^ for that FX-3000 one I see in your pics, that's the one you are using right?

keropi wrote:

^ for that FX-3000 one I see in your pics, that's the one you are using right?

I'm actually using a PC-Chips motherboard.

I can pop the CPU back in the FX-3000 board and see if it works, but I wanted VLB so I changed the motherboard.

^ excellent (no hurry from my part) appreciated!

keropi wrote:

^ excellent (no hurry from my part) appreciated!

I think I saw in another thread recently that somebody posted the FX-3000 BIOS.... If not, I'll try to get it for you.

On another note, I am making progress on this build. Finally got the I/O controller setup figured out and have a new IDE to CF adapter I am using.

Have 3.5", 5.25", and CD-ROM drives installed. The slowest CD-ROM I have that wanted to work properly besides maybe the 2x that came with the system is a 24x.
My old 12x was having trouble, but I haven't used it in years so maybe the lens just needs cleaning.

The only PSU I had that fit the way the back of the case is made was an old Thermaltake 480w.. like I really need that much power for a 486. 🤣
I'm using one of those 20-pin ATX to AT adapters with -5v added.

Now I just have to figure out what sound cards to use with it (made a separate thread for the sound cards, do something about a turbo switch and led since the case doesn't have them, and wait for the IDE extension cables that I ordered to come as well as the slot mount CF adapters so I can have easy access to the CF card.

I also might end up swapping out the I/O controller for a less fancy one since it seems the SCSI part of the card makes it take forever to get past the screen for the I/O card.

I'm also going to add an 80 or 92mm fan to blow in the direction of the CPU in order to keep it nice and cool. It gets quite warm even when not running anything and I like super cool.

Noooooooo....not PC chips. The Compudyne chassis deserves much better than that.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Noooooooo....not PC chips. The Compudyne chassis deserves much better than that.

Heh... it is actually a really nice board from what I have seen so far.

The CMOS battery is even a CR2032 so no worries about barrel batteries.

The BIOS is pretty nice as well.

It actually has working support for up to 1MB L2 cache. I "only" have 512KB in there right now because I was having trouble sourcing chips to use 1MB.
I actually had to order chips from 2 different places to make a full set.

The only downside is that it is not v1.7 which has better CPU support.

Yeah, I know PC Chips has a really bad rep, but they apparently did make some decent boards.

The only other 486 board I have with a ZIF socket is a SIS 486G 3.3/5V Ver: G

It doesn't seems to support anything more than the PC Chips board does.. but may support the standard AMD 5x86 CPU although it only lists up to 120Mhz. I actually haven't even tested this board because when I got it, I had to remove the barrel battery and didn't have any external battery holders to use.

Is the SIS chipset the one that supports all those crazy settings that allow it to be slowed down to 8086 speed and possibly below?

Uggghhhh. Been trying to get a Windows 3.1 video driver installed for the STB PowerGraph 64v vlb video card. The flat S3 drivers fail to install and the ones from the Diamond CD on vogonsdrivers crash Windows while installing.

I think I finally found the actual STB driver release on a random ftp by searching for the file name listed on
http://files.mpoli.fi/unpacked/hardware/displ … .zip/stbftp.txt

First place I found it was a bbs listing with a link, but the file ended up being corrupt.. the very last file would not extract.

Then I found it on an ftp site and it extracted properly... now to see if it actually works.
ftp://major.butt.care/mirrors/cream.of.the.cr … ndex.html%3FM=A just love the ftp name.... 🤣

Edit:
Yay! It works. But it won't let you install the high color/high resolution driver during setup. It bombs out referencing standard mode. Have to install after Windows finishes installing.

I also switched to WFW3.11 instead of just Windows 3.1

I've heard that Trio64V is pretty buggy on the VLB interface, especially if you use a modern OS like 95 or NT4. Supposedly that was one of the reasons very few VLB cards used that particular chip. I've always wanted one to play with just to see what was up.

Well, another day, another speedbump. The power supply I am using has developed a squeal even when the computer is not powered on. I guess I could recap it, but I was not a big fan of the Thermaltake PSUs back in the day and it is definitely not as efficient as the Seasonic PSUs I have.

Contemplating transferring the guts including the fan from one of my NOS Seasonic units... or maybe it would be easier to just rework a Seasonic PSU so that the power button and cord socket would be in the correct place for the case.

Either way, it would make for a much quieter/silent system as the fans in the Thermaltake unit go to high speed after the system has been on for a few minutes.

Old thread but I thought I would let you know the original drive mounts to the side of the 5.25" bays.