The UMC and SiS are both pretty good chipsets, but the Asus board has a better reputation. Depends on what revision of HOT433 you have. I've never owned one, but I heard some of them can be pretty flaky.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

The UMC and SiS are both pretty good chipsets, but the Asus board has a better reputation. Depends on what revision of HOT433 you have. I've never owned one, but I heard some of them can be pretty flaky.

Thanks for the answer. I can't find any info about the rev of the HOT433, the only thing I can find is that label: 95C-0125

BUMP, in the end I have chosen the Asus, now I have some little problems:
1) It came with a glued heatsink on the cpu, I have 2 amd 586 to try but I can't find any suitable heatsink, I noticed that this mb has clips too, any chance to find a suitable heatsink in Europe?
2) I have some dispaired simm modules, do they need to be used in pair like on pentium systems? How can I recognize a edo simm compared to a fpm module?
Thanks

486 heatsinks can be tricky. Almost nothing used the clips on socket3. Most of the 486 heatsinks had plastic clips that you wedged under the CPU, and they often had small crappy fans too. It shouldn't be impossible to find one on eBay, but not sure about shipping to Europe.

It doesn't matter if 72-pin SIMMs are matched on a 486. They're 32-bits wide, and the 486 has a 32-bit datapath to memory. However, some people have said EDO is not entirely stable on a board that only supports FPM. I only use FPM SIMMs with parity on all of my old boards.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

486 heatsinks can be tricky. Almost nothing used the clips on socket3. Most of the 486 heatsinks had plastic clips that you wedged under the CPU, and they often had small crappy fans too. It shouldn't be impossible to find one on eBay, but not sure about shipping to Europe.

It doesn't matter if 72-pin SIMMs are matched on a 486. They're 32-bits wide, and the 486 has a 32-bit datapath to memory. However, some people have said EDO is not entirely on a board that only supports FPM. I only use FPM SIMMs with parity on all of my old boards.

Thanks for the tip, unlucky there is seem to be noone selling the 486 heatsink here in Europe (at least on ebay), buying it from USA it's not doable, mainly for the crazy shipping price.
About the memory thing is mainly because they are unpaired and I'm unable to identify if they are edo or fpm.
In your opinion the one on the right could it be FPM? It's the only one with 70 ns and a weird chip.
https://imgur.com/a/Se9rGnk

Many thanks.

i was naughty and used thermal glue to attach a heatsink and new fan to my AMD 486-133.

Finding good, working 486 fans is a mugs game.

canthearu wrote:

i was naughty and used thermal glue to attach a heatsink and new fan to my AMD 486-133.

Finding good, working 486 fans is a mugs game.

That's a solution but i'm not going to do it, I like to swap cpu if I like.
That being said, I received the package 2 days ago, it was shipped with a nice Hercules Dynamite PCI (Tseng et4000/w32p, 2mb), but I was wondering what video card I should use?
I will install on the system DOS 6.22 and windows 3.1.
That's the list of the cards I actually have:
Creative Labs Permedia 2 CT6610
Creative 3D Blaster Banshee CT6760
Matrox Mystique 618-02
Matrox Mystique 220 644-03
Matrox Millennium II 708-04
Tseng ET4000/W32P
Sis 6202
Sis 6215
Sis 6326
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5446
Avance Logic ALG2302.A
S3 Virge 325
S3 Virge 375 DX
S3 Virge 385 GX
S3 Trio 775 V2/DX
S3 Trio 64V+ 765

Any suggestion is more than welcome.

Sorry, Imgur is blocked in China and my VPN is down. But what you need to do is read the code on one of the ICs on your SIMM, and use google to find the datasheet. The datasheet can tell you if it's FPM or EDO.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Sorry, Imgur is blocked in China and my VPN is down. But what you need to do is read the code on one of the ICs on your SIMM, and use google to find the datasheet. The datasheet can tell you if it's FPM or EDO.

Thank you for the advice, I tried to google but without success, there are no pdf to download just a bunch of websites... 😵

In the meantime I have 2 problems:
I'm still undecided if go with Tseng video card or Virge (or virge DX), for a dos only system 2mb of video memory will be enough (Tseng) or should I go with a Virge with 4mb?

The chipset revision is the B2.

I took off the cpu (with the heatsink) but now I have a problem, the cpu goes into the socket in every side, that thing is... crazy!
What's the right way to put the cpu, I suppose it is the first picture but better safe than sorry:
https://imgur.com/a/NHOcibb

Thanks.

The Tseng ET4000/W32p is more period correct, but it might be a touch less compatible with games than the S3 Virge. My pick would probably be the Cirruc Logic CL-GD5430 actually. But all of them should work ok.

For placing the CPU ..... it is picture 1, where the corner cutout of the 486 CPU matches the corner with the fewer holes.

canthearu wrote:

The Tseng ET4000/W32p is more period correct, but it might be a touch less compatible with games than the S3 Virge. My pick would probably be the Cirruc Logic CL-GD5430 actually. But all of them should work ok.

For placing the CPU ..... it is picture 1, where the corner cutout of the 486 CPU matches the corner with the fewer holes.

Thank you for the tip! May I ask why do you advice the cirrus logic? It's a 1mb video card and according to the dos benchmarks I did some time ago probably the slowest one...

Cirrus logic cards have pretty wide compatibility with both LCD screens and DOS games. On a 486, under DOS, most PCI cards are going to offer good performance. So I thought it would be a good match, to save the higher performance cards for other faster computers.

Of course, video card choice is up to you, and doesn't have to be a permanent choice either 😀

canthearu wrote:

Cirrus logic cards have pretty wide compatibility with both LCD screens and DOS games. On a 486, under DOS, most PCI cards are going to offer good performance. So I thought it would be a good match, to save the higher performance cards for other faster computers.

Of course, video card choice is up to you, and doesn't have to be a permanent choice either 😀

Well it makes perfectly sense, most of that cards are well enveloped and tagged time to get them out!

I finally have been able to put the system back in use.
Unlucky the bios version is very old 0201, the main problem is that the bios chip is a intel 28f010/12V, that being said i'm unable to backup the bios with TL866II Plus, I also heard that using 12v eeprom may give issues with the latest bios version.
Any suggestion? As work around I flashed the new bios on a W29EE011 but this eeprom belongs to another pc.

Huh, the TL866II Plus should be able to read and program it with the P28F010 program.

canthearu wrote:

Huh, the TL866II Plus should be able to read and program it with the P28F010 program.

Yes correct, I was selecting the wrong type of eeprom :\
Thank you!
In the meanwhile I updated the bios with uniflash and 12v chip, I'm getting the "can't write escd" error that have been discussed in various topics here on vogons with this model of mb.
It seems that the 12v latest bios is 0205 (Re: Question about and need bios update help for ASUS PVI-486SP3), now I give it a try.

Edit: 0205 seems a good version, no errors, I still have the support for hard drives >502mb and the auto setting on bios ide drives, next test will be to check if the 586 works or not.
I did some tests, with older bios the 586-p75 is identified as 486 120 mhz. Everything is fine with the newer bios.
I ordered some eeprom for a reasonable price, they will come handy.

Hello, I'm going to do to a head to head to compare Asus PVI-486SP3 against the Biostar MB-8433UUD-A as soon I get some stuff from China.
On friday I got the fpm memory from a famous german shop (32MB PS/2 FPM SIMM RAM Double Sided 60ns 8Mx32 non-Parity Samsung KM44C4000BK-6), now I tried to install it on my Asus board and it gets detected as a 8mb stick, the stick is composed from 16 chips, 8 for face.

I tried to find the datasheet but it doesn't mention the density of the single chip. My first thought was that it uses high density chips, but I realized it is silly, so could have they sent the wrong memory stick? What can I do?
I can't test the chip in another motherboard because the other simm pc are pentium and they need 2 of them.

Thanks

According to https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/A … PVI-486SP3.html it uses parity ram. Don't know if that will make a difference. That page shows all the accepted memory combinations.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-01-12, 01:58:

According to https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/A … PVI-486SP3.html it uses parity ram. Don't know if that will make a difference. That page shows all the accepted memory combinations.

The mainboard should accept the memory stick, maybe it just doesn't like it because using another stick works just fine...