First post, by vetz
- Rank
- l33t
So, my experience from 386 to todays systems I've come up with the following list in terms of difficulty with building, configuring and tweaking/error searching. I've not worked on 8088 or 286 systems, so can't add them to the list.
1. 486 VLB systems - A jumper hell. VLB is twitchy on a good day, and if you want to add SCSI into the mix, then good luck getting that build 100% stable with a CPU that has write-back. Compatibility issues are often found between expansion cards, motherboards and CPU/RAM and you'll have to navigate between PNP and non-PNP devices. Setting up Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22 with the best performance and available memory requires good control of config.sys and autoexec.bat. Add to all that most manuals/drivers are hard to find on the internet and BIOS'es can't be flashed on 95% of what's available. 486 with VLB is for people wanting a challenge after their Socket 7 system 😀
2. Early 386 OEM systems - Everything is custom made, can be hard to impossible to find information. Error searching can be quite difficult.
3. Socket 4/5 systems - Main problem here is early PCI implementation and early Pentium chipsets which can be sketchy and give you strange problems which is hard to identify. Documentation/drivers for the motherboard can also be hard to find and there is less information available in the community. Other than that, they generally just work.
4. Generic 386/486 ISA systems - While in general less configuration than the VLB boards with jumpers and CPUs, you still have to battle IRQ/DMA setups and have a good config.sys/autoexec.bat setup. On the plus side generally much info to be found online and motherboards are generally easy to setup if they are of the later kind.
5. Super Socket 7 - Yes, placing this system here mainly because of the strange errors that sometime occurs due to compatibility issues due to the chipsets in use. Generally much more jumpers than normal Socket 7. Lots of documentation available which is a plus.
So what is your list?