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MB and RAM for 486 DX-50

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First post, by ltning

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Hi,

I have a weird plan - I want to build a 486 DX-50 based system. I'm not going for any speed crowns; rather one could say I'm replicating a piece of my own history here.

Specifically I'm looking at two motherboards:
- Asus PVI-486SP3 rev. 1.22
- ATREND ATC-1425B

Both appear to have "some" amount of cache memory installed, but I'm not sure this even matters much for this CPU.
Bigger question is: What kind of RAM should I go for? I need 32 or better 64MB, and I see both support EDO and FPM alike. Now, knowing that EDO and FPM chip-wise is or may be precisely the same, and seeing that many in here speak of FPM RAM even on EDO-capable motherboards - what is the secret sauce here? What have I missed? From my youth I remember EDO was "the sh1t", though I have no memory of solidly proving that one way or another.

Any input welcome. 😀

/Eirik

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 1 of 30, by dionb

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Those motherboards are not a good match with this CPU.

The DX-50 was an interesting chip, one that pushed the limits when it was released in 1991 (5 years before those motherboards!). A 50MHz CPU core was impressive, but a motherboard that worked at 50MHz more so. Initial motherboards were ISA-only, so only CPU, RAM and motherboard chipset needed to work at 50MHz. That generally worked well, as did EISA boards with 32b bus running slower than CPU speed. Soon however VLB was introduced for a 32b bus running at full CPU speed. In the case of the DX-50 that meant that everything in the VLB system needed to run at 50MHz too, despite sometimes long trace lengths. This was rarely stable unless extra wait states were introduced, basically sacrificing all the extra performance. The practical problems involved with 50MHz bus speed on 486 architecture led Intel to abandon that speed tier and instead focus on 25/33MHz bus speeds with multiplier (DX2, DX4). AMD and Cyrix later increased it up to 40MHz, but nobody tried 50MHz again until the launch of the Pentium architecture, and even there, no local buses like VLB were used, specifically to avoid the problems seen with the DX-50.

Now, some later 486 motherboards could handle 50MHz after all (they were being produced well into the Pentium era), so it's possible one of the two late boards you mention might work - if equipped with suitable RAM and expansion cards. It would, however, be like taking a modern car and putting an engine from a 1960s sports car in it: inefficient and horribly unmatched. Instead you'd be better off finding an old 1991/1992-era ISA-only or EISA 486 board capable of running at 50MHz. Save those other two boards for DX4 CPUs or a 5x86.

As for RAM: FP and EDO describe how chips work, not what they look like or which kind of module they are on. The only way to tell is to look up the chip codes on the chips on your modules. Both can be found on 30p SIMMs, 72p SIMMs and occasionally on 168p DIMMs. Your motherboard chipset determines which type of chip you need, your motherboard layout what kind of modules. EDO is slightly faster than FP, but needs to be explicitly supported, and EDO support was rare in 486 days.

I'm wondering what you need 32 or 64MB for, as that is vastly beyond what normal mortals could afford when these systems were new (in 1992 a high-end system had 4 or 8MB of RAM). It should be possible though, provided you have enough SIMM slots. The motherboard chipset determines max chip density, which in turn determines max SIMM capacity and therefore max total RAM.Around 1991, 4Mb (note lower case b!) was the maximum chip density. With 30p SIMMs limited to 8 chips (or 9 with parity), your max SIMM capacity would be 4MB (as 1B = 8b). If you have 8 SIMM slots like that, you get 32MB, with 16 slots you hit 64MB. I have an EISA board for DX-50 from 1991 with 16 slots, exactly that configuration. With 72p SIMMs, you can use 16 chips, so with 4Mb memory density you get max 8MB per SIMM and 4 72p SIMM slots gives you 32MB.
Later chipsets support 16Mb density, so 16MB per 30p SIMM or 32MB per 72p SIMM is possible, and there exist 72p SIMMs with 64Mb chips, allowing 64MB or even 128MB on a single SIMM. At least one very late era 486 chipset can work with those SIMMs, but they are totally period-inappropriate for a DX-50.

Reply 2 of 30, by mpe

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IMHO none of the above boards is a good choice if you want to replicate history as you say. it is not they can't run it, but it is just pointless and sometimes troublesome.

A period corrrect setup for DX-50 is either early 486 EISA or ISA motherboard. That's what was state of the art for a short period before clock doubled chips and local bus came to market. After that the DX-50 was relegated to server space if anytthing.

As stated above DX-50 was never a good choice for VLB/PCI based motherboards.

If you have a late VL-Bus/PCI based Socket 3 motherboard there is no good reason for preferring DX-50 over DX2-66. Or even DX2-50. Let alone DX4. Just use a DX2-66 and save all the hassle. If you want a proper DX-50 system you need a different board. Feel free to check my own Dx-50 build.

Blog|NexGen 586|S4

Reply 3 of 30, by pshipkov

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In my opinion:
Dx50 is a dos and win3.1 capable cpu.
It won't do win95 well.
For dos: vlb >> pci, eisa, isa.
In other words - vlb/isa motherboard will work better than pci/isa, or eisa ones.
Decent quality vlb vga+ide adapters can run natively at 50mhz with 0-wait states.
Decent quality sram chips can handle that frequency as well. If you can - pick a board with 512k or 1mb. Gives small perf increase.
Any RAM will do. Go with FPM, it is a safer bet. 32mb will be fine for pretty much anything that makes sense for dx50 machine, but more won't hurt.
With such configuration you will have the best experience with this class hardware.
But if you want extra flavor - do what MPE said - EISA.

retro bits and bytes

Reply 4 of 30, by debs3759

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As others have said, 64MB and EDO are overkill for a DX-50 based DOS system. Having said that, the PVI-486SP3 can take a pair of 64MB FPM sticks, so will happily work with 32 or 64. Not sure about EDO though, most people say it's not supported, and I haven't tried it yet.

The same board can also go up to 66 MHz bus, although I assume that was never official. For a VLB card, you would no doubt need to set the jumper for 1 wait state if you go above 40 MHz bus, and even for 40 MHz with many cards.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 5 of 30, by rmay635703

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mpe wrote on 2021-03-21, 15:19:

IMHO none of the above boards is a good choice if you want to replicate history as you say. it is not they can't run it, but it is just pointless and sometimes troublesome.

Meh historically accurate seems to be just OEM according to Vogons

For those of us who built and used systems from as found situations you might well get a cast off cpu, buy a new motherboard / video card with features you want (like built in eide w/ vlb support), re use your memory, hd and a junk case.

If the modernish motherboard you select is rock stable at 50mhz and has onboard IDE and you carefully choose your vlb graphics you might well get away with 50mhz .

And if you don’t the chip always runs fine at 40mhz.

It’s also helpful your modern speeds of cache can be hacked in to not be period correct with sync sram (even if only 64k worth)

Get a board with unofficial 60/66mhz FSB and things might get even more interesting.

So have fun, if you already have the dx50 don’t worry about accuracy, back in the day you worked with what you brought.

Also my old Windows benchmark program listed a dx50 server with 0 wait state memory that had a faster memory benchmark than a stock p90, never knew what machine that was

Good Luck

Reply 7 of 30, by ltning

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First off - thank you for your very detailed response.

dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 13:05:

Those motherboards are not a good match with this CPU.

I've removed the rest of this part of your response for brevity.
Yeah, I was afraid/aware that it's not a *good* match. I have not done a lot/enough reading up on how VLB/PCI deals with the 50MHz bus speed of this CPU. Sadly I've been looking for EISA boards for some time (as that's what I had back in the day), but finding that is hard - finding an EISA VGA card, or even harder, a (caching) IDE controller, has proven pretty much impossible. At least at my budget.

dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 13:05:

As for RAM: FP and EDO describe how chips work, not what they look like or which kind of module they are on. The only way to tell is to look up the chip codes on the chips on your modules. Both can be found on 30p SIMMs, 72p SIMMs and occasionally on 168p DIMMs. Your motherboard chipset determines which type of chip you need, your motherboard layout what kind of modules. EDO is slightly faster than FP, but needs to be explicitly supported, and EDO support was rare in 486 days.

I was referring to how, at least in some cases, the actual chips on the modules are the same for FPM and EDO sticks - perhaps this is an artifact from the later days of the era, when the RAM speeds had already been pushed way beyond these standards but was still in demand.

dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 13:05:

I'm wondering what you need 32 or 64MB for, as that is vastly beyond what normal mortals could afford when these systems were new (in 1992 a high-end system had 4 or 8MB of RAM). It should be possible though, provided you have enough SIMM slots. The motherboard chipset determines max chip density, which in turn determines max SIMM capacity and therefore max total RAM.Around 1991, 4Mb (note lower case b!) was the maximum chip density. With 30p SIMMs limited to 8 chips (or 9 with parity), your max SIMM capacity would be 4MB (as 1B = 8b). If you have 8 SIMM slots like that, you get 32MB, with 16 slots you hit 64MB. I have an EISA board for DX-50 from 1991 with 16 slots, exactly that configuration. With 72p SIMMs, you can use 16 chips, so with 4Mb memory density you get max 8MB per SIMM and 4 72p SIMM slots gives you 32MB.
Later chipsets support 16Mb density, so 16MB per 30p SIMM or 32MB per 72p SIMM is possible, and there exist 72p SIMMs with 64Mb chips, allowing 64MB or even 128MB on a single SIMM. At least one very late era 486 chipset can work with those SIMMs, but they are totally period-inappropriate for a DX-50.

Ah. The "why on earth" question. :)
I'm going to run OS/2 on this one (in addition to DOS). Back then we used some specialised software to produce some of the first digitized surveying maps of the region where I lived, and that software was notoriously resource-consuming. I am hoping to get my hands on the floppies it was distributed on once the Covid situation is past, as I still have some of the old data files we produced back then. They are very high resolution vector representation of geographical maps - for the time it was a massive effort, and the digitizing happened by hand on a massive plotting table of about 2x1m size. But I digress..

Now if I were to stumble across an EISA board and the necessary add-on boards in my price range I'd jump on that - but until then I'll see what the Asus (yes, I bought it..) can do for me. It comes with a DX4-100 and 32MB, so it'll be great to get started with, at least.

Would you recommend a VLB VGA, or will a PCI ET4k or similar do fine (I'm assuming "yes")?

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 8 of 30, by ltning

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mpe wrote on 2021-03-21, 15:19:

IMHO none of the above boards is a good choice if you want to replicate history as you say. it is not they can't run it, but it is just pointless and sometimes troublesome.

See my response - I should probably have been more clear that I'm somewhat well aware of the limitations and that there's a certain mismatch there..

mpe wrote on 2021-03-21, 15:19:

If you have a late VL-Bus/PCI based Socket 3 motherboard there is no good reason for preferring DX-50 over DX2-66. Or even DX2-50. Let alone DX4. Just use a DX2-66 and save all the hassle. If you want a proper DX-50 system you need a different board. Feel free to check my own Dx-50 build.

That.... is drool-worthy. And pretty close to what I had back then. The caching IDE controller, the Adaptec (which we had for CD-ROM back then).. I can't for the life of me remember what VGA it was, but it was definitely EISA and it had to be able to drive the outrageous 1024x768 21" display (but it was specifically not 8514/A, which caused driver-headaches in OS/2). We used Token Ring back then, and this machine was one of only a few on the dedicated 16Mbit ring in the house, and the EISA TR adapter was key to making that tick at all.

Thanks for your input. Much appreciated.

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 9 of 30, by ltning

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pshipkov wrote on 2021-03-21, 16:46:

Dx50 is a dos and win3.1 capable cpu.

I can promise you that in OS/2 it ran circles around the DX2-66 machines that arrived soon later, mostly because disk I/O was so much better. I suppose RAM access was also somewhat faster, though I'm not sure which RAM timings that system was operating with.

pshipkov wrote on 2021-03-21, 16:46:

Decent quality vlb vga+ide adapters can run natively at 50mhz with 0-wait states.

Got any examples, so I know what to look for? This (ASUS) has onboard IDE so I'll use that unless I find a cache controller (PCI, probably) - but if you think VLB graphics beats PCI for such a board, what should I look for to be somewhat certain it can handle 50MHz?

pshipkov wrote on 2021-03-21, 16:46:

Decent quality sram chips can handle that frequency as well. If you can - pick a board with 512k or 1mb. Gives small perf increase.

I guess time will show :)

Thanks!
/Eirik

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 10 of 30, by ltning

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debs3759 wrote on 2021-03-21, 17:05:

As others have said, 64MB and EDO are overkill for a DX-50 based DOS system. Having said that, the PVI-486SP3 can take a pair of 64MB FPM sticks, so will happily work with 32 or 64. Not sure about EDO though, most people say it's not supported, and I haven't tried it yet.

Manual seems somewhat vague about it; I guess I'll have to try. I have some small EDO sticks floating around, but I'll try with the RAM that comes with the board first.

debs3759 wrote on 2021-03-21, 17:05:

The same board can also go up to 66 MHz bus, although I assume that was never official. For a VLB card, you would no doubt need to set the jumper for 1 wait state if you go above 40 MHz bus, and even for 40 MHz with many cards.

Now that's interesting. I don't think I'll ever be able to push anything that far, but it would sure be fun to try.

Thanks,
/Eirik

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 11 of 30, by ltning

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pshipkov wrote on 2021-03-21, 17:15:

That latest revision pvi-486sp3 board is really good. If you have it already - go for it. It is a no brainer.

Thanks for making me feel less nervous about my purchase ;)
As others have suggested, probably not the best for a DX50, but there are a lot of 486-class CPUs out there and this board seems to support pretty much all of them - so I can play around quite a bit, it would seem.

/Eirik

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 12 of 30, by dionb

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ltning wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:28:
First off - thank you for your very detailed response. [...] […]
Show full quote

First off - thank you for your very detailed response.
[...]

I've removed the rest of this part of your response for brevity.
Yeah, I was afraid/aware that it's not a *good* match. I have not done a lot/enough reading up on how VLB/PCI deals with the 50MHz bus speed of this CPU. Sadly I've been looking for EISA boards for some time (as that's what I had back in the day), but finding that is hard - finding an EISA VGA card, or even harder, a (caching) IDE controller, has proven pretty much impossible. At least at my budget.

With patience and watching local sources like a hawk, a lot is possible. I've found two EISA boards similar to MPE's for EUR 25 each, I paid EUR 15 each for a Compaq QVision 1024 and an SMC 10/100 EISA NIC, and EUR 20 for a Buslogic EISA SCSI controller. Of course, YMMV as to what you get The first board had a DS1387 soldered to it. I suspect something went wrong desoldering as I've never been able to get it stable since, and the second board is fixed at 50MHz bus speed, but my long -awaited DX-50 turns out to be dead...

[...]
I was referring to how, at least in some cases, the actual chips on the modules are the same for FPM and EDO sticks - perhaps this is an artifact from the later days of the era, when the RAM speeds had already been pushed way beyond these standards but was still in demand.

Er, no, FP and EDO chips are physically different. Usually the third digit on the chip code is a 4 with FP and a 5 with EDO, although it can differ per brand.

[...]

Ah. The "why on earth" question. 😀
I'm going to run OS/2 on this one (in addition to DOS). Back then we used some specialised software to produce some of the first digitized surveying maps of the region where I lived, and that software was notoriously resource-consuming. I am hoping to get my hands on the floppies it was distributed on once the Covid situation is past, as I still have some of the old data files we produced back then. They are very high resolution vector representation of geographical maps - for the time it was a massive effort, and the digitizing happened by hand on a massive plotting table of about 2x1m size. But I digress..

OK, that's pretty niche, but very valid. OS/2 2.0 or Warp?

Now if I were to stumble across an EISA board and the necessary add-on boards in my price range I'd jump on that - but until then I'll see what the Asus (yes, I bought it..) can do for me. It comes with a DX4-100 and 32MB, so it'll be great to get started with, at least.

Would you recommend a VLB VGA, or will a PCI ET4k or similar do fine (I'm assuming "yes")?

Depends what that software wants. Does it support XGA? Not very familiar with that niche, but given age and ultra-high-end it might well. In any event I'd say look out for OS/2 driver support first and foremost.

Reply 13 of 30, by Jo22

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dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:58:
ltning wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:28:

Ah. The "why on earth" question. 😀
I'm going to run OS/2 on this one (in addition to DOS). Back then we used some specialised software to produce some of the first digitized surveying maps of the region where I lived, and that software was notoriously resource-consuming. I am hoping to get my hands on the floppies it was distributed on once the Covid situation is past, as I still have some of the old data files we produced back then. They are very high resolution vector representation of geographical maps - for the time it was a massive effort, and the digitizing happened by hand on a massive plotting table of about 2x1m size. But I digress..

OK, that's pretty niche, but very valid. OS/2 2.0 or Warp?

I wonder the same. Pre-Warp civiliza.. err.. systems are though.
They require that 64MB/OS2 option in BIOS if more than 64MB is installed.
Warp 3 and beyond do nit require special treatment, if memory serves.

By the way, here's that legendary OS/2 vs NT shout out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DAojx2Hgec

OS/2 v2.1 needs at least 8MB realistically. 4MB, as installed in German Vobis PCs at the time was not enough.
Even Win95 struggled on such a RAM configuration.

For comparison.. Mail servers in offices running on Windows for Workgroups were equipped with 12, 16 or 24MB of RAM.

So it's not too farfetched that an OS/2 Workstation PC runs on 32 to 64MB.
Even back in the 90s, special purpose PC must have existed that such a gigantic memory configuration.
Maybe software developers, artists or video amateurs had such power horses under their desk! 💪😎

Edit: In case you care about Windows 3.1 or Win-OS/2..
It's possible to integrate Windows more seamlessly into OS/2..

http://www.geocities.ws/cryptic_crab/windows3 … ls/wpshell.html

There's also another utility which changes the Win 3.1 buttons to that of OS/2! 😀
So Windows programs nolonger look so alien in OS/2.

Edit: Files attached (Freeware)

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Last edited by Jo22 on 2021-03-23, 14:26. Edited 2 times in total.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 14 of 30, by ltning

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dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:58:

[...]
I was referring to how, at least in some cases, the actual chips on the modules are the same for FPM and EDO sticks - perhaps this is an artifact from the later days of the era, when the RAM speeds had already been pushed way beyond these standards but was still in demand.

Er, no, FP and EDO chips are physically different. Usually the third digit on the chip code is a 4 with FP and a 5 with EDO, although it can differ per brand.

Then I've misunderstood, or misremembered. Nevermind.

dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:58:

Ah. The "why on earth" question. :)
I'm going to run OS/2 on this one (in addition to DOS). Back then we used some specialised software to produce some of the first digitized surveying maps of the region where I lived, and that software was notoriously resource-consuming. I am hoping to get my hands on the floppies it was distributed on once the Covid situation is past, as I still have some of the old data files we produced back then. They are very high resolution vector representation of geographical maps - for the time it was a massive effort, and the digitizing happened by hand on a massive plotting table of about 2x1m size. But I digress..

OK, that's pretty niche, but very valid. OS/2 2.0 or Warp?

We started out with 2.0, 2.1 came out very soon after so the project really only took off in the 2.1 era. Warp3 ("Connect" - with a proper TCP/IP stack, IIRC) showed up and was probably the most successful version for this project - it made integration on the network there much easier (Banyan Vines was never good friends with OS/2, and after moving to Novell it became necessary with better network support in both DOS and OS/2 sessions). Warp4 came towards the end when other platforms (cough) started taking over.

I have OS/2 in some variation installed on all the builds I have, from P1-133 via dual P200MMX to a P4. The current variant - ArcaOS - is pretty much a slightly updated bundle of what most of us die-hard users ended up assembling on our own back in the late 90s, plus it supports somewhat modern hardware, too.

dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:58:

Would you recommend a VLB VGA, or will a PCI ET4k or similar do fine (I'm assuming "yes")?

Depends what that software wants. Does it support XGA? Not very familiar with that niche, but given age and ultra-high-end it might well. In any event I'd say look out for OS/2 driver support first and foremost.

Driver support won't be a problem; nowadays OS/2 has both SciTech DisplayDoctor and Panorama drivers - both with support for all sorts of cards. I was more wondering what is generally considered to be the better option in a combined PCI and VLB system, particularly if I'm to run my CPUs at "odd" speeds. In this context, DOS performance, compatibility and stability is probably more important. Not that I'm going to be squeezing FPS out of this thing, but having old demos and games run smooth without tearing due to bandwidth issues would be nice.

Anyway - I have a pile of PCI VGA cards of various kinds, I'll be experimenting with those until I come across a VLB card I cannot resist.

(Also, how did you do the collapsing of my long-winded nostalgia? Still getting used to bbcode..)

Last edited by ltning on 2021-03-21, 20:02. Edited 1 time in total.

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 15 of 30, by ltning

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Jo22 wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:12:

I wonder the same. Pre-Warp civiliza.. err.. systems are though.
They require that 64MB/OS2 option in BIOS if more than 64MB is installed.
Warp 3 and beyond do nit require special treatment, if memory serves.

Memory apparently serves. :)

Jo22 wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:12:

By the way, here's that legendary OS/2 vs NT shout out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DAojx2Hgec

Dayyyummm... I hadn't even seen that one before. I remember hearing about it, as a kind of lore .. I'm gonna need a beer (and maybe a whisky) for this. Thanks!!

Jo22 wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:12:

OS/2 v2.1 needs at least 8MB realistically. 4MB, as installed in German Vobis PCs at the time was not enough.

OS/2 2.0 on my own 386SX-16 with 5MB(!) ran circles around my dad's hot 486DX-25 with 4MB in his office. One megabyte difference. Mind-blowing. Took me a year before I could afford to upgrade to 8MB. Those 1MB sticks were bloody expensive. Something about a fire in a RAM factory somewhere..

Jo22 wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:12:

So it's not too farfetched that an OS/2 Workstation PC runs on 32 to 64MB.
Even back in the 90s, special purpose PC must have existed that such a gigantic memory configuration.
Maybe software developers, artists or video amateurs had such power horses under their desk! 💪😎

And nowadays just nutcases like myself. ;)

/Eirik

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 16 of 30, by debs3759

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ltning wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:43:
debs3759 wrote on 2021-03-21, 17:05:

As others have said, 64MB and EDO are overkill for a DX-50 based DOS system. Having said that, the PVI-486SP3 can take a pair of 64MB FPM sticks, so will happily work with 32 or 64. Not sure about EDO though, most people say it's not supported, and I haven't tried it yet.

Manual seems somewhat vague about it; I guess I'll have to try. I have some small EDO sticks floating around, but I'll try with the RAM that comes with the board first.

Do you by any chance have the full manual? As far as I can tell, the full manual can't be found online, so if you have a copy, scans (or, better still, a pdf) will be very much appreciated, probably by many of us.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 17 of 30, by ltning

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debs3759 wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:33:
ltning wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:43:

Manual seems somewhat vague about it; I guess I'll have to try. I have some small EDO sticks floating around, but I'll try with the RAM that comes with the board first.

Do you by any chance have the full manual? As far as I can tell, the full manual can't be found online, so if you have a copy, scans (or, better still, a pdf) will be very much appreciated, probably by many of us.

Sorry to get your hopes up; I am only going by what I've seen here and as a result of googling :(

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~

Reply 18 of 30, by dionb

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ltning wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:20:

[...]

We started out with 2.0, 2.1 came out very soon after so the project really only took off in the 2.1 era. Warp3 ("Connect" - with a propper TCP/IP stack, IIRC) showed up and was probably the most successful version for this project - it made integration on the network there much easier (Banyan Vines was never good friends with OS/2, and after moving to Novell it became necessary with better network support in both DOS and OS/2 sessions). Warp4 came towards the end when other platforms (cough) started taking over.

I have OS/2 in some variation installed on all the builds I have, from P1-133 via dual P200MMX to a P4. The current variant - ArcaOS - is pretty much a slightly updated bundle of what most of us die-hard users ended up assembling on our own back in the late 90s, plus it supports somewhat modern hardware, too.

I'm slightly nostalgic about OS/2 as our first PC was a PS/2 model 70 in 1988, which ran OS/2 1.1. My mother (who worked for IBM at the time) was very insistent on using OS/2, even if no one actually used it for anything other than DisplayWrite 4/2, which was fine until someone needed to exchange files with people without a PS/2 (i.e. pretty much anyone else out there). It was around then that people started to appreciate the facti I'd installed PC DOS 4.01 on the other 30MB partition and had gotten WordPerfect 4.2 from somewhere.

Unfortunately -mainly due to lack of sensible software - I never got to see OS/2 as anything more than nice graphical gimmick, and the next time I started to look was in the early 00's, by which time it had become a curiosity. Shame, as I definitely preferred Warp 4 to Win9x, but by then it was the XP era.

[...]

Driver support won't be a problem; nowadays OS/2 has both SciTech DisplayDoctor and Panorama drivers - both with support for all sorts of cards. I was more wondering what is generally considered to be the better option in a combined PCI and VLB system, particularly if I'm to run my CPUs at "odd" speeds. In this context, DOS performance, compatibility and stability is probably more important. Not that I'm going to be squeezing FPS out of this thing, but having old demos and games run smooth without tearing due to bandwidth issues would be nice.

Anyway - I have a pile of PCI VGA cards of various kinds, I'll be experimenting with those until I come across a VLB card I cannot resist.

DOS performance is about bandwidth to the video memory and little else. With ISA it's hopelessly bottlenecked by the bus, not sure exactly where the bottleneck is with PCI and VLB, but unless a chip is utterly glacial, it hardly matters for DOS - at least in terms of performance. Two things that do matter:
- VESA compatibility. As a rule, S3, nVidia and 3Dfx do it very well, ATi and Matrox badly and the rest somewhere in between.
- image quality. At high res, RAMDAC and analog filters are important, at low res (DOS, even in SVGA) it's about basic colour and brightness. Watch out for cheap S3 cards, they have a tendency to washed-out colours, particularly blacks looking grey.

(Also, how did you do the collapsing of my long-winded nostalgia? Still getting used to bbcode..)

Manually 😜

Lots of forums do it automatically, Vogons is -fittingly- somewhat more primitive. So I just append

[/quote]

and

[quote]

in between the various bits, and delete older quotes, replacing them with "[...]"

Reply 19 of 30, by ltning

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dionb wrote on 2021-03-21, 19:54:

Unfortunately -mainly due to lack of sensible software - I never got to see OS/2 as anything more than nice graphical gimmick, and the next time I started to look was in the early 00's, by which time it had become a curiosity. Shame, as I definitely preferred Warp 4 to Win9x, but by then it was the XP era.

Well nowadays even Chrome can be used (...to some extent...). If the audience can forgive the somewhat off-topicness - see attached screenshot. :)

/Eirik

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    Chromium browser running on OS/2 (ArcaOS)
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    CC-BY-4.0

The Floppy Museum - on a floppy, on a 286: http://floppy.museum
286-24/4MB/ET4kW32/GUS+SBPro2
386DX-40/20MB/CL5434 ISA/GUSExtreme
486BL-100/32MB/ET4kW32p VLB/GUSPnP/AWELegacy

~ love over gold ~