a message to a member.

Thank you for your help Skyscraper, sorry i didn't know how the board email sending works.

Anyway, i have this stretchgoals with my 486:
run games like frontier first encounters, microprose F19
bit of qbasic programming (easy)
bit of assembly programming (medium)
DIY ISA card (hard)
It's due to my nostalgia and because it seems to me that I've missed the opportunity to do
old PC hardware design. It was actual some 20 years ago 😁 Now technologies are so good
and cheap that any hobbyist can stick anything to ISA he wants.

Here is the manual this is the only manual you will find on the internet. It has all what you need. About cf card i dont know im running normal hdd with this board. The case problem is strange as i have my installed in normal atx not at case and everything is fine. Post some pictures. Are you from Slovakia?

luisile wrote:

Here is the manual this is the only manual you will find on the internet. It has all what you need. About cf card i dont know im running normal hdd with this board. The case problem is strange as i have my installed in normal atx not at case and everything is fine. Post some pictures. Are you from Slovakia?

I can confirm that this is the same manual I have.

Thank you all for your help. I'll scan the whole manual if i find it.

luisile wrote:

About cf card i dont know im running normal hdd with this board. The case problem is strange as i have my installed in normal atx not at case and everything is fine. Post some pictures. Are you from Slovakia?

What HDD do you use? Has anyone experience with sata to IDE adapter or CF to IDE adapter?

I'll make better pictures of the bent case. I think it has one hole drilled in wrong place, which is only one of the mechanical problems.

Yes i'm from Slovakia. Is anyone here in neighbourhood? The second gem I have at home is Didaktik Kompakt, which is Slovakian clone of Sinclair ZX spectrum. It has one builtin floppy drive. I've got DIN keyboard adapter with some very old and weird sturdy keyboard with DIN connector. Also I have some kensington joysticks.

Yes im from Slovakia ill send you PM, and for the others i use a quantum fireball cr 4.2gb Hdd.

If you order a 512MB, a 2GB, an 8GB and a 32GB CF card, you'll have one for most capacity limits you'll hit. 486s with PCI slots are later 486s so maybe your machine will have something like the 8.4GB limit. You can use Ontrack Disk Manager or get a PCI IDE card if your onboard controller has a low limit and you want more. And yes you could also get a SCSI card though I'd recommend just getting an IDE card. Preferably not a RAID card, either, as those can be tricky as far as drivers go.

Never consider spinning disks unless you really want to hear the sound they make and/or they are free. And either way, or any other way, don't ever trust any of them (you shouldn't trust any hard drive, but especially not a 20-30 year old one).

SATA to IDE adapters usually seem to work fine on compatibility and performance should be good enough especially for a 486 or Pentium.

CF cards essentially ARE IDE natively so they almost always work well. Not 100% of the time though. Ontrack should work on CF cards too.

SD card adapters also exist and SD is not IDE natively but SD cards are generally newer tech, and even though the SD-IDE adapter chip has to do more work than a CF adapter, sometimes performance will actually be better. They cost a bit more but not too bad.

PhilsComputerLab, a mod here, also has a Youtube channel under the same name where he has discussed some of these options, including a CF adapter, an SD adapter, and a SD-SCSI adapter.

I also have the Chapter 4 scanned manual. I would really like to have the full manual, also. If you find it & scan it... thank you in advance.

My PVI486-SP3 is a weird one. Certain PCI cards don't like to work: things like IDE cards. I could try an XT-IDE but that's only an 8-bit ISA card. Any suggestions for mass storage on this weird beast?

I haven't had good luck with CF on my PVI486-SP3. Doom buffers when playing.