Now running Quake on the 386/387! 😁

With enough memory, Windows accelerator VGA card and possibly CF card for HDD it will run fast. At least the OS by it self.

I see you're using real HDD... so replacing it with CF card it will run way faster - more responsive. Otherwise as the ISA bus is the limit you can't do miracles. HDD transfer limit is around 1.5MB/s while CF card has access time 10x faster then the real HDD. There might be even better solution with SCSI controller and SCSI to CF adapter - I'll try this when I get to it, eventually 😉

Nice Quake slideshow 😁

there was a scsi to micro sd adapter shown on phils channel; the transfer rates were low though; also sector size was small so i think the device may just kill the card; its also quite expensive;
i have seen a youtube vid about win95 on 386-40 - it ran faster than on my old 5x86 - probably nothing installed, just bare os;

kixs wrote:

With enough memory, Windows accelerator VGA card and possibly CF card for HDD it will run fast. At least the OS by it self.

I see you're using real HDD... so replacing it with CF card it will run way faster - more responsive. Otherwise as the ISA bus is the limit you can't do miracles. HDD transfer limit is around 1.5MB/s while CF card has access time 10x faster then the real HDD. There might be even better solution with SCSI controller and SCSI to CF adapter - I'll try this when I get to it, eventually 😉

Nice Quake slideshow 😁

I never really liked the CF solution even if I understand it is quiet similar to the ide interface. Probably cause it sounds "weird" also to knot hear an hard disk running into the case. 😵
But I think I'll need to try it cause this fast ata disk (actually really quiet fast for its time also tried on a vlb/486 config) is quiet noisy I don't know if it's ok or not but somtime it does strange noises.
A scsi to sd/cf sound so extreme! 😁

About Quake... I wasn't expecting a lot but I am happy to see it actually even run.. also interesting to see that changin the window size not improve speed almost. It'd nice to know if it's more CPU or FPU limited.

Ah the controller is a Goldstar Prime 2C chipset with 1 IDE and 1 floppy.

I don't think you can really do any better for hard disk controller. In the past some people used caching controllers, but since modern hard drives have so much cache of them, and because CF is so fast is seems to make the caching controller unnecessary. What *may* help is a controller that can do DMA. Adaptec AHA-1542C can do DMA, and it's supposed to make your system more responsive in a multitasking environment. However, I don't know that there have been any conclusive results that show it makes a big difference. There may be a few DMA EIDE controllers for ISA as well, but they may or may not require special drivers. Did you check to see if you can tick the "DMA" box in 9x under the device manager?

386SX wrote:

Is the FPU someway used by the os to the general tasks?

This is perhaps against popular believe, but I think Windows since 3.1 does use the co-pro to speed up GDI drawing.
I once saw this mentioned in an old computer magazine, where they explicitly stated that this was a major improvement over
Win 3.0 (that issue included a FPU How-To, and benchmarks with/without FPU installed).

386SX wrote:

I never really liked the CF solution even if I understand it is quiet similar to the ide interface. Probably cause it sounds "weird" also to knot hear an hard disk running into the case. 😵
But I think I'll need to try it cause this fast ata disk (actually really quiet fast for its time also tried on a vlb/486 config) is quiet noisy I don't know if it's ok or not but somtime it does strange noises..

I know what you mean. I was used to the sound of a DOS machine loading its drivers and stuff.
- Beginning with the floppy drive seek, over the pause himem.sys makes when checking memory, upto the moment when Win 3.1 loads its files..
Anyway, I'm also using CF cards now (but sometimes keep the original drives in the case, for authencity).
That's because in recent years I developed some kind of antipathy against noise.
No idea why, but it now causes me headache and dizziness (too much stress maybe ?)

386SX wrote:

A scsi to sd/cf sound so extreme! 😁

Hey, that's my idea! Just kidding! 😀
You can also try to use a DOM module (disc on memory).
They are quite similar to CF cards, but are made for embedded/industrial use (like some CFs are, too).
Their compatibility is perhaps even better: Pure IDE mode, 512 bytes/sector, SLC memory, 5V compatible, fixed-disk mode, etc.

kixs wrote:

With enough memory, Windows accelerator VGA card and possibly CF card for HDD it will run fast. At least the OS by it self.

Absolutely! Some CF cards were slow, though. So I used to benchmark my CF cards with HD-Tune and an USB 2.0 card reader (now USB 3.0).
Important is the access time. Some Cards have 0.1ms (good), while older ones have 10ms (bad).

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I don't think you can really do any better for hard disk controller. In the past some people used caching controllers, but since modern hard drives have so much cache of them, and because CF is so fast is seems to make the caching controller unnecessary. What *may* help is a controller that can do DMA. Adaptec AHA-1542C can do DMA, and it's supposed to make your system more responsive in a multitasking environment. However, I don't know that there have been any conclusive results that show it makes a big difference. There may be a few DMA EIDE controllers for ISA as well, but they may or may not require special drivers. Did you check to see if you can tick the "DMA" box in 9x under the device manager?

Thank for the advice, I'll look for the dma controller. 😀

Jo22 wrote:

This is perhaps against popular believe, but I think Windows since 3.1 does use the co-pro to speed up GDI drawing. I once saw […]
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386SX wrote:

Is the FPU someway used by the os to the general tasks?

This is perhaps against popular believe, but I think Windows since 3.1 does use the co-pro to speed up GDI drawing.
I once saw this mentioned in an old computer magazine, where they explicitly stated that this was a major improvement over
Win 3.0 (that issue included a FPU How-To, and benchmarks with/without FPU installed).

I think that too cause the last time I tried Win 98 on the 386DX it was much slower, maybe I had also an older ATi 28800-5 that I don't think had Bitblt acceleration too.

Remove FPU and try again 😉

Otherwise a proper windows accelerator card makes all the difference.

kixs wrote:

Remove FPU and try again 😉

Otherwise a proper windows accelerator card makes all the difference.

Soon I'm gonna try a web browser with it. 😁