VOGONS


First post, by AngryByDefault

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HI all!

As it seems I will not be finding any 486 mainboard in the foreseeable future I am evaluating putting together a Socket 7 sys....

Now, those I find appear to be either earlier models with single type memory (30 pins?) and a slot for L2 cache or newer models with 30 and 72 pins slots but no L2 slot that I can recognize in the pictures....

I did find one board which seems to include the "extra" L2 cache, and I have the idea that this was a big deal in the P 90's era...
But does that make it a better purchase now?
The build aims to be basically a Doom I, II box, DOS only, no windows at all.

Oh, and by the way: Is TXPro much more stable than VXPro as I' ve heard?

Thanks in advance.
ABD

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Reply 1 of 14, by canthearu

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For a "My first Socket 7" build, I recommend getting a board based on the Intel 430TX chipset.

It is nice and easy chipset to use, without the troubles of Cache slots (cache will be on the motherboard already). It will generally take easier to acquire SD-RAM modules, take a wide variety of 66mhz FSB socket 7 chips that you can find, and will usually support stuff like booting from CD-ROM.

The only real downside is that you should limit yourself to 64meg RAM on these motherboards due to chipset caching issues.

Reply 2 of 14, by FAMICOMASTER

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Socket 7 is pretty good. The one in your picture seems to cover all bases, COAST module, onboard ATA, four SIMM slots (up to 128MB!), plenty of expansion slots, a VRM slot for Pentium MMX / AMD K6 upgrades, and it also uses a CMOS battery instead of a Dallas RTC module which dies or a barrel battery which leaks and eats half the board.
The only thing you could ask for would be Super Socket 7 for AGP, but otherwise that looks like it would be a brilliant choice.

30 pin SIMMs suck. Avoid them if you can. I've not seen any Pentiums with them, but I hated dealing with them on 486 boards and before. 72 pin SIMMs are no problem and you can get them cheap if you know where to look.

Cache is a big deal for these machines, it is a massive performance boost. If your board supports the 512K COAST module and you can track one down, absolutely go for it. Many boards use COAST modules and even the 256K units are pretty cheap. Go for it if you can, it's a big performance jump. Check your chipset limitations to make sure your board can actually handle the 512K module and that it can cache all of your system memory.

That said, if you're running DOS only there's less reason to worry about most of this. You could probably put 32MB in it and live with it just fine in DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.x. Would still recommend a COAST module for improved performance, though.

Reply 3 of 14, by Caluser2000

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I'd go for a Super Socket 7 mobo. Greater cpu choice with those.

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Reply 4 of 14, by AngryByDefault

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Hi,

So, for what I gather TX Pro is an ALi M1531 relabeled 430TX chipset?
TX Pro = ALi M1531 (Aladdin IV+)
VX Pro = VIA Apollo VP1 (VT82C580VP)

@canthearu

[...] and will usually support stuff like booting from CD-ROM.

Ouch, I had fogotten how inconveniente it was not being able to boot from a CD or thumbdrive!!

@FAMICOMASTER

The only thing you could ask for would be Super Socket 7 for AGP, but otherwise that looks like it would be a brilliant choice.

I want to stick to PCI, anything above that will run somewhere else.

30 pin SIMMs suck. Avoid them if you can. I've not seen any Pentiums with them,

Right! I mixed up 30 pins for 72 and 72 for SIMM's! My mistake.

About cache, back in the 90's/00's around here usually you could only find the most basic or stripped down versions of these kind of things, mostly because of cost cutting, so today you'd be lucky to find a board with "added" cache included. I wouldn't count on being able to upgrade this kind of "details" in the future.

Now, these other boards, which are more common here (probably PCChips, see cost-cutting comment) I assume they have the cache onboard? (unless they are faked by pcchips o.c.)
How do they compare?
I feel they are separated by a few years?

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@Caluser2000

I'd go for a Super Socket 7 mobo. Greater cpu choice with those.

To be perfectly honest, I really really wanted to go for a mean AMD 5x86 but I can't find a darn socket 3/5 mainboard, so if that can't be I'd rather stay as close to that as I can.

TIA

Reply 5 of 14, by Joseph_Joestar

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AngryByDefault wrote on 2021-06-09, 05:41:

Now, these other boards, which are more common here (probably PCChips, see cost-cutting comment) I assume they have the cache onboard? (unless they are faked by pcchips o.c.)
How do they compare?
I feel they are separated by a few years?

The quality of PC Chips motherboards varies between models.

I can recommend their M571 board since it is well documented and its drivers, manuals and BIOS updates are readily available. You can find my review of that motherboard in this thread.

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Reply 6 of 14, by FAMICOMASTER

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PC Chips is perfectly fine. They were just a design firm which made several kinds of chips, everything from EGA/VGA controllers to SOCs to PC chipsets to DACs and memory. There's nothing inherently wrong with their designs, in fact many of them are quite innovative for their time.

The OEM that put the board together is the one that cheaps out. Those are the ones who typically put fake "Write back" cache on the board.

Reply 7 of 14, by cyclone3d

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FAMICOMASTER wrote on 2021-06-09, 08:35:

PC Chips is perfectly fine. They were just a design firm which made several kinds of chips, everything from EGA/VGA controllers to SOCs to PC chipsets to DACs and memory. There's nothing inherently wrong with their designs, in fact many of them are quite innovative for their time.

The OEM that put the board together is the one that cheaps out. Those are the ones who typically put fake "Write back" cache on the board.

So the PC Chips motherboards branded as PC Chips with fake cache were not actually made by PC Chips?

Not to mention that they also put stickers on their chipset to try to make people think that these chipsets were made by bigger companies.

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Reply 8 of 14, by Hezus

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I'd go with a board with Intel 430TX chipset. Those are fast and reliable and the software for it is easy to find. If you can, try to find a board that has a USB as well. This will make it a lot easier to copy files over. 430TX also has great USB support.. the ALi board with Alladin IV+ I had was a nightmare when it comes to USB.

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Reply 9 of 14, by FAMICOMASTER

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cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-09, 08:49:

So the PC Chips motherboards branded as PC Chips with fake cache were not actually made by PC Chips?

Not to mention that they also put stickers on their chipset to try to make people think that these chipsets were made by bigger companies.

While that may be true, I still wouldn't put down the engineering of their chipsets. There is nothing wrong with the chipset itself.

Reply 10 of 14, by AngryByDefault

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Hezus wrote on 2021-06-09, 08:58:

I'd go with a board with Intel 430TX chipset. Those are fast and reliable and the software for it is easy to find. If you can, try to find a board that has a USB as well. This will make it a lot easier to copy files over. 430TX also has great USB support.. the ALi board with Alladin IV+ I had was a nightmare when it comes to USB.

So, just to be clear, you're suggesting me to look for a board that has Intel branded chipset and not those "TX Pro"?

For what I read "TX Pro" chipsets are "ALi M1531 (Alladin IV+)" relabeled by PCChips and their subbrands, so they are not 430TX at all?

Reply 11 of 14, by dionb

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FAMICOMASTER wrote on 2021-06-09, 10:53:
cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-09, 08:49:

So the PC Chips motherboards branded as PC Chips with fake cache were not actually made by PC Chips?

Not to mention that they also put stickers on their chipset to try to make people think that these chipsets were made by bigger companies.

While that may be true, I still wouldn't put down the engineering of their chipsets. There is nothing wrong with the chipset itself.

No, but that's the one part they didn't engineer. The rest is very, very cheaply built (compare PCB thickness of a PC Chips board with that of any Asus or FIC or... well basically almost any other brand), and even once they had stopped defrauding people over cache, almost every detail they could be misleading on is. It's not just the chipset "names" but also the fact that all support chips are relabeled too, even to the point of relabeling the BIOS EEPROM. Frequently what's on the chips is also incorrect - take the CMI-8330 audio chip on many of their boards. It's actually quite good IMHO (one of only two full SB16 clones), but to call it "PCI Sound Pro" is nonsense, it's an ISA chip:

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Now after that diatribe, as I'm interested in obscure chipsets I actually end up with PC Chips boards a lot, as they definitely were more creative there than just about the rest of the industry, and some of those boards I actually like (the M560 for example, which is clock for clock the fastest So7 board I've come across). But I'd consider them about the worst possible choice for someone just starting due to pretty much every text on them being wrong, intentionally obfuscating or downright misleading. If you don't know your SIMMs from your DIMMs, you want well-documented clarity, not the exact opposite.

A board with i430TX (the real one...) would be a good choice, but given we're talking DOS-only here the USB consideration is pretty irrelevant. For DOS the added value of the i430TX over older i430FX, VX or HX is very limited, and indeed the added value of an Intel chipset with solid Windows support is limited too. So instead I'd advise choosing based on two things:

1) Brand name known for solid quality and good documentation. Gigabyte and Asus still have support pages up for their So7 stuff, you can find reams of documentation for FIC, Abit and MSI boards. Choose one of them, or failing that at least something with a solid manual available online.
2) Price and availability. No point in paying a massive premium for *that one board* if you're going to run DOS and basically need to learn the ropes before getting massive preferences anyway.

Just one pitfall: beware early SDRAM chipsets (i430VX, Via VPX). DIMM compatibility is very tricky. If you get a board with these chipsets it will invariably have 72p SIMM slots too. Get some EDO to use in those instead if you choose a board with one those chipsets.

As for cache, tbh for a Pentium DOS system you want to run pre-Pentium software (Doom) on, it really doesn't matter in the bigger picture. Still want to dive in? A matrix of two RAM types vs three cache options:
- EDO + no L2 cache: worst performance.
- EDO + async L2 cache: about 2.5% better than EDO and no cache
- EDO + PLB L2 cache: about 5% better than EDO and no cache
- SDRAM + no L2 cache: (hardly ever seen) about 2.5% better than EDO and no cache
- SDRAM + async L2 cache: never seen in wild, by SDRAM introduction cache was all PLB.
- SDRAM + PLB L2 cache: about 10% better than EDO and no cache

Async cache: multiple little DIP SRAM chips (usually 4, 8 or 16 chips)
PLB cache: 2 or 4 bigger rectangular SMD chips (onboard or on COAST card in brown slot)

But we're talking max 10% difference between best and worst cases in DOOM performance, which would run smoothly on a 486 anyway. This really doesn't matter here.

AngryByDefault wrote on 2021-06-09, 13:14:
Hezus wrote on 2021-06-09, 08:58:

I'd go with a board with Intel 430TX chipset. Those are fast and reliable and the software for it is easy to find. If you can, try to find a board that has a USB as well. This will make it a lot easier to copy files over. 430TX also has great USB support.. the ALi board with Alladin IV+ I had was a nightmare when it comes to USB.

So, just to be clear, you're suggesting me to look for a board that has Intel branded chipset and not those "TX Pro"?

For what I read "TX Pro" chipsets are "ALi M1531 (Alladin IV+)" relabeled by PCChips and their subbrands, so they are not 430TX at all?

No, it is not an Intel i430TX. It's an ALi Aladdin IV+ (which is actually a better chipset than i430TX for most things - such as cacheable RAM limits, divider support for higher bus speeds and raw memory performance - but different and USB is not its strong point).

This intentional confusion is the biggest reason I would not recommend starting with a PC Chips board.

Reply 12 of 14, by imi

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FAMICOMASTER wrote on 2021-06-09, 08:35:

PC Chips is perfectly fine. They were just a design firm which made several kinds of chips, everything from EGA/VGA controllers to SOCs to PC chipsets to DACs and memory. There's nothing inherently wrong with their designs, in fact many of them are quite innovative for their time.

The OEM that put the board together is the one that cheaps out. Those are the ones who typically put fake "Write back" cache on the board.

uh, you're probably confusing PC Chips with Chips & Technologies (their chips are often prominently marked with "CHIPS")

PC Chips didn't make any chips to my knowledge, they just relabeled/remarked existing chips from other manufacturers, PC Chips was just a brand from Hsing Tech Enterprise Co and afaik they only ever made motherboards.
and while Hsing Tech/PC Chips got later acquired by ECS, Chips & Technologies got acquired by Intel.

Reply 13 of 14, by AngryByDefault

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Guys, again, thank yo so much for the data!

I really appreciate the time you take to answer this in such detail.

I'll pull the trigger on the best I can find based on these loads of info and what is available to me. At some point I need to start with something and eventually will improve it as I acquire more experience and (if) better things pop up.

Thanks!

Reply 14 of 14, by pixel_workbench

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If you're looking at the ATX form factor for Socket 7, then I can recommend the LT430TX boards from Gateway computers. They include many newer conveniences like onboard UDMA33 IDE and floppy ports, PS/2 ports, USB, onboard PLB cache, SDRAM slots, and best of all are relatively inexpensive. Throw in a Pentium MMX, and with SETMUL software it can hit the speeds of a 386 and 486 in addition to full speed.

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