More pictures of the hardware...... 😀

I simply love all these components. They are great, perform excellent and play everything 1990 to 1993.

Next step.... Reassembling of the case and motherboard installation.

I have been installing the rest of the hardware, and moved the controller card down. As the data cables would begin to push the VGA card up, and it would loose contact in the VLB slot. Made a quick drive speed test, and it made no difference at all. It will be kept in the bottom slot for now.

Next up... First boot, after the actual rebuild.

First boot.....
I started by entering the BIOS, and load "fast defaults/settings", enabling stuff, disabling stuff and setting the clock.
Rebooted and the system would start perfectly. No issues, other than the one were I had to move the controller down.
Took a picture of the Controller-BIOS screen and went on to test with Norton Sysinfo, to see if it made a difference.
Did not, so I am a happy champ. All what's missing, is the final touches such as bay covers and one rear slot bracket.

Now it is time for bed.... This whole rebuild, took me some 4,5 hours. And it is late. I will do benchmarking tomorrow.

Time for some benchmarks.... First results....

Norton Sysinfo results...

And some gaming/3d scores...

My thoughts on this build?
Hmmmm... For a gaming rig, that are aimed directly at 1989 to 1993 (untill Doom), then I like this build.
It has parts that works great with each other, it has no spaghetti lines (tested with Civilization and Lotus-III).
It runs Doom great, and Dynablaster run with both music and sound effects on.
I have had 3D-Bench running higher. Though I think it is the controller card that makes it run a tad slower.
Looking at the goal... Making a 1989/93 machine, and comparing it to a Dx2-66/CL-5428. Then it is great.

In other words... I am really pleased with this machine. Build-Log finished (for now).

Very nice build! Love it. 😀

The benchmarks you took were interesting to me to compare against and see how much of a performance boost a DX2-80 might be in my build versus the DX2-66 I'm using now. Kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison though of course, given I'm using a different motherboard (FIC 486-PVT, VIA chipset) and I have 256KB L2 installed. Same basic video card though (S3 805 VLB).

For reference, I'm getting:
3DBench 1.0: 50.0fps
Chris's 3D Benchmark: 27.5fps
PC Player Benchmark: 9.3fps
Doom: 2842 realtics / 26.28fps

I guess I expected Doom would've been a tad bit more faster for you, but interesting to see it's on-par with my build.

Wonder what you'd get with 256KB L2 and with the controller card switched out with something else (mention only because you wrote above suspecting it might be slowing things down a tad?).

EDIT: Also, wondering what's going on with your Speedsys not detecting your video card? I'll admit I've not seen that happen with Speedsys before.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah... It is like comparing apples to oranges. Or should I say red apples to green apples. 🤣
After all, both builds are VLB and are Dx2's. The way I see it, they are both in the same kind of narrow classes.
Not like it is a Dx-33 compared to Dx4-120 and VLB compared to PCI. 😉

Regarding the VLB controller. Then I really do not know if it is that. I suspect, as one is a Goldstar and the other UMC.
If they for some reason has something to do with overall VLB speed or are CPU dependent, then it makes sence.

On this build, I actually got slower results than you, when I used a Dx2-66 cpu. Yet compared to what everyone are
building, then I see this as a Dx2-66 with a bit more juice. You know...
If one look at Doom gameplay on all them Dx2-66/CL-5428 build's, then Doom kind of looks like drunken walk.
A Dx2-80 just removes the last lagging, and yet it is still capeable running most 1989/90 games at normal speed.

256kb cache you say.... Hmmm.... Might have to check that out, and possible try 512kb if my board supports it.

I have no idea how much (if any) difference upgrading to 256KB cache would make, but since you have the space for more cache, I figure might as well, right? 😉

Regarding Doom performance... I've seen some videos that have really left me scratching my head regarding the performance the person was seeing. For example, one of Phil's videos (think it was the "sleeper" DX2-66 build he did)... maybe it was the video recording making it seem slower than it actually was... but once I saw that part of his video I had to go back and double check he actually put a 66Mhz CPU in there! Never seen a DX2-66 play Doom that slowly! I also have a Unisys CWD-4001, DX2-66, 16MB, GD5424 with zero L2 cache that runs better then his PC was (just based off visual comparison)! It's kind of funny how many things can throw off performance of different games. 😀

I agree with you though that a DX2-80 gives things just a little bit more power to smooth out some little bits of lag that can be very nice indeed!

Very nice build - 128KB cache limits you to 16MB in WriteBack mode - I might be wrong though.
Doom is way more demanding than people like to admit. I remember having it run on a DX2/66 many years ago and I was shocked at how slow and laggy it felt.
If you want to speed it up decrease the number of voices mixed - sound playback may be a huge performance issue on slow 486s.

Gered wrote:

I have no idea how much (if any) difference upgrading to 256KB cache would make, but since you have the space for more cache, I figure might as well, right? 😉

Regarding Doom performance... I've seen some videos that have really left me scratching my head regarding the performance the person was seeing. For example, one of Phil's videos (think it was the "sleeper" DX2-66 build he did)... maybe it was the video recording making it seem slower than it actually was... but once I saw that part of his video I had to go back and double check he actually put a 66Mhz CPU in there! Never seen a DX2-66 play Doom that slowly! I also have a Unisys CWD-4001, DX2-66, 16MB, GD5424 with zero L2 cache that runs better then his PC was (just based off visual comparison)! It's kind of funny how many things can throw off performance of different games. 😀

I agree with you though that a DX2-80 gives things just a little bit more power to smooth out some little bits of lag that can be very nice indeed!

Hmmm... Well.
I am not loading any Vesa drivers or anything, and the L1 is in WT and not WB mode. I don't think that there were any Dx2-80-WB version, as all I can find is WT models. Amd-486dx2-66 is a different story though. The goal of this machine is a strickt 1989 to 1993 build. The reason for this early 90's era, is that I have one 486dx4-120 (real 120 WB chip) and a 5x86-133 WT setup.

amadeus777999 wrote:

Very nice build - 128KB cache limits you to 16MB in WriteBack mode - I might be wrong though.
Doom is way more demanding than people like to admit. I remember having it run on a DX2/66 many years ago and I was shocked at how slow and laggy it felt.
If you want to speed it up decrease the number of voices mixed - sound playback may be a huge performance issue on slow 486s.

True... I think the dx2-66, though it is legendary, are only for people that want it because they had it.
It is more a kind of a nostalgia CPU and will allways be linked to fond memories.
Though if people want an early 90's setup that can still play Doom, then a dx2-80 is the one to go for.
Especially if it is VLB cards and not PCI. And it is still slow enough for 1989/90 games.

brostenen wrote:

I am not loading any Vesa drivers or anything, and the L1 is in WT and not WB mode. I don't think that there were any Dx2-80-WB version, as all I can find is WT models.

Ah interesting. I'm also not running WB L1 either as my CPU doesn't support it. I actually just today bought a processor (SX955) that supports WB L1 cache, interested to see if it makes any difference at all once it arrives.

brostenen wrote:

The goal of this machine is a strickt 1989 to 1993 build. The reason for this early 90's era, is that I have one 486dx4-120 (real 120 WB chip) and a 5x86-133 WT setup.

Totally get this, and I think your build is fantastic for this purpose! 😁

Gered wrote:

Ah interesting. I'm also not running WB L1 either as my CPU doesn't support it. I actually just today bought a processor (SX955) that supports WB L1 cache, interested to see if it makes any difference at all once it arrives.

Sweet. 😜 Those are not cheap are they?

Haha. 😀 Depends on if the seller knows what it is or not or if it's being sold as scrap for gold (risk of it not working then too).

DX2 80 is indeed an interesting choice. after the 66 most people will jump to dx4 100 or higher, makes this something special (if a VL system wasn't special enough
I like it a lot 😀

nice. I had an dx2-80 running vlb at 40mhz. sweet cpu!

chinny22 wrote:

DX2 80 is indeed an interesting choice. after the 66 most people will jump to dx4 100 or higher, makes this something special (if a VL system wasn't special enough
I like it a lot 😀

Thanks.... 😀
Yes. The idea behind this, was to make one of those "standard" 93/94 systems that everyone bought back then. And pimp it slightly, in order to get rid of those small hickups/lags that you would see, and then still retain the feel of the Dx2-66. VLB special? Well... They were kind of what was the standard here in Denmark back then. EISA or MCA were special back then, and by the time of the Dx2-66, ISA was only used for soundcards and really low spec systems of that time (Cyrix 486 SLC/DLC systems). Even Dx33 was sold with VLB videocards and VLB controllers here in Denmark, around 93/94.

That said. Yeah... I love this little system. It has all what I knew from back plus a little extra.

- CPU bumped from 66 to 80.
- Memory bumped from 8 to 16 megabyte.
- FSB bumped from 33 to 40.
- VGA bumped from CL-5428/30 to S3-805.
- Controller bumped from singlechannel-non-BIOS to dualchannel-BIOS.

All in all... A 1993/94 machine sold at aprox 12/15 thousand Danish Kroner back then.
Wich is somewere between 1900 and 2300 US Dollars in price range.

EDIT:
The only thing that would make this setup even more special, is a VLB SCSI-II setup.
I have a SCSI harddrive, at a capacity of aprox 1gb. And I have a Plextor SCSI CDrom drive that uses caddy's.
So if I had to make this just a bit more exotic, I need to source a SCSI controller.
Even better.... A VLB SCSI controller with space for actual 30-Pin Cache Ram modules.
Ohhh.... One can only dream though. 🤣