First post, by jheronimus
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi, all
I decided to make a "classic" 486 build to use for MT-32 games. I've used a Chaintech 4SLP motherboard from my failed 5x86 build. No matter how hard I tried, this board always gave me issues with both 5x86 and AMD DX4-100 (even though it explicitly supports the latter). However, with a regular 486DX2-66 the experience was extremely smooth and worked the first time I tried to boot it.
The board has 256KB L2 cache and a SIS471 chipset. The battery was replaced by the previous owner and it seems to have some sort of an aftermarket VRM module installed. I fitted the motherboard with 4x4MB of RAM — I could never fit more than 16MB of memory in this board anyhow.
I'm actually using Overdrive DX20DPR66 v4.0 even though I have a regular 486DX2 — just wanted to use the stock heatsink. Both chips have write-through cache as far as I can tell and according to CHKCPU.
I'm using a VLB Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 board upgraded to 1MB of VRAM and a VLB controller with a UMC chip. Connected to it is a 1.6GB Samsung hard drive — the largest one I have that still has the "old disk whirring" sound. Also, I have a 24x CD-ROM connected — the slowest one I have that still supports CD-R/CD-RW.
For sound I'm using a Vibra CT2940 with true OPL3. I also have a CT2230, but I'm using it in an AMD K6-3+ build that is better suited for General MIDI games.
Finally, I'm using a 3COM 3C509 card for NIC. Roland MT-32 is connected to Sound Blaster and I'm using SoftMPU. So far, only Legend Entertainment games give me troubles. Eric the Unready reverts to Sound Blaster, and music in Superhero League of Hoboken freezes at intro scene (but I can skip it and get music in main game).
Turbo works really well — I can use the case button and Ctrl + Alt + +/- even while running the system. I'm still experimenting with options, though, and will post my benchmarks later and share my experience with games like Wing Commander 1/Ultima 7. If I can't get them to work then I'll downgrade to 486SX-30 or UMC U5S-SUPER33. I don't have a DX-30, unfortunately, but I can probably try to downclock my DX2 to DX2-50 and see if I get anything useful with Turbo.
Overall, compared to 5x86/DX4 this build seems almost trouble-free, but I don't really know why. I mean, DX2, DX4/100 and 5x86 all use the same 33MHz FSB speed, so it can't really be speed issues.
I'll post the photos of the final build later, but for now I have some questions:
1) I have a Yamaha SW60XG that would be nice to use in this build. It can be set to use 300h address — since my SB16 (and consequently, MT-32) is using 330h. However, I'm not sure if I can daisy-chain them together. How do I go about this? MT-32 goes into line-in of SW60XG, SW60XG goes into line-in of SB16 or what?
2) I have atrocious performance in Duke Nukem 3D. Not the most important game for this build, but still — I've seen people on YouTube play DN3 on 486DX2 in 320x200 with no issues. I've tried running UniVBE 6.7 from Vogonsdrivers.com and from Phil's benchmark pack, but in both cases it says that my card is not supported — even though 5428 is explicitly listed as supported in Readme. Am I doing anything wrong or should I use some different version of UniVBE?