chinny22 wrote:

Line in on the Awe32 doesn’t work

I think I know that problem 😀

Run MIXERSET and turn on line-in at the OUTPUT section. There needs to be a x for L and R. For some reason line-in is disabled by default on the AWE cards.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

chinny22 wrote:

Line in on the Awe32 doesn’t work

I think I know that problem 😀

Run MIXERSET and turn on line-in at the OUTPUT section. There needs to be a x for L and R. For some reason line-in is disabled by default on the AWE cards.

PS: That Yamaha is a very good card. Might as well ditch the AWE?

I thought it was the ol mixerset settings as well, but it still didnt want to work, I would be upset but this is my 1st time playing with an external midi device so more often than not I turn the music up louder than the sound anyway (I also spend way too much time looking at the SC55's display and end up dead) 😒

While technically the labway is fine, ever since I was a teenager playing games on the Osborne mentioned above with its SB16 I've always wanted to be able to select that AWE32 option even if it's only for a bit then back to the SC55!

My P3 has the Dell SE440BX3 motherboard with a Yamaha YMF724 onboard which is basicly the same as the labway. As far as Dos compatibility on the PCI bus I can't think of anything else I'd prefer to use and being on board frees up a slot as a bonus. It's just a shame it doesn't work outside of Windows.

Have made a few changes to the 486, gave the inside a bit of a tidy and I think I’m just about happy with it now.

CPU: 486 Dx4 120 (A80486DX4-120SV8B, C9539CPH)
M/B: Abit AB-PB4 Rev 1.3
RAM: x2 32MB 60NS EDO (LG GMM7328110CS6 32MB EDO 60nS 72-PIN SIMM TIN)
Video: Diamond Stealth 2000 3D v1.04 Virge 4MB PCI
NIC: PCI 3Comm 3C905C-TXM
Audio1: Awe32 Value CT3910
Audio2: Labway Yamaha YMF719E-S (Only used for the Midi port)
Midi: Roland SC55
1st HDD: Quantum Trailblazer 850MB (TR85A351/850AT)
2nd HDD: Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s UDMA 8GB CF card
3rd HDD: Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s UDMA 8GB CF card
CD-Rom: Creative 4x (CRE-BTB)
FDD1: Sony 3 ½ 1.44MB
FDD2: Gotek 1.44MB USB floppy emulator (100 disk version)
OS: Dos 6.22 with IPX network for games only + Windows for Workgroups 3.11 TCP/IP network for file sharing.

The big changes were the video card. I can now see windows in 256 colours with all that 4MB! 😲
I’ve played Terminal Velocity in S3D and it’s the same as I remember playing the standard SVGA version with all the options on full on my DX2 all those years ago, Playable but not smooth. I intend to play around with this card and more S3D games in the P3 for a bit but once the novelty wears off it suits this PC well.
The USB Floppy emulator I got after checking out Mau1wurf1977’s youtube channels a while back. So big thanks to you for discovering this for me. I still use floppys a fair bit for boot disks or quickly transferring smaller files and these things are cheap, basic, and no more boot disk errors due to my disks slowly dying. I wish it was white not grey but doesn’t look that bad in the poor light where it lives.
Looking around on the net and I discovered what the hole next to the green LED is for

Just like whoever it was out there on the net somewhere my loading LED wasn’t bent into place, (that white rectangle printed underneath the LED says RED LED and the one next to it says Green LED) it’s strange as it’s much more useful than the green LED which just indicates power. Lucky its easy enough to bend into place.
For the moment I’ve just got the one drive and use the software on my day to day PC to copy files between the 2, but it works well and I will start putting them in all my retro builds. Network is great for large transfers but this is a god send for replacing unreliable boot disk’s or a quick file copy in dos.

Also got a round floppy cable to make the case a bit more tidy. Slight issue there as the Sony disk drive was keyed the wrong way round (typical Sony great product but make it not compatible with anything else) Still a small plastic tab was no match to a sharp kitchen knife and I even managed to stop before cutting any of the cable. 😎
Also got a round IDE cable for the boot HDD and CD-ROM. In the end I could actually run this under the power supply but it still takes up less space which is good thing as the parallel and serial port header, floppy and 2 IDE connectors are all located together. So there was a mass of ribbon cables all getting in each other’s way before.
I shortened the 2 CF card readers ribbon cable but as they sit right next to the motherboard IDE connector there was no reason to get a round cable. After my recent trouble they are working fine now as secondary master and slave. I left a real hard drive for the OS as this gets constantly written to plus it has a 2nd partition I use as a dumping ground. The CD-ROM rarely gets used. So the HDD gets the primary IDE channel pretty much to itself. With the CF cards where all the games located on the Secondary IDE, should they need the CD-Rom the Physical HDD is no longer doing anything so the Channel is left alone for the CD-ROM. I didn’t actually plan that but it worked out well.

I’ll admit the CPU heat sink is a bit over the top but it was spare so it’ll stay. It’s just a cheap Akasa Athlon heat sink without the fan. It used to get warm but not anymore with the case fan. Plus it’s still am AMD CPU so its allowed 😉

I added a 92mm fan that came with the Zalman CNPS6500B-ALCU flower heat sink, I just cut the end off and used an old 12v fan molex plug so it’s running at the full 12v so any noise I save from removing hard drives is back but really you don’t notice it above the power supply fan anyway. I don’t think it’s really needed but the fan wasn’t being used, AT cases never had any air flow to speak of so it can only help. With it slightly angled at the CPU it doesn't even get warm anymore
The only other things I want to add to it is replace the 850MB HDD for a newer larger drive anda dream is to add at 3 digit display to the case to show the world I'm running at 120.

Software wise still needs a little fine tuning. I've got 2 choices at startup Roland or AWE neither configured optimally. I've also broken windows networking so it cant log onto my 2k domain and access shares it used to but I was fixing something that wasn't even broke that was that. I can the 486 from the other PC's so its no big deal but it annoys me. I'm sure once that's all fixed up it'll be time to change it all again (I hope not)

What are those brackets you use that have the compact flash port in them ?

sunaiac wrote:

What are those brackets you use that have the compact flash port in them ?

2 of these
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CF-IDE-3-5-Male-Ada … =item43a6998325

Which USB floppy drive emulator are you using? I see a bunch on eBay from China but there are a few different models.

Half-Saint wrote:

Which USB floppy drive emulator are you using?

I just got whichever was the cheapest at the time. Once you open them up they all seem to come from the same manufacture "Gotek" or at the very least EXACT same manufacturing process right down to the red LED needing to be bent round.

I did chose one that had the disk indicator numbers on the front so you can see what number disk your reading from, the cheapest are missing this.
I got the one that had 2 digits as I'm never going to use all 100 Disks but even then the 3 digit model is almost the same price.

Just double check its the 1.44 MB version but most of the cheaper ones are

excellent PC chinny22!

I have not seen many AMD DX4 120 based systems.

The CF to IDE brackets are a really nice touch.

If your Yamaha YMF719E-S is anything like my YMF718 its an excellent card. Why do you prefer the Awe32 over the yamaha?

Must admit until I got this PC I thought the DX4-100 was as good as it got, and that's the CPU I was looking for, It was pure luck I came across this when I did, and it was only about £6
Don't really want a 586 as they don't do anything sentimentally for me (Of course I wouldn't was no if one found its way to me)

Kind of the same with the Yamaha card. Apart from the horrible driver software I've got no problem with it and would do the job fine But the AWE32 was what I grew up wanting.

My P3 has the Dell/Intel SE440BX-3 with the similar YMF724 on board which I do use as my primary soundcard for dos gaming, its just a shame you loose midi if your not in Windows.

Chinny22, were your cache and memory timings on the fastest possible settings when you posted that Speedsys screenshot?

The PC wouldn't boot if I set the Ram timings to the fastest. so had to drop it back 1 setting, From memory I think it was changing it from fastest to fast?
But pretty sure the results were at my machines fastest settings

So it is just the RAM that is not on the fastest setting? The L2 cache is on the fastest setting?

Ok, managed to dig up the manual as the PC is in storage, From memory DRam Write time had be set 1 lower then the fastest setting, (I think the options were Fastest/Fast/normal/Slow) everything else is set to the fastest.
Well I think it is, I did have to look around vogons/google to find out what some of the settings actually did.
I've attached the Manual in PDF form instead of their annoying exe file, if you look at the screen shot on page 3-8 in the manual or 17 in the pdf
That's what I'm using to remind myself

Why do you think I'm missing something?

The results seem a bit on the slow side compared to similar era SiS-496- and UMC-8881-based motherboards using an AMD DX4-120. I was wondering if Abit has some hidden latency or if that ALi chipset is generally slower.

I would most likely blame me more then the Abit board, but wont be near the PC anytime soon to test

The only other ALi-based 486 board I benchmarked had slowish results as well, but it was a PC Chips board. Those results were worse than yours.

Seemed a shame to have this sitting in storage so I've dusted off and made a few changes to this PC.
My childhood Osborne VLB 486 will always be my favourite, but I surprised myself by wanting to keep it pretty much how it was when I was growing up, rather then upgrade it. So that's what I'll use this 486 for, my dream 486 if you wish. The currant setup is now

CPU: Was 486 Dx4 120, Now POD 83
M/B: Abit AB-PB4 Rev 1.3
RAM: x2 32MB 60NS EDO (LG GMM7328110CS6 32MB EDO 60nS 72-PIN SIMM TIN)
Video: Diamond Stealth 2000 3D v1.04 Virge 4MB PCI
NIC: WAS PCI 3Comm 3C905C-TXM, Now Dlink DFE-528TX
Audio1: Awe32 Value CT3910
Removed Audio2: Labway Yamaha YMF719E-S (Only used for the Midi port)
Removed Midi: Roland SC55
1st HDD: Quantum Trailblazer 850MB (TR85A351/850AT)
2nd HDD: Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s UDMA 8GB CF card
3rd HDD: Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s UDMA 8GB CF card
CD-Rom: Creative 4x (CRE-BTB)
FDD1: Sony 3 ½ 1.44MB
FDD2: Gotek 1.44MB USB floppy emulator (100 disk version)
OS: Was Dos 6.22, Now Win95c

Changed the NIC as the 3Comm was from the Dell and wanted to put it back.
The Roland is now on the Osborne so no need for the 2nd sound card.

CPU: I talked abut how I came by getting them in the Osborne's post. Short story is managed to get a POD83 for £3.40 I didn't know about 586 when growing up so this is in keeping with the "dream" setup (although really I always simply wanted a new PC back then)

I went with Win95c as even though that's what I mainly used on the Osborne growing up, I want to keep Win3x like when I originally got it and can relive my 95 memories here. Only use it for system management and networking, not gaming

Onto the benchmarks using Phils486 suite.
586 133, BIOS defaults
3dBench2 FPS=61.2, PCPBench FPS=18.4, Doom FPS=33.11, Realticks=2019

586 133 Bios tweaked
3dBench2 FPS=61.3, PCPBench FPS=17.1, Doom FPS=,33.70 Realticks=2055

POD83 BIOS defaults
3dBench2 FPS=60.8, PCPBench FPS=19.1, Doom FPS=37.95, Realticks=2314

So its actually faster then my original 486 VLB motherboard.
Osbone 486 DX2 66 VL-Bus (My 1st PC ever)

And lastly some pics as the originals have been lost over the years.

Even still has the sticker from where it was built
It also has Housing/Ecology and a London postcode printed on the side. Quck google seems to suggest it was once owned by a housing trust in Camden

Both the old girls, Both permanently setup like this now

I'm the 1st to admit I don't really need this PC. If I'm in the mood for nostalgia I'll turn to the Osborne. If I want a fast dos PC I'll turn to the Slot 1 P3, Still its nice to have the luxury to have this to mess around/test with leaving the others purely for gaming.

edit updated photo URL's