"VESA" as in VESA Local Bus? (VLB)

That's not exactly common on 386 motherboards. In that case you're looking for a board with OPTi 495SX chipset that supports both 386 and 486.

Hybrid boards with VLB are not impossible to find...but, the VLB doesn't really make much difference unless you have a 486DLC. Even then, the speed increase is small. What it will do however is let you put the frame buffer on your graphics card beyond 16MB so that you can have a lot of memory in your system without conflict. This would also be great for a VLB SCSI controller.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Hybrid boards with VLB are not impossible to find...but, the VLB doesn't really make much difference unless you have a 486DLC. Even then, the speed increase is small. What it will do however is let you put the frame buffer on your graphics card beyond 16MB so that you can have a lot of memory in your system without conflict. This would also be great for a VLB SCSI controller.

I see. So I should be looking at an ISA solution instead?

Any recommendations for an ISA motherboard then, but keeping the other specifications static?

if you can find it, the AMI Mark V 386 BABY SCREAMER looks pretty badass

maxtherabbit wrote:

if you can find it, the AMI Mark V 386 BABY SCREAMER looks pretty badass

Nice. Does this one have external cache? I forgot to point out I really want that, too.

Edit: Yeah, looks like it does.

Another question: Is there even a PDF for the manual for this thing? I can hardly find anything on it.

There is also the infamous Alaris Cougar motherboard, which has a on-board 486DLC on steroids (clock tripled), I think it has two VLB slots too.

The Baby Screamer is indeed a pretty nice 386 board, but the BIOS options are pretty limited, and normally there isn't DLC support.
Thankfully it's already pretty well tuned, and performs well considering the cache isn't double banked. I have one, and I like it.

Best performing 386 boards I have seen are based on Forex 300+402 and 411+402 chipsets, both boards I have give couple notches higher benchmark results than other boards I have seen and the ones I have also support 256KB cache. There is no native DLC support on them though but with the Cyrix util I could get performance exceeding that of what I saw on an ALi based board with native DLC support.

If your goal is to run AMD 386DX40, then you will probably be just fine with a late compact board with a soldered on CPU. Something like this would fit the bill perfectly and virtually all of these boards have an FPU socket.

Keep in mind that on most 386 boards you need to replace an oscillator chip in order to switch between, e.g., 386DX33 and 386DX40 — and that means soldering work (although some boards have socketed oscillators). So your easiest option would be to get a board that was designed for an AMD 386DX40 in the first place.

Shuttle HOT-327 is worth trying, as it has 72-pin SIMM sockets - making it easy to install 64 MB of RAM
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/S … 86-HOT-327.html

But what's the point of 64MB if you only have 128kb cache? More than likely, 32MB is all that can be cached.

Are the Forex 300+402 boards really that fast? I still haven't seen any benchmarks that prove that. Do you have any numbers?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

The Baby Screamer is indeed a pretty nice 386 board, but the BIOS options are pretty limited, and normally there isn't DLC support.
Thankfully it's already pretty well tuned, and performs well considering the cache isn't double banked. I have one, and I like it.

do you mean limited compared to "normal early 90s BIOS" standards or limited compared to MR BIOS standards?

My recommendation would be FX-3000 board.

256Kb cache, good performance, oscillator is not soldered and CPU can be switched to 486.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

But what's the point of 64MB if you only have 128kb cache? More than likely, 32MB is all that can be cached.

Yes, it's clearly visible already at the POST - memory test slows down at 32 MB.
Still, memory-hungry software can run faster with half-cached 64 MB, than with fully-cached 32 MB.

Let's be real here. 32Mb RAM is a stretch for any 386 CPU.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Let's be real here. 32Mb RAM is a stretch for any 386 CPU.

not if you're trying to run Windows NT or something else that's not DOS or Win9x

maxtherabbit wrote:

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Let's be real here. 32Mb RAM is a stretch for any 386 CPU.

not if you're trying to run Windows NT or something else that's not DOS or Win9x

True, but what are you doing trying to run that on a 386? Technically Linux will run on a 386 (at least, an OLD kernel with ditto glibc) or later OS/2 versions, but if it needs more than 16MB RAM, it probably runs a lot better with a newer CPU. Reality check: for most 386 systems, you're looking at 2MB-8MB of RAM. The architecture supports more, but no one 1987-1992 would have had that sort of RAM, or near the end would have that sort of RAM and not just bought a 486 CPU. 32MB is more 'normal' for a late 1997 build, by which time a Pentium (MMX) was the norm.

Now, I have run 386 systems with 64MB and 486 systems with 256MB, but that's being silly maxing out platforms years after they were relevant. It by no means reflects how the platforms were realistically used in the day.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Are the Forex 300+402 boards really that fast? I still haven't seen any benchmarks that prove that. Do you have any numbers?

Here's numbers from TopBench and Ultimate Doom 1.9 demo4 (818 gameticks, hires, no sound or mouse) :

1Board                : Score/ MT /MEA / Op / Vid / 3D / Total / Doom
2ALi M1429 + 486DLC   : 116 / 134 / 38 / 38 / 187 / 35 / 433   / 3632
3ALi M1429 + 386DX40  :  98 / 162 / 48 / 57 / 189 / 58 / 512   / 5306
4Forex 300+402 + DLC  : 123 / 134 / 37 / 41 / 153 / 37 / 403   / 4232
5Forex 300+402 + DX40 : 106 / 160 / 46 / 54 / 155 / 55 / 470   / 4956
6Forex 411+402 + DLC  : 123 / 134 / 38 / 42 / 155 / 38 / 405   / 4254
7Forex 411+402 + DX40 : 106 / 160 / 46 / 54 / 155 / 55 / 470   / 4983
8Forex+optimized DLC  : 127 / 134 / 36 / 36 / 154 / 32 / 390   / 3431

Rest of the hardware is 1MB WD90C30, 32MB RAM, 256KB L2 on Forex, 128KB L2 on ALi, Crystal based sound card and a modernish Seagate HDD. ISA speed is 16MHz on ALi, 13.3MHz on Forex, memory timings are all maxed out.
With some effort I can get Speedsys shots too if needed.

I have one of these OPTi 495SLC boards. I only recently got it to work and I haven't done any performance tests yet so I'm not sure how the VLB performs. I have an Intel 386DX 33Mhz installed on it with 4 megs of ram. To me that seems period correct for 1992 if I remember correctly.

But, if you can find it, it might also be an option..