VOGONS


First post, by Am386DX-40

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Hi guys, need a little help here.
I recently got an old 486 motherboard, "ALD VL4200 Rev. 1.33" in which I plan to build a retro 486DX2 gaming pc. The board is in great shape and came with an IBM (Cyrix) 5x86-100 processor. It has markings for jumper settings for BUS speed (25, 33 and 40) and voltage (3.3v and 5v) on it, but there is absolutely no indication about the multipliers or type of processor. Also there are a lot of jumpers next to the socket 3 that I have no idea what they do and there's nothing on the pcb about them. Ss it is right now, it boots, but it's badly configured because it's reporting "Cx586 16mhz" which is impossible unless there's a 0.5x multiplier.

I found an old thread from the year 2002 in the motherboards.org forum (http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7457) where a user was requesting the manual, and sent a mail to "aldtech.com" and got it, but I did the same and the mail was rejected, the address is long gone, and the current aldtech.com website is of no help at all. Maybe some of you has the manual and can scan/take pics of the configuration part?

Thanx in advance!!

Reply 1 of 5, by fitzpatr

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Please post a good, high resolution picture of your board. We may be able to match it.

MT-32 Old, CM-32L, CM-500, SC-55mkII, SC-88Pro, SC-D70, FB-01, MU2000EX
K6-III+/450/GA-5AX/G400 Max/Voodoo2 SLI/CT1750/MPU-401AT/Audigy 2ZS
486 Build

Reply 2 of 5, by Am386DX-40

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Here are some pics (sorry for the bad quality)

Full view:
bY1QWo0.jpg

Bus speed settings (set to 33mhz) and "delay/no delay", is this some kind of config for the wait states for the VLB slots I presume?:
jUXzU8D.jpg

Voltage settings and unknown jumpers (J3, J4 and J5):
JPwGY07.jpg

More unknown jumpers, probably processor type and multiplier are here, notice also white color vs red for voltage and yellow for bus:
09f1IGQ.jpg

Here you can see the cache config table, but it's factory preset and the jumpers are not present:
lqJw7bd.jpg

Here there's another jumper, J12 with red cap, who knows what it does (it's open btw):
rs8Zztq.jpg

And the last one, probably clear cmos due to proximity of battery/bios chip:
QVjAf47.jpg

Reply 3 of 5, by Am386DX-40

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Turns out that after going into the bios and resetting all to "optimal" preset, and then tewaking a bit, it's correctly configured to run at 100 MHz, and the benchmarks seem to confirm that. Still, can't change the processor or the settings though...

Reply 5 of 5, by Am386DX-40

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Oh I see that board again and I have instant headaches 🤣
I traded it for something useful some time ago. The one in the picture had fake cache, or maybe the chips soldered there were legit, but this board had all the jumpers missing (and some other components in the area) and when tested, it reported no cache. Was quite slow.
Maybe this particular board was OEM... who knows. I'm glad I don't have it anymore 😁