Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-05-29, 15:07:

Yeah, Like I wrote. In order to save you some money and grief. If your looking for Best DOS and Win-3x performance then get a P […]
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Yeah, Like I wrote. In order to save you some money and grief. If your looking for Best DOS and Win-3x performance then get a
Pentium 233mhz computer.
This 486 even with a 486dx4-100 CPU will NOT play ALL DOS games in good performance.
So dont spend too much time or MONEY on your 486 if you want it for playing DOS games.

If you are just looking to build the best 486 then go ahead and spend your MONEY.

But for playing DOS games and running Win-3.1 or Win-3.11
I would NOT go more then this. You will NOT see much more of a performance gain if go over this.
486dx2-66
8mb to 16mb ram
256kb cache
ET4000, 2mb video card
Sound Blaster with Yamaha OPL3 and Wave table.
Sony 52x CDROM drive
Video card - S3 trio64, PCI 2mb.
Networking card - 3com 3c509b
DOS / Win3.1 or 3.11 ( 3.11 is better for setting up a Networking card and internet ).

Eep386 wrote on 2021-05-31, 15:30:

Those are generally good recommendations for a mid-level 486, but I've a few suggestions and comments of my own: […]
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Those are generally good recommendations for a mid-level 486, but I've a few suggestions and comments of my own:

In ISA form, the Trident 8900CL or 8900D are very close in speed to an ISA ET4000AX in most cases, but are a lot cheaper on eBay. The 9400CXi and especially 9440(AGi) are even better, but are harder to find on an ISA card and probably more expensive.
Cirrus 5422/5424/5426/5248/5429 are also very good ISA VGA cards, and they're also usually cheaper than Tsengs as well. 5426 and later even have accelerated Windows drivers (5426 and later chips have modest GUI acceleration).

2MB does not buy much for an ISA VGA card in most cases (next to nothing for Cirrus or an ET4000AX - it's the ET4000/W32i and W32p that gain anything substantial from 2MB), unless said card is a 64-bit card (S3 Vision864/868/964/968, S3 Trio64 or ViRGE,Trident 9680, etc). But good luck trying to find an ISA card with a 64-bit chip for a sensible price!

ESS cards are a good, generally way cheaper alternative to Creative sound cards (and generally less buggy to boot). Most ISA ESS cards have ESFM, which is a particularly good OPL3 clone that sounds much better than other clones. And their compatibility is better than average for a clone as well; unlike OPTi cards they don't play Joshua Jensen sound system games (such as One Must Fall or Jazz Jackrabbit) at a wrong pitch.

Windows 3.11 is, more or less, a bug-fix of 3.1. You might still be able to download the service pack for Windows 3.1 that converts it into 3.11 from someplace.
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is where 3.1x gets interesting. Windows for Workgroups has more functional early networking support, but only comes out of the box with IPX/SPX and NetBEUI support, and a limited collection of drivers for network cards. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 also has 32-bit file access, but that will probably only be more useful if you have a VLB controller card. (No, it won't work in an ISA slot.) It also only runs in 386 Protected Mode, so forget about running it on a 286 (as if you'd ever really want to do that anyway).

Took some time and some hiccups, but the build is practically done for the most part. I was able to test a few of my favorite games and most of them worked pretty well for what I wanted. Lotus III Challenge ran like a charm and was a full blown nostalgia overload as I haven't been able to play the game for more than 25 years, even in my Pentium MMX and Pentium III builds. Micro Machines is perfectly playable, which was another game that I really wanted. Some games really showed their limitations, like Doom, but I can just play it in those other builds. Mortal Kombat even ran pretty well which was very impressive to me! All in all it fulfills the purpose of making playable those games that I just couldn't get to run on the Win95 & 98SE builds.

As far as sound goes I am happy with the Vibra 16 that I bought for it, it was cheap and I appreciate the sound. As for the graphics card I will take your advice into account for the near future, thank you for having the sensibility of suggesting cheaper but effective alternatives. Buying this computer was a big stretch for me but I really wanted a 486, when the time comes I will look into making those upgrades. Shame about the DX-2 I bought, but for now it'll have to wait for the 33mhz quartz that my motherboard apparently needs. I know that this is becoming an expensive hobby more and more each day, and that was one of the reasons I decided to make the effort to get a 486 now, even if I will have to wait to tweak it a little further.

Now that I have experienced some things with this build, a few doubts if you don't mind:
1. I understand that "Esc" or "F10" or "CTRL + Esc" "Alt + F4" don't work to exit every DOS game, why is this? What shortcut am I missing? Surely every DOS game has its shortcut? I had to reboot a few times as I just couldn't get out of some games...

2. When I am configuring audio settings or config in general in some DOS games it says that it can't save the configuration. This happened with Sensible Soccer for example, I couldn't register the key config so I wasn't able to start the game as I had no controls mapped. Is this because I'm running EZDrive disk overlay for my 4GB HDD and it's overriding something? Or something else overriding / stopping the game from saving the config file?

3. The BIOS at boot says that the cpu clock is 50Mhz, but in the case front panel LED it indicates 50mhz as being in Turbo mode already. Shouldn't it light up the Turbo indicator in the LED only when I click it so it is at 25Mhz? 25mhz = Turbo light on?

In general I am very happy with the build, had a blast learning some basic DOS and playing around with it. Thank you all for the replies along the process, truly couldn't have done it without your help|

andre_6 wrote on 2021-06-01, 00:29:

Now that I have experienced some things with this build, a few doubts if you don't mind: 1. I understand that "Esc" or "F10" or […]
Show full quote

Now that I have experienced some things with this build, a few doubts if you don't mind:
1. I understand that "Esc" or "F10" or "CTRL + Esc" "Alt + F4" don't work to exit every DOS game, why is this? What shortcut am I missing? Surely every DOS game has its shortcut? I had to reboot a few times as I just couldn't get out of some games...

2. When I am configuring audio settings or config in general in some DOS games it says that it can't save the configuration. This happened with Sensible Soccer for example, I couldn't register the key config so I wasn't able to start the game as I had no controls mapped. Is this because I'm running EZDrive disk overlay for my 4GB HDD and it's overriding something? Or something else overriding / stopping the game from saving the config file?

3. The BIOS at boot says that the cpu clock is 50Mhz, but in the case front panel LED it indicates 50mhz as being in Turbo mode already. Shouldn't it light up the Turbo indicator in the LED only when I click it so it is at 25Mhz? 25mhz = Turbo light on?

In general I am very happy with the build, had a blast learning some basic DOS and playing around with it. Thank you all for the replies along the process, truly couldn't have done it without your help|

1. CTRL+X, CTRL+Q, CTCL+C; sometimes you just need CTRL+ALT+DEL as not all DOS games had this nice exit routine apparently.
2. There is probably a config file you copied over from a media where it was read only. Do a DIR /S /AR *.* in the game directory, and if there is a read only file do ATTRIB -R FILE.EXT
3. It can be wired and configured both ways. If you want it the other way then you will have to shift your turbo button connector to the left or right by one pin on the motherboard, then change the turbo display's segment jumpers around until it shows you what you want. It's going to be frustrating so just enjoy it as it is if you want my advice. You can do this when you get the 33MHz crystal and want 66/33 anyway if you really want it.
Enjoy your build. Always great to hear about something coming together and making a fellow VOGONer happy.

Some games can't be quit. Why would you, just keep playing 😀

One such game is Steel Empire (aka Cyber Empires), the first version I saw was a PC port from Amiga I think. No Quit to Dos button in the menu, you had to cut power to the PC or reset it. I could not find that version years later, the one I have now does have the button.

Yep, there was virtually no standardisation in Dos games for returning to the command prompt. The Windows mindset of those always-usable shortcut combinations needs to be discarded; almost every game is implemented differently.

Not all LCD displays can be configured to show low/high speeds differently. Some can, some can't. You may have to have a look at the exact model of your LCD display and try to find it on: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/led_speed_dis … eed_display.htm

appiah4 wrote on 2021-06-01, 06:19:

1. CTRL+X, CTRL+Q, CTCL+C; sometimes you just need CTRL+ALT+DEL as not all DOS games had this nice exit routine apparently. 2. T […]
Show full quote

andre_6 wrote on 2021-06-01, 00:29:

Now that I have experienced some things with this build, a few doubts if you don't mind: 1. I understand that "Esc" or "F10" or […]
Show full quote

Now that I have experienced some things with this build, a few doubts if you don't mind:
1. I understand that "Esc" or "F10" or "CTRL + Esc" "Alt + F4" don't work to exit every DOS game, why is this? What shortcut am I missing? Surely every DOS game has its shortcut? I had to reboot a few times as I just couldn't get out of some games...

2. When I am configuring audio settings or config in general in some DOS games it says that it can't save the configuration. This happened with Sensible Soccer for example, I couldn't register the key config so I wasn't able to start the game as I had no controls mapped. Is this because I'm running EZDrive disk overlay for my 4GB HDD and it's overriding something? Or something else overriding / stopping the game from saving the config file?

3. The BIOS at boot says that the cpu clock is 50Mhz, but in the case front panel LED it indicates 50mhz as being in Turbo mode already. Shouldn't it light up the Turbo indicator in the LED only when I click it so it is at 25Mhz? 25mhz = Turbo light on?

In general I am very happy with the build, had a blast learning some basic DOS and playing around with it. Thank you all for the replies along the process, truly couldn't have done it without your help|

1. CTRL+X, CTRL+Q, CTCL+C; sometimes you just need CTRL+ALT+DEL as not all DOS games had this nice exit routine apparently.
2. There is probably a config file you copied over from a media where it was read only. Do a DIR /S /AR *.* in the game directory, and if there is a read only file do ATTRIB -R FILE.EXT
3. It can be wired and configured both ways. If you want it the other way then you will have to shift your turbo button connector to the left or right by one pin on the motherboard, then change the turbo display's segment jumpers around until it shows you what you want. It's going to be frustrating so just enjoy it as it is if you want my advice. You can do this when you get the 33MHz crystal and want 66/33 anyway if you really want it.
Enjoy your build. Always great to hear about something coming together and making a fellow VOGONer happy.

Deunan wrote on 2021-06-01, 10:04:

Some games can't be quit. Why would you, just keep playing 😀

One such game is Steel Empire (aka Cyber Empires), the first version I saw was a PC port from Amiga I think. No Quit to Dos button in the menu, you had to cut power to the PC or reset it. I could not find that version years later, the one I have now does have the button.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-06-01, 10:38:

Yep, there was virtually no standardisation in Dos games for returning to the command prompt. The Windows mindset of those always-usable shortcut combinations needs to be discarded; almost every game is implemented differently.

Not all LCD displays can be configured to show low/high speeds differently. Some can, some can't. You may have to have a look at the exact model of your LCD display and try to find it on: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/led_speed_dis … eed_display.htm

Thank you so much, will give it a try. As for the Turbo, I simply thought it was incorrect, but if it's possible to configure it both ways I'll just let it be. It's likely that I will install the 33mhz crystal, it would be a shame not to use the DX-2 I bought, but even then I would probably let it show "25/50" anyway. Will try and find the LCD display model if I end up changing my mind

appiah4 wrote on 2021-06-01, 06:19:

3. It can be wired and configured both ways. If you want it the other way then you will have to shift your turbo button connector to the left or right by one pin on the motherboard, then change the turbo display's segment jumpers around until it shows you what you want. It's going to be frustrating so just enjoy it as it is if you want my advice. You can do this when you get the 33MHz crystal and want 66/33 anyway if you really want it.
Enjoy your build. Always great to hear about something coming together and making a fellow VOGONer happy.

Back in the day, had a friendly kind of competition with a friend about the turbo display, when we figured out how to set them, his had just been sitting at 33 for bus speed, and I put mine at 40, he took his out and put it to 66, because he had the Dx2-66, I put mine to 80 for Dx2-80... then he put his to 99.... so I put mine to FF

For the 33mhz crystal, is this the correct piece or are there more types or formats? I don't seem to find the place on the board where it should be installed also

andre_6 wrote on 2021-06-01, 17:12:

For the 33mhz crystal, is this the correct piece or are there more types or formats? I don't seem to find the place on the board where it should be installed also

No, that won't work. You want a 33MHz oscillator in DIP-14 format, the component that you are replacing is the metallic rectangular block secured with a zip tie above the CPU socket (it says 50.0000MHz as your DX runs at 50MHz bus speed). Please note that these kind of oscillators are no longer being produced, so you'll have to source it from eBay or something like that (they're quite common though).

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-01, 17:35:

andre_6 wrote on 2021-06-01, 17:12:

For the 33mhz crystal, is this the correct piece or are there more types or formats? I don't seem to find the place on the board where it should be installed also

No, that won't work. You want a 33MHz oscillator in DIP-14 format, the component that you are replacing is the metallic rectangular block secured with a zip tie above the CPU socket (it says 50.0000MHz as your DX runs at 50MHz bus speed). Please note that these kind of oscillators are no longer being produced, so you'll have to source it from eBay or something like that (they're quite common though).

Thanks, if my current oscillator says 50Mhz because it runs at 50, shouldn't the oscillator for my DX-2 66mhz be a 66mhz oscillator instead of 33Mhz? Or it just needs to be one of both and the turbo button does the rest?

andre_6 wrote on 2021-06-01, 17:50:

Thanks, if my current oscillator says 50Mhz because it runs at 50, shouldn't the oscillator for my DX-2 66mhz be a 66mhz oscillator instead of 33Mhz? Or it just needs to be one of both and the turbo button does the rest?

The oscillator sets the bus frequency, so for a DX-50 you use a 50MHz oscillator. A DX2 however expects a 33MHz bus frequency and has an internal 2x multiplier to run at 66MHz, that's the reason for using a 33MHz oscillator.

The turbo switch doesn't affect the frequency on 486 boards, it slows down the computer by disabling cache or adding wait states.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-01, 18:20:

andre_6 wrote on 2021-06-01, 17:50:

Thanks, if my current oscillator says 50Mhz because it runs at 50, shouldn't the oscillator for my DX-2 66mhz be a 66mhz oscillator instead of 33Mhz? Or it just needs to be one of both and the turbo button does the rest?

The oscillator sets the bus frequency, so for a DX-50 you use a 50MHz oscillator. A DX2 however expects a 33MHz bus frequency and has an internal 2x multiplier to run at 66MHz, that's the reason for using a 33MHz oscillator.

The turbo switch doesn't affect the frequency on 486 boards, it slows down the computer by disabling cache or adding wait states.

Now I get it, thanks! Will get on it soon, and will keep an eye for 16mb 30 pin SIMMs (parity or non parity?...) and maybe a 2mb graphics card from the models that were suggested. I would already be happy with the build as it currently is but if it doesn't end up being too much of a financial stretch to upgrade it as far as it can go then why not I suppose. I assume that the DX-2 will give me a slight boost without compromising early-DOS games compatibility, although even now with the DX-50 Bouncing Babies is way too fast already, even at 25Mhz!

Ther s probably not a whole lot of difference between a DX50 and DX2-66 in real terms; the DX2-66 of course has faster processing speed, but the 50MHz bus clock of the DX50 means substantially improved memory throughput over the 33MHz of the DX2.

It's an odd duck, the DX50; nothing matches it's bus speed in the 486 era. They tended to be quite heavily used in server roles because of the hefty increase to IO throughput that the 50MHz bus brought.

I'm actually kinda surprised they didn't do a DX2-100, that would have been an absolute monster of a 486 cpu... Although my guess is that the cost of the logic and on board supporting components to reliably interface with a 50MHz bus was not worth it when clock tripling a 33MHz bus was so much more effective.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-06-01, 22:39:

Ther s probably not a whole lot of difference between a DX50 and DX2-66 in real terms; the DX2-66 of course has faster processing speed, but the 50MHz bus clock of the DX50 means substantially improved memory throughput.

It's an odd duck, the DX50; nothing matches it's bus speed in the 486 era. They tended to be quite heavily used in server roles because of the hefty increase to IO throughput that the 50MHz bus brought.

I'll keep the DX-50 around in any case as it came with the build. Were there ever dual cpu boards for 486?

Also, could you please advise me for this board, do I buy 16mb of RAM with or without parity? http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2399

I'll keep the DX-50 around in any case as it came with the build. Were there ever dual cpu boards for 486?

I think there were some bespoke specialist SMP boards, but they're really uncommon. I've seen a few boards crop up now and again on various forums but not seen anyone actually with a 486 (or 386, for that matter) multi processor system running.

As a side note there is no practical reason to not use the DX-50 instead of the DX2-66 on this board. The practical differences will be minute as you are locked into an ISA architecture so VGA throughput will be the bottleneck in almost all cases, and with 50MHz FSB you will actually get a faster ISA Bus. I'd stick with te DX-50. It's actually one of the few systems where this CPU would make sense.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-06-02, 08:06:

As a side note there is no practical reason to not use the DX-50 instead of the DX2-66 on this board. The practical differences will be minute as you are locked into an ISA architecture so VGA throughput will be the bottleneck in almost all cases, and with 50MHz FSB you will actually get a faster ISA Bus. I'd stick with te DX-50. It's actually one of the few systems where this CPU would make sense.

Well, I have the DX-2 now so I'll keep it anyway, but if you think it won't make a difference in terms of performance then it's probably not worth it to get the 33mhz crystal and install it to use the DX-2. I bought it because I saw this video from Phil's Computer Lab and was impressed with the differences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNlcZetLzY8&t=89s

Right now I am looking for those little upgrades I can do to the build in order to close it for good. What would make the most difference for 2D and 3D DOS gaming: a Trident 8900 1MB ISA for example, the DX-2 (which would require buying the 33mhz crystal), or 16MB RAM? I can't find the specs anywhere to know if I need parity or non parity RAM, that still confuses me.

What I would like is to have a notion of what performance increase each of those upgrades would give me, to compare with the costs of buying them and see if it's really worth it. Thanks!

I'd vote the Trident 8900CL or 8900D (don't bother with the 8900B or 8900C, they're much slower). 16MB of RAM isn't strictly required (unless you plan on playing more complex games) but is quite nice to have, if you can find it cheap then by all means use it.

One relatively cheap upgrade you can do on your FIC board is populate the dirty TAG socket with a 32Kx8 15ns or 20ns SRAM. What this will do is enable write-back caching on the chipset, which *significantly* improves off-cache memory access speed, regardless of the CPU you use. In many cases you don't even have to fiddle with the jumpers either. You can look for another Toshiba TC55328P-20, Alliance AS7C256-20PC or -15PC, Winbond W24256AK-20 or -15, EtronTech EM51256C-15 or -20, or any 28-pin 32Kx8 SRAM rated at 20 or 15ns that will fit.

Eep386 wrote on 2021-06-02, 14:59:

I'd vote the Trident 8900CL or 8900D (don't bother with the 8900B or 8900C, they're much slower). 16MB of RAM isn't strictly required (unless you plan on playing more complex games) but is quite nice to have, if you can find it cheap then by all means use it.

One relatively cheap upgrade you can do on your FIC board is populate the dirty TAG socket with a 32Kx8 15ns or 20ns SRAM. What this will do is enable write-back caching on the chipset, which *significantly* improves off-cache memory access speed, regardless of the CPU you use. In many cases you don't even have to fiddle with the jumpers either. You can look for another Toshiba TC55328P-20, Alliance AS7C256-20PC or -15PC, Winbond W24256AK-20 or -15, EtronTech EM51256C-15 or -20, or any 28-pin 32Kx8 SRAM rated at 20 or 15ns that will fit.

Dirty Tag.png

Thanks, so for the DX-2 66, it's not worth it to buy the 33mhz crystal for install vs. just using the current DX-50 that's in there? I was under the impression that the performance increase would be justifiable, but if it's not the case...

You'd gain 16Mhz in CPU speed but lose 17 MHz of bus speed

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-02, 15:23:

You'd gain 16Mhz in CPU speed but lose 17 MHz of bus speed

So in beginner lingo, what would that do for me in practical terms? Wouldn't 2D or 3D DOS games be better?