Hello.
I picked up this old boy this Friday. unfortunately the 125mb wd hard drive was destroyed by its former owner for security reasons. I haven't started it yet. but according to my first tests, the power supply is hs. The black floppy dates from 2006, which proves that it is not original 😉. There was a ton of dust. The 5inch would be a 1.2mo. There is no additional cache.

Yeah, thats Nice. I tried to upgrade the cache in mine but was unsuccessful. The motherboard bios did not want to register the cache chips I inserted. So that was a No Go on the cache upgrade. I would not worry about cache upgrade anyways because it will only improve CPU performance by 3%-to-5%. If you really want a performance improvement upgrade the CPU. Intel 486 Overdrive CPU or regular Intel 486dx-50 or higher. I really like the look of this case. It’s very pleasing to the eye.
16mb. Of ram is good enough too. I used ( 4x 4mb. ) 60ns FPM SIMMS.
This is AST Proprietary design Motherboard.

Hi,
I can not put more than 4x 4MB. The 8MB does not pass. I retrieved from cache of a pentium motherboard (256KB). He was more or less recognized. Not a real success. Do you have the possibility to make a dump of the bios. Mine is in version 1.00. No way to find a newer one. My model is 501196-04. Thank you.
I upgraded the cpu with a DX2-50, I'm waiting for a DX2-66. Apparently, there would be a 40Mhz FSB available but not indicated on the web. I found it by chance while playing with the E9 and E10. I imagine a 4th in addition to the 25 and 33 according to the possible combinations. I also found a Conner CFS425A 425 MB Hard Drive for the limit of 1024cyl. There was a W98 but it's too much for this one... 😉 . See you.

its deep inside my garage and I don't have the time to dig it out.
the bios date on mine is 6-17-1993

Freemaxx wrote on 2023-08-21, 21:56:

Hi,
I can not put more than 4x 4MB. The 8MB does not pass. I retrieved from cache of a pentium motherboard (256KB). He was more or less recognized. Not a real success. Do you have the possibility to make a dump of the bios. Mine is in version 1.00. No way to find a newer one. My model is 501196-04. Thank you.
I upgraded the cpu with a DX2-50, I'm waiting for a DX2-66. Apparently, there would be a 40Mhz FSB available but not indicated on the web. I found it by chance while playing with the E9 and E10. I imagine a 4th in addition to the 25 and 33 according to the possible combinations. I also found a Conner CFS425A 425 MB Hard Drive for the limit of 1024cyl. There was a W98 but it's too much for this one... 😉 . See you.

Had a quick check here, but couldn't see anything obviously related to your system / model - https://www.sandyflat.net/digerati/ast486/dri … -bios/index.htm

Yes, I downloaded some of the files (the ones about the Bravo LC). In each, there is a text file which gives the compatible model but none corresponds to my model :,(
.

Hello,
I found 4x 16 MB in FPM. That works.
I have not yet retested with a 256kb cache. I have a HS chip (tested with xgecu t48).
I put a 4GB HDD in SCSI to exceed the 540MB limit.
Sincerely.

16mb of RAM is enough for DOS/Win3x
My LC only came with 64kb cache. I was unable to upgrade to 256kb don’t know why.
I tried lots of different DRAM chips and none would register with this motherboard.
So I gave up. Anyways 256kb of cache will only give you about a 3% performance boost.
If you really want a performance boost upgrade the CPU.
This proprietary motherboard SUCKS. It has so many DUMB limitations.
The bios also has a 410mb hard drive capacity limitation.