The Asus P3B-F is ~THE~ 440BX (slot 1) board to own. I owned one new, back in the day. That board stayed with me from a p2-233 all the way to a 1ghz chip.

luckybob wrote:

The Asus P3B-F is ~THE~ 440BX (slot 1) board to own. I owned one new, back in the day. That board stayed with me from a p2-233 all the way to a 1ghz chip.

Isn't 440BX great?

440BX ery day.

Just picked up this 486 beast today, including an ugly as hell (but functional) Logitech 3-button serial mouse. I already de-soldered the crusty barrel battery and everything else looks good. Found a nice Promise cache controller inside, a Mediavision PAS 16, a VLB Diamond Viper card with the Weitek 9000 chipset, and the motherboard appears to be a SiS chipset (can anyone identify it?).

The tower itself is massive, weighing about 43 Lbs. Check out the tape drive and the 'fake' 3.5" drive bay covers! Oddly, the CD-ROM appears to use a 50-pin SCSI connection but I don't see a SCSI controller anywhere...

Artex wrote:

Oddly, the CD-ROM appears to use a 50-pin SCSI connection but I don't see a SCSI controller anywhere...

That would be on the PAS16. 😉

Cloudschatze wrote:

Artex wrote:

Oddly, the CD-ROM appears to use a 50-pin SCSI connection but I don't see a SCSI controller anywhere...

That would be on the PAS16. 😉

Omg. Now I'm a little embarrassed. 😀

That is an epic case. A pretty damn nice system inside it too.

I like how it has the two fake floppy bezels in the 3.5" bays, and yet they mounted the actual 3.5" floppy drive in a 5.25" slot. 🤣

Whoa what a monster! I have a PCI vga card with that chipset, and it sucks for DOS games. I assume it's more of a CAD card, and I'm guessing that viper is in the same boat. It would have cost a bomb back in the day.

Nice system. Would have cost a fortune back in the day...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Nice system. Would have cost a fortune back in the day...

Thanks! A few probs so far... hard drive appears shot. Substituted a 1.3GB Seagate which is detected properly by the BIOS, but doesn't boot past the 256KB/Cache 50Mhz POST screen. Tried cable select, etc. Floppy controller doesn't appear to be working on the Promise card either. I swapped in another VLB controller card but I'm getting the same error, even after reversing the cable for proper pin 1 placement. The 5.25 floppy is daisy chained, so I'll have to see what's all connected. Ahh the fun old 486 days... What I need to track down is the jumper config for the motherboard and cache controller. The case Mhz display is showing 50Mhz which is awesome!!

Definitely forgot how hard it was to get these things up and running back in the day...It's so "dumbed down" nowadays...

486 are the hardest parts to work with. A jumper jungle and so many different CPUs, FSBs, Multipliers, Cache strategies.

You KNOW you just want an easy to work with Super Socket 7 ATX based DOS Time-Machine 😁

badmojo wrote:

Whoa what a monster! I have a PCI vga card with that chipset, and it sucks for DOS games. I assume it's more of a CAD card, and I'm guessing that viper is in the same boat. It would have cost a bomb back in the day.

Funny you say that.. The guy I bought it from said the previous owner was into CAD/architecture/graphic design way back in the day (1993?).... so what you say fits. The card does have 2MB VRAM.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

486 are the hardest parts to work with. A jumper jungle and so many different CPUs, FSBs, Multipliers, Cache strategies.

You KNOW you just want an easy to work with Super Socket 7 ATX based DOS Time-Machine 😁

I gotta tell you man, I've seen nearly all of your videos and I'm getting close to doing the same thing. I have several MPU-401ATs (and all necessary external Roland modules), a few Super Socket 7 MBs, and now that they have a front loading Compact Flash-to-IDE 3.5" bay, I'm REALLY close.

BUT... I have these glorious 486MBs sitting around in anti-static bags... I hate to seem em like that. 🙁

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

That is an epic case. A pretty damn nice system inside it too.

I like how it has the two fake floppy bezels in the 3.5" bays, and yet they mounted the actual 3.5" floppy drive in a 5.25" slot. 🤣

Haha. I thought the same.. How ridiculous! Also love the "Fastest Keyboard BIOS" chip. 😎 Pretty baller to put that on your BIOS chip...

Closeup up the NEC Multispin 50-pin SCSI Tray-loading CD drive.. and others..

Drive bonanza!

I'd call it the Pre-Millenium Falcon.

Damn you Artex!

I love full tower cases!

Where did it come from?

Sweet Case and cache I/O card - those are not easy to come by.

I got a bunch of stuff in early 2012 from a local Craigslist advert. He remembered me and my collection and thought I might be interested in this thing.

Not a hardware in fact, but anyway.

Funny thing is that I haven't got any MediaVision hardware. Though looking forth to acquire a 8-bit ProAudioSpectrum.

Got two PSUs (AT and ATX), and an S3 sound card (?) from the thrift store today.
Also for the first time ever found some interesting games there: Tomb Raider 1 & 2, Riven, and Railroad Tycoon.