Here are the settings for your motherboard:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020603034300/ht … ard/mboard.html

Don't use regular (non-rechargeable) batteries in a place where they will get charged. J1 should be the external battery header, you can connect there a pack of 3 or 4 AAA regular alkalines. The external battery doesn't get charged. Scrub the board with vinegar if there is the slightest sign of corrosion, in time it will get worse.
A photo of your board would be welcome.

Thanks for that link, that will be very helpful.

Here is a pic of the board

Then the leaking battery

And after romoval and cleaning

From my experience, putting a slow trident graphics card into a 486 can slow it down to 386 speeds in doom. At least it was like that in my 486 33Mhz when I was comparing tseng labs et4000/w32p vlb card and a slow isa trident card that was similar to yours. I got close to double the fps in doom with the vlb card and picture quality was also worse with the trident card.

Baoran wrote:

From my experience, putting a slow trident graphics card into a 486 can slow it down to 386 speeds in doom. At least it was like that in my 486 33Mhz when I was comparing tseng labs et4000/w32p vlb card and a slow isa trident card that was similar to yours. I got close to double the fps in doom with the vlb card and picture quality was also worse with the trident card.

I used an ISA Trident 9000i in a U5SX 486-33F build and did not suffer terribly for it, it was certainly not a decelerator like the Realtek or Oak cards. I could even play DOOM on it. Granted, for anything DX2 and above you would want a VLB or PCI card that will let you take advantage of that speed.

In doom benchmark my 486 33Mhz got 7.07 FPS in with trident TVGA 9000A card and 13.65 FPS with with tseng labs et4000/w32p card.

I hooked up a CD ROM and it works, was able to play doom, the 3.5 and 5.24 floppy's it came with will power on, but I can't get windows to recognize any disks (not sure if its my disks or what). I will try and get some other disks to see if I can get them working.

Which drives do you have exactly? In 486DX2-era I'd expect DS/HD drives for both 3.5" and 5.25", which should be able to read (if not write) all regular PC formatted disks.
And which disks - any idea what system they were used on previously? Can you format one in these drives?

Then the graphics card is a Trident TVGA9000B, it works, Doom kind of looked like bad though. Does anyone know if this card is decent? if not what is recommended for a good 486 machine?

You might find this link useful:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~andrewm/Do … eo-card_faq.txt

ET4000/W32p VLB: Very good at both low res and SVGA. CL-GD5434 VLB: Good at both low-res and SVGA. S3-864/Trio64 […]
Show full quote

ET4000/W32p VLB: Very good at both low res and SVGA.
CL-GD5434 VLB: Good at both low-res and SVGA.
S3-864/Trio64: Very good at low res, mediocre at SVGA.
S3-964: Good at low-res, fair at SVGA.
ATI Mach32 VLB: Fair.
S3-805 (Stealth 24): Mediocre at low-res, good at SVGA.
S3-805 (generic): Mediocre.
CL-GD5426/8: Mediocre.
Trident 9200Cxr: Poor.

ISA TVGA9000B is slow but reliable. As for what is recommended... what is available where you are, and what is your budget?

Generally Tseng ET4000/w32 is recommended for DOS performance, although S3 chips (particularly the Vision 86x/96x series and later) tend to give the best VESA compatibility with very similar performance. Windows is a different story, the more exotic chipsets (eg the Weitek P9000 on the Diamond Viper) start coming into their own, although that's not of much use if you also want to run DOS.

But beggars can't be choosers, on eBay any VLB card tends to go for (very) high prices, and outside of there you generally need luck and persistance to find anything.

There is no sound card, I would like to see what is generally recommended for sound cards. I have read a lot about 486 gaming builds and it seems most people use two, a sound blaster of some variety and a MIDI card, which I'm am not really familiar with.

You can go absolutely crazy on sound card configs if you want, but as you're new to this game, start simple. In DOS almost everything supports the Soundblaster Pro 2.0 well (older titles do regular SB or even AdLib, but the SBPro is compatible with them). The actual Creative Labs SBPro 2.0 is rare, expensive and actually quite crap in terms of signal/noise. What you want is a card with a chip that is 100% hardware compatible with the SBPro2.0. That means pretty much any of the cheap SB clones out there. Generally the more expensive exotic stuff is *less* compatible so less suitable for a first build. That even includes Creative's own SB16/32/64 range!

Chipsets to look out for:
Avance Logic ALS1xx
Aztech AZT23xx
Crystal 423x (preferably NOT the 4235 which has broken FM synthesis)
ESS (pretty much anything, 688 and 1868 are the commonest)
OPTi 92x
I wouldn't pay over EUR/USD 15 for the sort of stuff I'm referring to. If you can't find it locally, check out Amibay.

Once you have this up and running you can start looking into exotic stuff and figure out for yourself if the prices people pay for Soundblaster AWE64 Gold, Gravis Ultrasound, Roland MT-32 / SC-55 and other such things are worth it for you. There are lots of threads here on Vogons discussing the merits of the various cards and modules with videos and sound tracks to listen to.

Which drives do you have exactly? In 486DX2-era I'd expect DS/HD drives for both 3.5" and 5.25", which should be able to read (if not write) all regular PC formatted disks.
And which disks - any idea what system they were used on previously? Can you format one in these drives?

I am not sure exactly what they are, I will have to pull them when I get home and find out.

ISA TVGA9000B is slow but reliable. As for what is recommended... what is available where you are, and what is your budget?

Generally Tseng ET4000/w32 is recommended for DOS performance, although S3 chips (particularly the Vision 86x/96x series and later) tend to give the best VESA compatibility with very similar performance. Windows is a different story, the more exotic chipsets (eg the Weitek P9000 on the Diamond Viper) start coming into their own, although that's not of much use if you also want to run DOS.

But beggars can't be choosers, on eBay any VLB card tends to go for (very) high prices, and outside of there you generally need luck and persistance to find anything.

Yeah I have seen a lot of people talking about the Tseng ET4000, but it looks like a difficult and expensive card to track down. I am ok with spending around $100 on a card, I suppose for now any VLB card would be better than what I have. I see a Diamond Speedstar Pro and some Cirrus Logic VLB cards on Ebay for a reasonable prices. guess I research those and pick one up. Either of those brands know to be better or worse?

You can go absolutely crazy on sound card configs if you want, but as you're new to this game, start simple. In DOS almost every […]
Show full quote

You can go absolutely crazy on sound card configs if you want, but as you're new to this game, start simple. In DOS almost everything supports the Soundblaster Pro 2.0 well (older titles do regular SB or even AdLib, but the SBPro is compatible with them). The actual Creative Labs SBPro 2.0 is rare, expensive and actually quite crap in terms of signal/noise. What you want is a card with a chip that is 100% hardware compatible with the SBPro2.0. That means pretty much any of the cheap SB clones out there. Generally the more expensive exotic stuff is *less* compatible so less suitable for a first build. That even includes Creative's own SB16/32/64 range!

Chipsets to look out for:
Avance Logic ALS1xx
Aztech AZT23xx
Crystal 423x (preferably NOT the 4235 which has broken FM synthesis)
ESS (pretty much anything, 688 and 1868 are the commonest)
OPTi 92x
I wouldn't pay over EUR/USD 15 for the sort of stuff I'm referring to. If you can't find it locally, check out Amibay.

Once you have this up and running you can start looking into exotic stuff and figure out for yourself if the prices people pay for Soundblaster AWE64 Gold, Gravis Ultrasound, Roland MT-32 / SC-55 and other such things are worth it for you. There are lots of threads here on Vogons discussing the merits of the various cards and modules with videos and sound tracks to listen to.

Yeah there seems to be an overabundance of options when it comes to sound devices. Like you said, I guess Ill start with tracking down a SBPro 2.0 on Ebay and look into other options down the road.

So looking on Ebay right now there are several options for the sound cards you mentioned:

Advanced Logic ALS100+ for $20
Crystal 4237B for $22
Bunch of ESS for around $20

Are all of these about the same?

johndutch1987 wrote:

[...]

Yeah I have seen a lot of people talking about the Tseng ET4000, but it looks like a difficult and expensive card to track down. I am ok with spending around $100 on a card, I suppose for now any VLB card would be better than what I have. I see a Diamond Speedstar Pro and some Cirrus Logic VLB cards on Ebay for a reasonable prices. guess I research those and pick one up. Either of those brands know to be better or worse?

Don't compare apples & pears. Diamond is a card vendor, Cirrus Logic a chipset vendor. In this case the Speedstar Pro is in fact a Cirrus Logic-based card...

Cirrus Logic is good for DOS, with the 5434 (rare in VLB) having excellent performance, the 542x (such as used on the Speedstar Pro) less so.

Diamond has good build quality, but IMHO the cards are somewhat overpriced due to name recognition. Diamond is no better than say STB, Elsa, Miro, Quantum, Orchid or Number Nine.

[...]

Yeah there seems to be an overabundance of options when it comes to sound devices. Like you said, I guess Ill start with tracking down a SBPro 2.0 on Ebay and look into other options down the road.

[/quote]
I'd advise against that. The original SBPro 2.0 is rare thus expensive and has very bad sound quality. Almost any clone will have much better sound for a much lower price. Also, take a look at Amibay - eBay is overpriced and full of sharks.

Right, sorry. I meant a clone of the SBpro not the actual one.

Like I said above:

So looking on Ebay right now there are several options for the sound cards you mentioned: […]
Show full quote

So looking on Ebay right now there are several options for the sound cards you mentioned:

Advanced Logic ALS100+ for $20
Crystal 4237B for $22
Bunch of ESS for around $20

Are all of these about the same?

dionb wrote:

I'd advise against that. The original SBPro 2.0 is rare thus expensive and has very bad sound quality.

Bad sound quality? That's all relative.
It suffers from a bit of noise... then again, that's part of the charm.
The SB Pro 2 (not 2.0) however has a very powerful amp with very good bass response. Many people consider it the best sounding OPL3 card out there. Most later SBs and clones sound a lot thinner.

Scali wrote:

The SB Pro 2 (not 2.0) however has a very powerful amp with very good bass response. Many people consider it the best sounding OPL3 card out there. Most later SBs and clones sound a lot thinner.

would You happen to know the numbers behind this? are there non sb cards with comparable or better parameters? (or is an external amp the only way out?)

mrau wrote:

would You happen to know the numbers behind this? are there non sb cards with comparable or better parameters? (or is an external amp the only way out?)

Well, I know it uses a TEA2025 chip as amplifier. I'd have to check what capacitors it uses.
I know that at least some clones also use a TEA2025, such as Aztech Sound Galaxy cards. So they may be 'faithful' clones, which sound similar to the real thing.
Anyway, see/hear this YouTube video for a comparison: https://youtu.be/_ibdIm-ZBB4
What is interesting is that some SB16 cards have been modded with larger capacitors, which improves bass response, getting them to sound closer to an SB Pro 2.

johndutch1987 wrote:

Right, sorry. I meant a clone of the SBpro not the actual one.

Like I said above:

So looking on Ebay right now there are several options for the sound cards you mentioned: […]
Show full quote

So looking on Ebay right now there are several options for the sound cards you mentioned:

Advanced Logic ALS100+ for $20
Crystal 4237B for $22
Bunch of ESS for around $20

Are all of these about the same?

OK, good idea - although you can probably get cheaper on Amibay (in fact I know for sure 😉 )

If you can get more info such as exact brand and model you might find info on good or bad cards, but if they're all 'no name' you'll have to take a gamble. Purely based on chips all the above look fine, and the ALS100+ is the most interesting as it is both SBPro2 and SB16 compatible, which is quite rare (even the SB16s don't do that).

I don't think there is any reason to rush into looking for an SB Pro II, I still have my original CT1600 model and while it sounds nice, I've ended up going with a Vibra 16S with yamaha OPL3 instead because it has far less line noise. I have my 486 hooked up to a home theater system (or use sennheiser HD595s) and much prefer the Vibra 16. Another one that I think sounds much better is the SB32 CT3600, while lacking genuine OPL it does sound very nice.

If you're using old school PC speakers instead of modern high end gear, the Pro II sounds nice, otherwise the line noise may bug you. Newer cards have their cons as well but none of them have bothered me at all.

Just leaving my 2 cents 😀

Guess Ill just pick one of those moderately priced cards and go with it, Im not really an audiophile or anything, so ill get one, and upgade later if necessary.

As far as a video card, I found a cirrus logic CL-GD5428 pretty cheap. Saw a few people on here saying it was a decent card. Anyone have an opinion on it, or know much about it?

johndutch1987 wrote:

As far as a video card, I found a cirrus logic CL-GD5428 pretty cheap. Saw a few people on here saying it was a decent card. Anyone have an opinion on it, or know much about it?

The CL542x cards are among the fastest VLB cards, and are quite good in terms of compatibility. My 486DX2-66 has a Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB, which is based on a CL542x. Always did a fine job for me.

The CL542x cards are among the fastest VLB cards, and are quite good in terms of compatibility. My 486DX2-66 has a Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB, which is based on a CL542x. Always did a fine job for me.

There is a diamond speedstar pro version i can get as well, about the same price. Is there any difference between the two?

johndutch1987 wrote:

There is a diamond speedstar pro version i can get as well, about the same price. Is there any difference between the two?

Difficult to say. Those brand-less cards could be great, or could be terrible (I have a real Stealth S3 Trio card, and a brandless card that runs faster). Diamond isn't great, but it's not terrible either.