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I have this "mini" 486. What is it good for?

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First post, by keenmaster486

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I got this "mini" 486 motherboard at a recycle center. It has only ISA slots - six 16-bit and one 8-bit, to be precise.
I have all the cards to make this thing work, I just have to go back and pick up some RAM which I forgot I was all out of 😵

I also have two CPUs: a 486SX-25 and a 486DX2-66.

Considering that this MB only has ISA slots, which ISA video card is a good choice and what's the best 486 processor it wouldn't bottleneck?

The MB also has cache sockets. Is it worth using cache when you don't have VLB or PCI video?

Ultimately I would want this thing to run DOOM acceptably. But maybe that isn't possible with ISA video.

Thoughts?

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 1 of 2, by jade_angel

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You can get it to run Doom well with ISA video. I'd start with either a Tseng ET4000AX or an S3 83c805, combined with either a DX2/66 or a DX4/100, plus 16+ MB of RAM. Look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ha8Q_oLUr8&t=4s for reference; I'd definitely recommend adding cache. Max it out if there's no specific reason not to.

The DX2 you have will do, but if your board can do 3.45v, a DX4/100 or 5x86/133 will help out a lot.

Main Box: Macbook Pro M2 Max
Alas, I'm down to emulation.

Reply 2 of 2, by ElBrunzy

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my 386dx40 had a very crappy 8bit isa 256kb vga and I ran doom great! One old doom version had a bug on computer without nmi and it was running slow as hell, I cannot remember the patch version it was fixed on but then the game start to run smoothly again.

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