Testing a bunch of 486 chips \ VOGONS

Testing a bunch of 486 chips

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First post, by Half-Saint

Posted on 2013-12-18, 20:59

Half-Saint Offline

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Well, I just spent a good part of the day straightening bent pins on 22 chips, mostly Intel/AMD/Cyrix DX2-66. I also tested them all in the same motherboard with the same RAM sticks, VGA and IDE controller + SanDisk 128MB CF card.

Most of the CPU's booted into DOS just fine. A few however just get stuck after RAM count (2x ST 486DX2-66, 2x Cyrix 486DX-40). One of the AMD 486DX2-66 chips gets detected as DX4-100 and also doesn't boot properly.

Any input?

Now you can start drooling 😉

Last edited by Half-Saint on 2013-12-19, 09:32. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by Mau1wurf1977

Posted on 2013-12-18, 21:48

Mau1wurf1977 Offline

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486 have a ton of jumpers. They also need BIOS support for exotic brands. The CPU model / brand should be in the user manual with jumper settings for full support.

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Reply 2 of 2, by Half-Saint

Posted on 2013-12-19, 09:19

Half-Saint Offline

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Location: Slovenia

I was testing the chips in batches, 486DX2-66 batch was first. All chips are 5V and the board doesn't have any special jumpers for AMD/Intel/Cyrix. It's all the same.

The funny thing is that one ST486DX2-66 works fine, the other two don't boot into DOS. Same goes for one AMD 486DX2-66 - it works while the other one gets picked up as a DX4-100 but refuses to boot.

EDIT: pic added.

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