Personally, I actually would recommend the DX4 Overdrive over the other upgrades if you can find it cheap. Internally it's close enough to the Intel 486DX2 that often even the buggiest and most backward BIOSes work just fine with them. Sometimes particularly old and nasty Award BIOSes struggle with the Am5x86-133 upgrades, and Pentium Overdrive support is highly dependent on both the motherboard chipset and the BIOS for it to work its best.

I've had a card exactly like that very GD5429 many years ago. If it has 60ns rated memory, it ought to be plenty quick enough for a 486 game box. (And you can squeeze a little extra performance out of it using the CIRBOOST utility.) I also noticed you found a QD6500 VLB card. That's a really good one, especially if you can find someone to burn an XT-IDE BIOS ROM chip to plug into that vacant slot. (What the XT-IDE BIOS ROM will do, is make using a hard drive larger than 503MB much less painful to set up and use. Many old 486 boards have incomplete or even non-existent LBA support, meaning you're often stuck with a 503MB or, if you're lucky, 2GB or so maximum drive size otherwise.)

Eep386 wrote on 2020-12-13, 01:00:

Personally, I actually would recommend the DX4 Overdrive over the other upgrades if you can find it cheap. Internally it's close enough to the Intel 486DX2 that often even the buggiest and most backward BIOSes work just fine with them. Sometimes particularly old and nasty Award BIOSes struggle with the Am5x86-133 upgrades, and Pentium Overdrive support is highly dependent on both the motherboard chipset and the BIOS for it to work its best.

That’s excellent. Pretty much a perfect chip then really. I’m really looking forward to putting it all together

Eep386 wrote on 2020-12-13, 01:00:

I've had a card exactly like that very GD5429 many years ago. If it has 60ns rated memory, it ought to be plenty quick enough for a 486 game box. (And you can squeeze a little extra performance out of it using the CIRBOOST utility.) I also noticed you found a QD6500 VLB card. That's a really good one, especially if you can find someone to burn an XT-IDE BIOS ROM chip to plug into that vacant slot. (What the XT-IDE BIOS ROM will do, is make using a hard drive larger than 503MB much less painful to set up and use. Many old 486 boards have incomplete or even non-existent LBA support, meaning you're often stuck with a 503MB or, if you're lucky, 2GB or so maximum drive size otherwise.)

Looking at the part number, it is 60ns memory. I’m in no rush but I shall be upgrading it with 2 512kb 60ns memory chips very soon

In regards to the BIOS, my father had a EEPROM reader / writer, can we write the BIOS with that?

Can you use any old BIOS chip that physically matches and reprogram that?

It would be nice to be able to have large drive support. I chose the card for its performance, I never considered about large drive support, I just thought it wasn’t possible without a PCI controller.

In regards to the BIOS, my father had a EEPROM reader / writer, can we write the BIOS with that?

If the chip type this board has is in the list of supported chips, yes.

Can you use any old BIOS chip that physically matches and reprogram that?

needs to be the same size and sometimes have the same cell organization. Your mileage may vary.

As for large disk support, most award 4.51PG bioses can be patched relatively easy, not so for AMI bioses it seems. We still miss the bios for this board in UH19 btw so if you could make a dump and post it somewhere that would be nice.

Well turns out he doesn’t have it anymore, so I will have to find help for that.

Is there anyway to tell if this board supports L1 cache writeback ?

There's no mention of the P24D in supported CPUs. So I fear it's not supporting WB.

evasive wrote on 2020-12-13, 16:42:

There's no mention of the P24D in supported CPUs. So I fear it's not supporting WB.

Thank you for that, I’m not too concerned, in benchmarks the WB makes a big difference, but some DOOM benchmarks I’ve been looking at actually come out a frame or two slower.

All in all, I think this is going to be an awesome machine, I just hope it’s as good as what I’m expecting. I’m looking for at least 25-30 frames in DOOM, if it does that then I’m winning.

If not then I have to spend more money, those Are the only two options available. 😅

Are there any utilities that can enable P24d or 5x86 wb mode after booting?

douglar wrote on 2020-12-14, 02:55:

Are there any utilities that can enable P24d or 5x86 wb mode after booting?

I found this, looks like it enables WT but not WB.
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?619 … os-command-line

I remember messing with some sort of tool that came some tool for managing the cache on evergreeen upgrade modules a long time ago.

I also remember the WB jumper pictured here:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?699 … een-586-upgrade

Here are some good links about processor upgrades:
http://www.pchardwarelinks.com/cpu_proc.htm

douglar wrote on 2020-12-14, 18:41:

I remember messing with some sort of tool that came some tool for managing the cache on evergreeen upgrade modules a long time ago.

I also remember the WB jumper pictured here:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?699 … een-586-upgrade

That CPU looks monstrous.

I'd love one of those, but not for the price I see.

douglar wrote on 2020-12-14, 18:41:

Here are some good links about processor upgrades:
http://www.pchardwarelinks.com/cpu_proc.htm

Thanks, I'll have a read

Oh yeah, one note about Cirrus 542x VLB cards: they don't gain much of anything with 2MB of RAM, only a few interlaced modes.

I have the Evergreen 5x86 in that one thread, it's indeed a very nice processor but you must find a way to keep it cool. Evergreen fitted a far too small heatsink to the top so if you can't replace the heatsink with a larger one, you'll probably want to look into an active cooler (like a fan). Finding a fan that fits the tiny surface area of the heatsink may be difficult, but some computer cases do have cut-outs for an 80mm fan in front which you can try.

I'm using a Kingston TurboChip for my Socket 2 486. It comes with a voltage converter and an active cooler on an Am5x86 133MHz CPU.

Thanks all. I'm too deep into the build to stop now. But not going mad with. Going to keep this one moderately specced out and keep it for really old DOS games.

I just lucked out on eBay and got a full system for £70. It knocks spots off the one earlier in this post.

Specs of the one I just won are as follows:

Processor: AMD 5x86 133Mhz Socket 3
Motherboard: Hsing tech Socket 3 PCI & VLB! 486AVIP
C2032 battery
RAM amount: 16Mb (2x8mb, 2 slots empty)
HDD: Seagate 3Gb
FLOPPY: 3.5
SCSI Controller & SCSI Sanoyo x4 CDROM
GFX: ATI MACH 64 PCI 2Mb
Sound: ISA Realtek RTA3000
Ethernet: SMC basic PCI ethernet

Comes with an AT keyboard but is a bit haggard.

I'm made up with it. Hope it survives the trip from Poland.

Sounds like a really good machine you won there. Even better that it comes with a coin battery instead of those leaky barrel batteries! Congrats.

OzzFan wrote on 2020-12-17, 18:53:

Sounds like a really good machine you won there. Even better that it comes with a coin battery instead of those leaky barrel batteries! Congrats.

Thank you mate. I agree. Doesn't need anything doing to it really. Nothing that I don't already own anyway.

I've probably spent 300 on the build in this thread then this comes along. I shouldn't rush into things, but that's a running theme with me.

Ah well. I'm fully kitted out now at least. I hope I can have some Voodoo 2 fun with it.

I did purchase one more thing. Some people hate these drives, but I think it gets respect for lasting 30 years on this earth and still working.

It's a Connor 40MB IDE HDD.

It's funny how much each individual part costs these days, but you can pick up a complete functioning system & with a case & PS for less than the price of the motherboard if you are patient and not too picky. When I started playing with my retro parts, I needed a stable system with a floppy drive for testing. I was able to snag a 350mhz 440bx gateway for $50. Smelled like an ash tray, but has worked like a champ.

douglar wrote on 2020-12-17, 19:45:

It's funny how much each individual part costs these days, but you can pick up a complete functioning system & with a case & PS for less than the price of the motherboard if you are patient and not too picky. When I started playing with my retro parts, I needed a stable system with a floppy drive for testing. I was able to snag a 350mhz 440bx gateway for $50. Smelled like an ash tray, but has worked like a champ.

Yeah, and you know what.. I kinda knew that all along. I wanted to build a full older ISA 486 from scratch. I've never had the struggles of setting up system resources and such, so we will see what it entails. Doing the 'new' build this weekend hopefully, and looking forward to it.

Will be a while before the complete system I won arrives anyway, so will be good to start setting up the hard drive, and clone onto the beast when it arrives.

All good things.

Most bits are here now.

Just waiting on the HDD and VLB cards.

It’s a painful wait. Some pics of progress so far.

Bye bye evil barrel battery.