I don't think the cost of designing and producing such a device would have been reasonable vs getting an actual VLB motherboard (assuming it is somehow feasible to build something like what you are describing).

On the other hand, motherboards with VLB slots that support 386 processors do exist (you will find a few threads about those in this forum).

Yep. Particularly if you consider the Blue Lightnings to be "386". Leaving out all the weird cabling, what you're describing sounds suspiciously like an Alaris Leopard or Cougar.

Such an adpater *might* be possible, but I'd have to look at all the pins on the VL bus to see where they go. It's possible that a few pins are special control lines that go to the chipset, and maybe specific chipset support for VLB is required.

The other problem I see is shielding. VLB is a noisy bus, and you're going to need a relatively long cable to go from the CPU slot to the VLB card edge.

I have actually been thinking of making a similar adapter. Not for VLB, but to add a 16-bit ISA connector to an 8086 CPU.

FYI... there are 386 motherboards with VLB slots out there. I own a few.

As for the project... if someone has the know-how and if it's possible at all... I say go ahead 😀

Are there any games which clearly benefit from having VLB card on a 386 system?

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Are there any games which clearly benefit from having VLB card on a 386 system?

My guess would be 'no'.
I bought my 486DX2-66 in 'phases'... Initially I bought the CPU+motherboard, and re-used the memory and ISA VGA card from my 386SX-16.
Even with the DX2-66, the ISA Paradise card I had was doing quite a nice job in most games.
I later upgraded to a Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB, which certainly was faster, but not orders of magnitude.

A friend of mine also later got an old 486 machine with ISA only, but with an ET4000 installed. He got even better performance than my Paradise did.

Based on these experiences, I would say that even on a 486DX2-66, the move from ISA to VLB is not that large.
Extrapolating that to the much slower 386DX-33 or 40, I don't think a fast ISA card would be much of a bottleneck at all, in most games.
Yes, in raw bandwidth, the VLB card would be better, but the CPU probably cannot saturate that bandwidth anyway. Besides, a game does a lot more than just writing to videomemory, so the real-world advantage is much smaller than the difference in bandwidth would suggest.

Having said that, I would certainly be interested in benchmarks from a 386 with VLB, compared to a fast ISA card, such as the ET4000.
If you were to run a game such as DOOM, can you see a difference?

it is not really faster to use VLB on 386DX40, because the limit here is often memory bandwith and cpu power.

There are some VLB+"386" results in this post, Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here . You'll have to read a few pages to make sense of it. From what I recall, VLB+Am386DX had practically no benefit. The benefits of VLB+386 seemed to manifest when using the DRx2-66 CPU. I would like to see a more in depth study on this topic though.

aries-mu wrote:

Or what about an actual CPU+Video Card all in one in a card for the CPU socket!!! Placed on the motherboard socket, it would have had like another Socket for the CPU

Cyrix made something similar to what you are describing. It was called the Cyrix MediaGX and used a special socket 7 motherboard. It was ahead of its time.

Keropi recently posted a thread about a 3/486 motherboard he was trying to identify but, he managed to find info for it before anyone replied and therefore removed his post.
It was this motherboard: http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/U-Z/32085.htm.
I saw the post and started to chat to him about it and he actually managed to get a VLB card working with a 386DX CPU (not sure of the MHz but, my guess was a 386DX-40).
He tested it as follows (hope it's OK for me to share this):
with an ISA WD90C30 vga and got these results:
wolf3d: 29.1fps
doom: 9.38fps

- with a VLB WD90C33 vga:
wold3d: 43.9fps
doom: 11.7fps

Based on the above, there definitely seems to be some speed improvement when pairing a 386DX with a VLB graphics card (if you can get it working) but, even so, Doom performance is still not close to what will make it enjoyable to play and, as such, there probably is no real world benefit of pairing a VLB graphics card with a 386 CPU.
It would be interesting to see how it compares with perhaos an ET4000 ISA & VLB graphics card.

I think Keropi was mentioning that he doesn't have any ISA/VLB cards with the same chipset to compare directly. His results seem better than I would expect, which makes me wonder if the chipset on the *C33 is better than the *C30.

Wow Guys, THANK YOU ALL! This is getting very interesting.

As first reply, I'd say that the VLB 386 was just a cherry. The main goal of this topic was my kid-dream of having a 486 socket to pseudo-VLB additional connector(s). So, it was for 486s mainly. At those times, there were A LOT of ISA-only 486s, so, there could have been market for such an adapter.

TheMobRules wrote:

I don't think the cost of designing and producing such a device would have been reasonable vs getting an actual VLB motherboard (assuming it is somehow feasible to build something like what you are describing).
On the other hand, motherboards with VLB slots that support 386 processors do exist (you will find a few threads about those in this forum).

• Probably right. However, considering Evergreen even made a 1 to 2 486 CPUs SMP double socket adapter... Reading the topic with yesterday's eyes, we can see tons of 486 owners with ISA-only motherboards that could have been potentially interested in a single upgrade/adaptor that could have made their system upgradable for quite a while (controllers, SVGAs, etc.).
• Wow! I didn't know VLB 386s existed!!!

dionb wrote:

Yep. Particularly if you consider the Blue Lightnings to be "386". Leaving out all the weird cabling, what you're describing sounds suspiciously like an Alaris Leopard or Cougar.

Never heard of these... will Google this stuff! Thanks.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Such an adpater *might* be possible, but I'd have to look at all the pins on the VL bus to see where they go. It's possible that a few pins are special control lines that go to the chipset, and maybe specific chipset support for VLB is required.
The other problem I see is shielding. VLB is a noisy bus, and you're going to need a relatively long cable to go from the CPU slot to the VLB card edge.
I have actually been thinking of making a similar adapter. Not for VLB, but to add a 16-bit ISA connector to an 8086 CPU.

WOW MAN! Are your really able to make such a thing? Or at least to even "try" to make it? Or at least to even know where one should start in theory? What are you? An electronic engineer? Where would you start? Where to get a board? How to build the lanes on the board??? The control chips?

kixs wrote:

FYI... there are 386 motherboards with VLB slots out there. I own a few.
As for the project... if someone has the know-how and if it's possible at all... I say go ahead 😀

• As I said, I had no idea they existed! WOW!
• Definitely: go ahead guys!!! Show us pics and benchmarks!! hehe

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Are there any games which clearly benefit from having VLB card on a 386 system?

You have a point!
Well, but it wasn't only for video cards. What about controllers? EIDE PIOMODE4, or even Ultra ATA and SCSI VLB controllers!
Imagine then the performance benefits on file servers... Small to large companies with huge infrastructures... would have been able to upgrade their systems by only adding the adapter and a VLB controller, keeping their servers for a long time...

Scali wrote:

My guess would be 'no'...

You raise interesting points. However, let's not forget that a 486 DX2 66 could have been used for quite a while after the release of DX4s and Pentiums. Games were evolving at a fast pace, and soon became unusable on even DX2 66 CPUs. But with such an adaptor and just upgrading the video card with a new / expensive one, people could have kept playing with "modern" games on their 486s...
Then there's, as mentioned above, the benefits of using VLB controllers. Countless 486s had not even EIDE onboard connectors, just IDE.... with only ISA slots...

matze79 wrote:

it is not really faster to use VLB on 386DX40, because the limit here is often memory bandwith and cpu power.

As above, thanks though!

feipoa wrote:

There are some VLB+"386" results in this post, Re: Post your 386 Speedsys results here . You'll have to read a few pages to make sense of it. From what I recall, VLB+Am386DX had practically no benefit. The benefits of VLB+386 seemed to manifest when using the DRx2-66 CPU. I would like to see a more in depth study on this topic though.
Cyrix made something similar to what you are describing. It was called the Cyrix MediaGX and used a special socket 7 motherboard. It was ahead of its time.

Wow Feipoa, you're always a resource!
And I'll Google those MediaGX creatures... curious!

jesolo wrote:

Keropi recently posted a thread about a 3/486 motherboard he was trying to identify but, he managed to find info for it before a […]
Show full quote

Keropi recently posted a thread about a 3/486 motherboard he was trying to identify but, he managed to find info for it before anyone replied and therefore removed his post.
It was this motherboard: http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/U-Z/32085.htm.
I saw the post and started to chat to him about it and he actually managed to get a VLB card working with a 386DX-40 CPU.
He tested it as follows (hope it's OK for me to share this):
with an ISA WD90C30 vga and got these results:
wolf3d: 29.1fps
doom: 9.38fps
- with a VLB WD90C33 vga:
wold3d: 43.9fps
doom: 11.7fps
Based on the above, there definitely seems to be some speed improvement when pairing a 386DX-40 with a VLB graphics card (if you can get it working) but, even so, Doom performance is still not close to what will make it enjoyable to play and, as such, there probably is no real world benefit of pairing a VLB graphics card with a 386 CPU.
It would be interesting to see how it compares with perhaos an ET4000 ISA & VLB graphics card.

Interesting data, thanks bro!
And it would also be great/interesting to compare and benchmark other video cards, like S3864 or 928 or 964 or ATI Mach64, and also EIDE controllers as said above... SCSI, why not!!?

Thanks everyone!

with an ISA WD90C30 vga and got these results:
wolf3d: 29.1fps
doom: 9.38fps
- with a VLB WD90C33 vga:
wold3d: 43.9fps
doom: 11.7fps

as you can see, doom is quite limited by cpu power 😁

aries-mu wrote:

TheMobRules wrote:

I don't think the cost of designing and producing such a device would have been reasonable vs getting an actual VLB motherboard (assuming it is somehow feasible to build something like what you are describing).
On the other hand, motherboards with VLB slots that support 386 processors do exist (you will find a few threads about those in this forum).

• Probably right. However, considering Evergreen even made a 1 to 2 486 CPUs SMP double socket adapter... Reading the topic with yesterday's eyes, we can see tons of 486 owners with ISA-only motherboards that could have been potentially interested in a single upgrade/adaptor that could have made their system upgradable for quite a while (controllers, SVGAs, etc.).

You mean this: https://books.google.nl/books?id=jBfu-m3a23MC … e%20486&f=false
This is a thing called "Vaporware". There is a publication of it but nothing more, it never really existed. 😊

matze79 wrote:

with an ISA WD90C30 vga and got these results: wolf3d: 29.1fps doom: 9.38fps - with a VLB WD90C33 vga: wold3d: 43.9fps doom: 11. […]
Show full quote

with an ISA WD90C30 vga and got these results:
wolf3d: 29.1fps
doom: 9.38fps
- with a VLB WD90C33 vga:
wold3d: 43.9fps
doom: 11.7fps

as you can see, doom is quite limited by cpu power 😁

🤣!

Nvm1 wrote:

You mean this: https://books.google.nl/books?id=jBfu-m3a23MC … e%20486&f=false
This is a thing called "Vaporware". There is a publication of it but nothing more, it never really existed. 😊

Oh gosh man!
I want that vaporware NOW! 😁 😁 😁

The Evergreen Rev-to-SMP has been mentioned before, however I don't think the prototype has ever surfaced.

feipoa wrote:

The Evergreen Rev-to-SMP has been mentioned before, however I don't think the prototype has ever surfaced.

Let's build it now, a 1 to 4 286 CPUs 🤣! Only use: as a key holder maybe.

Scali wrote:

My guess would be 'no'. I bought my 486DX2-66 in 'phases'... Initially I bought the CPU+motherboard, and re-used the memory and […]
Show full quote

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Are there any games which clearly benefit from having VLB card on a 386 system?

My guess would be 'no'.
I bought my 486DX2-66 in 'phases'... Initially I bought the CPU+motherboard, and re-used the memory and ISA VGA card from my 386SX-16.
Even with the DX2-66, the ISA Paradise card I had was doing quite a nice job in most games.
I later upgraded to a Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB, which certainly was faster, but not orders of magnitude.

A friend of mine also later got an old 486 machine with ISA only, but with an ET4000 installed. He got even better performance than my Paradise did.

Based on these experiences, I would say that even on a 486DX2-66, the move from ISA to VLB is not that large.
Extrapolating that to the much slower 386DX-33 or 40, I don't think a fast ISA card would be much of a bottleneck at all, in most games.
Yes, in raw bandwidth, the VLB card would be better, but the CPU probably cannot saturate that bandwidth anyway. Besides, a game does a lot more than just writing to videomemory, so the real-world advantage is much smaller than the difference in bandwidth would suggest.

Having said that, I would certainly be interested in benchmarks from a 386 with VLB, compared to a fast ISA card, such as the ET4000.
If you were to run a game such as DOOM, can you see a difference?

I will soon be running benchmark comparisons that bear on these questions.

I've got a Opti 495SX motherboard with a soldered-on Am386DX-40 CPU, but it only has one VLB slot. Instead of having a fancy VLB video card in there, I've got a VLB multi I/O card, which seems like a better choice for improving system performance. I just snagged a motherboard from Israel on eBay which appears to be the only one for sale in the world which has the same CPU on board, and has --two-- VLB slots. I already figured that what you said in this post is correct, re: video card performance on a 386 system. I just figured it couldn't hurt to have two VLB slots, and I couldn't find any motherboards for sale that are comparable to my Opti 495SX that I currently have (I.e., having just 1 VLB slot.)

The problem with my system is that the CPU benchmarks are just coming in really low. The benchmark numbers for my CPU are showing the performance ofa. 386SX-25 or lower, and I can't explain why. I've done absolutely everything I could think of, up to and including permuting jumper settings, adjusting BIOS settings, and upgrading the cache from 20ns to 15ns, and doubling the amount of cache from 128KiB to 256KiB. Nothing has budged the performance even a tiny bit. Warcraft I runs like complete crap on this system and it's pretty frustrating.

So, I think I'm going to get an ISA-only motherboard with an Am386DX-40 CPU while that other motherboard ships from Israel, and see if, paired with an ET4000 card (which is also on its way) that I can get decent system performance out of it. I'm not stuck on having VLB cards in my 386 system, but I didn't expect to face these weird problems, either.

Thoughts?

aquishix wrote:

I'm not stuck on having VLB cards in my 386 system, but I didn't expect to face these weird problems, either.

Thoughts?

Back when I had a 386/VLB board with the OPTi495XLC chipset it was an underperformer too. And even though I found the reason in relaxed cache and memory timings I couldn't rectify it. I tried a different set of cache chips but couldn't seem to get it working with tighter timings so it remained slow in comparison to my other 386 boards. What's even more interesting later I got a small board with the same chipset but without a VLB slot and it performs just like my faster ALI ones.

I was so disappointed with the VLB386 that I got rid of it in the end. It was either slow or unstable - and the other, faster ones performed at least as well with fast ISA cards.