Aglenoth wrote:

I have few slot 1 builds but they arent very nostalgic for me thats the main reason for me to build one with 486 instead

If you want Silicon Valley then get an IBM pre-built 486dx and upgrade the CPU to dx-100
Gateway 2000 486 also has a Turbo button.
Or an HP 486
Dell 486 if you can find one.

I think the Gateway 2000 and IBM are easy to repair and upgrade and reliable.

You might want to look at a Gateway Solo laptop or IBM 380 laptop. Also east to upgrade and repair and reliable.

Search eBay Worldwide.

brostenen wrote:

#Aglenoth. […]
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#Aglenoth.

I have gone through this tread a couple of times....

You must have had 486 machines when they were the newest new stuff and when they were mid range machines (1989 to 1994-ish), because you pointed out that a 486 is nostalgic to you.

So you must know that any games after some 1993/1994 will start to struggle on a 486 machine.

Well, I haven`t lived back in 90` i was born in late 99 but my first PC I played with was dads old 486dx4 with GUS, we had quite fun with it even in 2007 when it was absolutely obsolete and we had several newer machines that could run everything on max that year. But today nobody knows where that machine could have gone. So I want to build something a little bit similar so we can have nostalgia together 😀

Intel486dx33 wrote:

If you want Silicon Valley then get an IBM pre-built 486dx and upgrade the CPU to dx-100 Gateway 2000 486 also has a Turbo butto […]
Show full quote

Aglenoth wrote:

I have few slot 1 builds but they arent very nostalgic for me thats the main reason for me to build one with 486 instead

If you want Silicon Valley then get an IBM pre-built 486dx and upgrade the CPU to dx-100
Gateway 2000 486 also has a Turbo button.
Or an HP 486
Dell 486 if you can find one.

I think the Gateway 2000 and IBM are easy to repair and upgrade and reliable.

You might want to look at a Gateway Solo laptop or IBM 380 laptop. Also east to upgrade and repair and reliable.

Search eBay Worldwide.

I would love to get one but at the moment getting one will be costly and most of 486 laptops does not have soundcards 😒

Don't be shy of building a vlb system. Check ebay and other local vendors for vlb cards, cirrus logic 5428 will serve you beautifully as a starter and they are generally pretty cheap.

If you want the most power for the buck look for a board that can run an AM5x86 133 and see if you can run it at 40mhz bus (160mhz). For a dos only machine really only quake will be the only game to run badly. Anything else in VGA resolution will run nicely.

I find that the biggest price to pay to build these systems is a case, but you can fit them into atx cases.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Don't be shy of building a vlb system. Check ebay and other local vendors for vlb cards, cirrus logic 5428 will serve you beautifully as a starter and they are generally pretty cheap.

If you want the most power for the buck look for a board that can run an AM5x86 133 and see if you can run it at 40mhz bus (160mhz). For a dos only machine really only quake will be the only game to run badly. Anything else in VGA resolution will run nicely.

I find that the biggest price to pay to build these systems is a case, but you can fit them into atx cases.

Thanks for info, I am thinking about buying prebuild and upgrading it so i don`t have to look for case and PSU separately since i don`t like any type of adapters it just does not feel right.

Why do you need adapters? Just buy period-correct case and PSU. They're no rarer than 486 motherboards...

Rare no but price considerations yeah. It may be cheaper for him to hunt down a Gateway 2000 with a 486 where he is. My case + PSU was by far the most expensive part of my 486 build.

Then again some people here manage to find beautiful cases in local trades or recycling, I can only look upon them with envy.

Price aside. Yeah. Cases are notorious difficult to get a hold of. I found a case this year, wich was the first AT case for sale nationally during the last 2 years. 486 boards are easier to find locally. They pop up some 2 or 3 times a year.

That said. There is always eBay. Yet nearly all AT cases are from the outside the EU, and if I had to import one for the price of 100 US Dollars, the final price after import charges and vatt, would be 150 US Dollars.

VLB systems are really nice machines. Just be aware that some TFT/LCD monitors have a hard time displaying the image correctly. The biggest issue are those vertical grey/whitegrey lines. There are issues with aspect ratio as well. Yet once you notice those lines, then they are a pain, and you will stop enjoying the game. The cards that I have seen, that produces most lines, are Cirrus logic cards. S3 cards are decent cards, and I really have to look hard, in order to notice spaghetti lines on my Samsung flatscreen, when using my S3-805 VLB card.

Yet a VLB system with a DX4-120 is a really interresting system. Nobody here really talk about using that CPU. Most of the times it is just DX4-100's people overclock, in order to get a 120/40 system. Yet the real deal, seems to not gain interrest here.
Personally I am collecting hardware for my DX4-120 system. I have this FIC 486 VIP board. It is running with the onboard controller. For that I have bought an VLB SCSI controller. And the next piece of hardware that I will buy for it, are an S3-805 VLB card. It has 16mb of Ram, and it is running with an Audician32-Plus soundcard. Right now it is running with an CL-5446 PCI card, yet the PCI implementation is a bit weak on this board, so I will need to get that S3 VLB card in the future. They are faster than CL-5428 anyway.

Aglenoth wrote:

Well, I haven`t lived back in 90` i was born in late 99 but my first PC I played with was dads old 486dx4 with GUS, we had quite fun with it even in 2007 when it was absolutely obsolete and we had several newer machines that could run everything on max that year. But today nobody knows where that machine could have gone. So I want to build something a little bit similar so we can have nostalgia together 😀

Ahhh... That way nostalgic. Now I understand. Well... Sorry if I was a bit harsh on you. 😀
Personally, I am exposing my children to old computers a couple of times a year. They live at their mothers place, so it is only during winther time, that I can fire up a machine of some sort for them to play Lotus-III, Doom or something like that. I have even exposed them to my C64 and my Amiga's. They simply love old games, and the way old computers work. I bet they are the only ones, in their social circle or school that have had the pleasure of playing Amiga games from Floppy disks. Yeah... I just want them to know, that things are not allways iPad or iPhone only.

I'm not sure the vertical banding can really be attributed to the chip alone. My 5428 has banding on my LCD but it's very very minor and I can really only see it if I focus hard on an all black screen, the S3 805 I tried out was about the same (not sure who made it). I've seen others that are far worse. On the other hand I have a Trident ISA card with horrible, terrible banding. I wouldn't even bother playing games with that card when it was my only option 😢

That said it is true, without a CRT monitor it's just something you may have to put up with until you find a good deal on a higher end card. I'm totally happy with my Cirrus Logic card though.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

I'm not sure the vertical banding can really be attributed to the chip alone. My 5428 has banding on my LCD but it's very very minor and I can really only see it if I focus hard on an all black screen, the S3 805 I tried out was about the same (not sure who made it). I've seen others that are far worse. On the other hand I have a Trident ISA card with horrible, terrible banding. I wouldn't even bother playing games with that card when it was my only option 😢

That said it is true, without a CRT monitor it's just something you may have to put up with until you find a good deal on a higher end card. I'm totally happy with my Cirrus Logic card though.

It must depend on what maker/brand of card we are talking about, and what monitor we are talking about.
I am using a Samsung Syncmaster 172v monitor. My S3 card is a Spea-mirage-something.
I have had shitty image with Trident cards as well. Though CL-5424, CL-5428 and CL-5430 all VLB makes these lines.
When dealing with PCI cards, the CL-5430 version also made them lines.
Though both of my CL-5446-PCI makes a clean and beautiful image. The same quality as my S3-Virge-325 and
on my S3-Trio64v+ as well.

About banding on LCDs... use image auto-adjust on LCD and banding will be gone. At least this works with my LG M228VA.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Rare no but price considerations yeah. It may be cheaper for him to hunt down a Gateway 2000 with a 486 where he is. My case + PSU was by far the most expensive part of my 486 build.

Then again some people here manage to find beautiful cases in local trades or recycling, I can only look upon them with envy.

It does really depend on what's available locally (and how much time to invest in hunting/sniping). Anything actually advertised as "486 system" here goes for >EUR 100, but you can get lucky on "old junk found in attic" for far less. That old junk is far more likely to be a Pentium-era thing, but that will bag you an AT case and AT PSU for a fraction of the price of a known 486.

(of course you can hit it lucky straight off with that old junk - last one I got had an Asus VIP-IO So3 board with a DX4-100 on it 😉 )

dionb wrote:

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Rare no but price considerations yeah. It may be cheaper for him to hunt down a Gateway 2000 with a 486 where he is. My case + PSU was by far the most expensive part of my 486 build.

Then again some people here manage to find beautiful cases in local trades or recycling, I can only look upon them with envy.

It does really depend on what's available locally (and how much time to invest in hunting/sniping). Anything actually advertised as "486 system" here goes for >EUR 100, but you can get lucky on "old junk found in attic" for far less. That old junk is far more likely to be a Pentium-era thing, but that will bag you an AT case and AT PSU for a fraction of the price of a known 486.

(of course you can hit it lucky straight off with that old junk - last one I got had an Asus VIP-IO So3 board with a DX4-100 on it 😉 )

I went a similar route, Mine was purchased as a pentium mmx 166. Turned out it was a working MMX233 on a really nice AT/ATX hybrid board, nothing ultra rare in it but still got a bunch of stuff for the collection. Got that for $85 USD

The case has a 2 digit turbo display on it, so it was obviously upgraded at some point in its life.

Aglenoth wrote:

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Don't be shy of building a vlb system. Check ebay and other local vendors for vlb cards, cirrus logic 5428 will serve you beautifully as a starter and they are generally pretty cheap.

If you want the most power for the buck look for a board that can run an AM5x86 133 and see if you can run it at 40mhz bus (160mhz). For a dos only machine really only quake will be the only game to run badly. Anything else in VGA resolution will run nicely.

I find that the biggest price to pay to build these systems is a case, but you can fit them into atx cases.

Thanks for info, I am thinking about buying prebuild and upgrading it so i don`t have to look for case and PSU separately since i don`t like any type of adapters it just does not feel right.

Yeah, I think a pre-built is the way to go for 486. At worst it could have a bad battery or capacitor on the motherboard which is easy to fix.

Aglenoth wrote:

Intel486dx33 wrote:

If you want Silicon Valley then get an IBM pre-built 486dx and upgrade the CPU to dx-100 Gateway 2000 486 also has a Turbo butto […]
Show full quote

Aglenoth wrote:

I have few slot 1 builds but they arent very nostalgic for me thats the main reason for me to build one with 486 instead

If you want Silicon Valley then get an IBM pre-built 486dx and upgrade the CPU to dx-100
Gateway 2000 486 also has a Turbo button.
Or an HP 486
Dell 486 if you can find one.

I think the Gateway 2000 and IBM are easy to repair and upgrade and reliable.

You might want to look at a Gateway Solo laptop or IBM 380 laptop. Also east to upgrade and repair and reliable.

Search eBay Worldwide.

I would love to get one but at the moment getting one will be costly and most of 486 laptops does not have soundcards 😒

A Gateway Solo is a pentium mx 166mgz CPU and the IBM Thinkpad 380 is a pentium 166mhz also.
They sell for about $100 for a good one on ebay and are very easy ti fix and upgrade.

You can find a good used pre-built 486 for about $200 and upgrade it for about $150 with good high end parts for its time.
So for about $350 you can have a very good 486 computer.

I paid $2500 for my first barebones 486dx-33 computer back in 1993.
And that was a deal as IBM 486 computers where selling for $5000 back then.

brostenen wrote:

Aglenoth wrote:

Well, I haven`t lived back in 90` i was born in late 99 but my first PC I played with was dads old 486dx4 with GUS, we had quite fun with it even in 2007 when it was absolutely obsolete and we had several newer machines that could run everything on max that year. But today nobody knows where that machine could have gone. So I want to build something a little bit similar so we can have nostalgia together 😀

Ahhh... That way nostalgic. Now I understand. Well... Sorry if I was a bit harsh on you. 😀
Personally, I am exposing my children to old computers a couple of times a year. They live at their mothers place, so it is only during winther time, that I can fire up a machine of some sort for them to play Lotus-III, Doom or something like that. I have even exposed them to my C64 and my Amiga's. They simply love old games, and the way old computers work. I bet they are the only ones, in their social circle or school that have had the pleasure of playing Amiga games from Floppy disks. Yeah... I just want them to know, that things are not allways iPad or iPhone only.

You werent harsh, you just havent seen my point of view 😀 However its kinda difficult here in czech republic where everything gets recycled and if you want to buy something from recycling facility you cant we have law for it soo with 150 $ budget i wont get even proper working unit let alone decent build with ram and soudcard , however some seller here sells all Macintoshes from year 1989 to 93ish fully working units for 50$ Each.

Search eBay for IBM Thinkpad 380 laptop. They sell for about $100 and IBM offers drivers in DOS/3x/NT351/NT4/95/98
They come with 1st gen pentium CPU 166-233mhz, 3gb Hard-drive and supports up to 64mb of ram.

Here is a video on how easy it is to fix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWGOLO5HTDs

RAM
https://www.ebay.com/itm/64MB-EDO-MEMORY-RAM- … sMAAOSwe7BW0w24

IBM Drivers:
https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad-Driver … ddfm/380xd.html

https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad-Driver … t/ddfm/380.html

You can use a program like Throttle or MoSlo to slow down the CPU and run old DOS games.

Throttle
http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/

MoSlo
http://www.hpaa.com/moslo/

Or you could probably use any old IBM thinkpad laptop with Pentium or Centrino or Core-Duo CPU.

Aglenoth wrote:

You werent harsh, you just havent seen my point of view 😀 However its kinda difficult here in czech republic where everything gets recycled and if you want to buy something from recycling facility you cant we have law for it soo with 150 $ budget i wont get even proper working unit let alone decent build with ram and soudcard , however some seller here sells all Macintoshes from year 1989 to 93ish fully working units for 50$ Each.

Cool. 😀 Here in Denmark, everything gets recycled as well. Right now, even Core2Duo begins to get low in quantity now a days.
Everything is i5/i7 and all that. So nothing older than some 10 years of age now. (You can still find Socket-478 if you look hard)

I was actually on holiday in Prague, back in the early 90's (91/93) and I must say that you really have some good things there.
Especially cristal glass, old monuments and really awesome food. It somehow reminds me of Danish food.
You know... Roasted pork and those white boiled dumplings. As far as I remember, it is a bit like boiled breaddough or something.
Nice and decent beer and warm summer. Awesome countryside.
I can't remember if it was in Hungary, Poland or Czech republich, that I had deepfried bread that could be ordered with eighter
salt, sour cream or cheese on top. They were sold everywere from portable diners at any rest stop on every road. I loved them.

brostenen wrote:

Cool. :-) Here in Denmark, everything gets recycled as well. Right now, even Core2Duo begins to get low in quantity now a days. […]
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Aglenoth wrote:

You werent harsh, you just havent seen my point of view 😀 However its kinda difficult here in czech republic where everything gets recycled and if you want to buy something from recycling facility you cant we have law for it soo with 150 $ budget i wont get even proper working unit let alone decent build with ram and soudcard , however some seller here sells all Macintoshes from year 1989 to 93ish fully working units for 50$ Each.

Cool. 😀 Here in Denmark, everything gets recycled as well. Right now, even Core2Duo begins to get low in quantity now a days.
Everything is i5/i7 and all that. So nothing older than some 10 years of age now. (You can still find Socket-478 if you look hard)

I was actually on holiday in Prague, back in the early 90's (91/93) and I must say that you really have some good things there.
Especially cristal glass, old monuments and really awesome food. It somehow reminds me of Danish food.
You know... Roasted pork and those white boiled dumplings. As far as I remember, it is a bit like boiled breaddough or something.
Nice and decent beer and warm summer. Awesome countryside.
I can't remember if it was in Hungary, Poland or Czech republich, that I had deepfried bread that could be ordered with eighter
salt, sour cream or cheese on top. They were sold everywere from portable diners at any rest stop on every road. I loved them.

Iam glad you enjoyed it here 😀 everybody seems to like Prague for some reason, but nowadays it feels rather dirty , and there are some places overwhelmed with criminality, but the historical parts are totally worth to visit 😀 anyways Postage of 380XD cost nearly same as the laptop 😒