luckybob wrote:

@KIXS

Yes. Yes, you do. It's not often they include the math coprocessor.

I know 😁 Now I only have to wait for the Postman...

OK... for those who don't know. It's a 286 to 486slc plugin upgrade for 286 motherboards that have a socketed CPU. They were sold with and without a FPU on the backside.

That is rather interesting to see something like that. Is that considered oddware?

Would love to get one of these for my Schneider Tower AT.

Found this beauty in some computer with a dead K8V SE Deluxe motherboard, picked it up for very cheap. The card itself works flawlessly. I will be replacing the HD 3850 AGP with it. I have tested it and it seems much better suited for the 2000 - 2005 era gaming, where as HD 3850 often stumbles upon compatibility issues.

bjwil1991 wrote:

That is rather interesting to see something like that. Is that considered oddware?

Not really... just rare these days.

Several companies had these plugin CPU upgrades as it was cheaper to only replace a CPU and you could run 32-bit software than buy complete computer.

I've never had the oportunity to try any out... last year I decided I didn't need them when someone was selling a few Kingstone SX upgrades... but now I went for it. I'll try both 16 and 20MHz operation (33/40MHz on the 486 CPU).

Not sure, but I think Amiga to PC-286 bridgeboard could use it. At least I saw some wanted request on Amibay.

On the other note... got two of these adapters NIB in the mail today:

Here's what I bought today at the thrift store:

- I/O Magic IDE DVD-RW drive (may go into my PowerMac G4 if it works)
- TP-Link 8-port ethernet switch
- Sony SATA DVD-RW drive (not exactly retro)
- Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital DB-15 flight joystick
- Dell Latitude external DVD-RW drive (bought it mainly for the drive module inside)
- PS/2 to USB keyboard and mouse adapter
- Compaq USB ball mouse
- GE screen cleaner

kixs wrote:

On the other note... got two of these adapters NIB in the mail today: […]
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On the other note... got two of these adapters NIB in the mail today:

What is it ?
Will it allow a 5v 486 socket 3 motherboard to accept a 3v CPU ?
Because I have some 5v motherboards with Intel-486dx-66mhz CPU's that I would like to put a 3v 486dx-100 into.

This is exactly what it is.

This probably sums up my day pretty well.

Bought this Totem TM-586TX4 i430TX board that had no BIOS chip, RTC battery and another missing chip near the LPT port. No biggie - flashed a spare ASD AE29F1008 on another motherboard (rebranded Winbond W29EE010 chip),dropped a Pentium 166MHz and 128MB PC133 SDRAM. Today was good day. Also replaced the RTC slot on it altogether as one of the pins was rusty.

Also, I really wasn't aware the 430TX does see 128MB and work well with it. Booted up 98SE perfectly, aside a missing PS/2 port (I don't have a bracket nor do I know the pinout on these PS/2 headers, any help is greatly appreciated, as I do have an spare PS/2 port removed from a trashed board, just need to make a header cable) and it recognized the ATI Rage II+DVD PCI straight away (ironically, the sticker on it claims to be a 3D Charger 2MB, the chipset says 3D Rage II+DVD and the VGA BIOS claims to be a Mach64 🤣 )

PcBytes wrote:

[...]

Also, I really wasn't aware the 430TX does see 128MB and work well with it. Booted up 98SE perfectly

i430TX officially supports max 256MB, using 64Mb chips. However, it's basically the same memory controller as in the i440EX and will happily do 512MB with 12BMb chips as well.

Note that the cacheable limit remains 64MB regardless, so normally it will run significantly faster with 64MB than with higher amounts of RAM, unless you are actually filling up >64MB (no L2 caching is still much better than thrashing to HDD).

aside a missing PS/2 port (I don't have a bracket nor do I know the pinout on these PS/2 headers, any help is greatly appreciated, as I do have an spare PS/2 port removed from a trashed board, just need to make a header cable)

Problem is that there are multiple different pinouts for these things (there's no official standard), so you really need to check both the board specs and the bracket in a case like this.

Edit:
Found the manual. Sod's law: most manuals give you the pinout of every bog-standard connector on the board. This one omits that - but also for the not-so-standard PS/2 header. What it does show is it's an in-line header:
http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Totem/m … 6TX4/index.html

Most in-line connectos are like the one on the left here:
https://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/2012- … 68.or.15360.jpg

The thing to check for is the 5V line. That's the only one that will actually damage anything if incorrectly hooked up, and if it's in the right spot, it's a good indication the rest will also correspond.

Sometimes the connector had a key (blank spot), then it could be this one:

and it recognized the ATI Rage II+DVD PCI straight away (ironically, the sticker on it claims to be a 3D Charger 2MB, the chipset says 3D Rage II+DVD and the VGA BIOS claims to be a Mach64 🤣 )

Long live ATi marketing...

That's an ATi Rage II+DVD chip on a 3D Charger 2MB card, with a legacy BIOS, because when it comes to BIOS calls & DOS, the Rage chips are basically still Mach64, so there's no need for a different BIOS.

What you have is indeed a Rage II+ DVD with 2MB EDO-RAM (marketing name: ATI 3D Charger) with a Mach64 GT-B core.
ATI decided to rename the portion of its Mach64 lineup, that has been enriched with some early 3D capabilities (and MPEG2 acceleration) to Rage, Rage II etc...

so normally it will run significantly faster with 64MB than with higher amounts of RAM

There's no significant perormance difference between 64mb and 128mb configs. 128 is slower, but just slightly.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

so normally it will run significantly faster with 64MB than with higher amounts of RAM

There's no significant perormance difference between 64mb and 128mb configs. 128 is slower, but just slightly.

I recall the impact was pretty severe. If I have time this afternoon I'll give it a spin on my AN430TX.

A lot does depend on what you are running. WinNT and later (and Linux) tend to put most OS stuff in the cached part though, so impact will be minor, but Win98 manages to run mainly in the uncached part, which is less good news.

But even if it's only minor: why even take that hit? What will you be running on a TX board that would be limited by 64MB? It's more than possible to run Win98SE with hundreds of MB of RAM, but long before you could utilize that in gaming or regular desktop stuff, you'd be CPU limited.

On other news:
I believe I just got my hands on a 486 board with EISA & VLB. Bad pics, so will have to wait till it arrives to be sure, but I suspect it's an ECS SL486E

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Here's what I bought today at the thrift store:

IMG_2092.JPG

- Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital DB-15 flight joystick

What's this community opinion on old PC joysticks in general and this one in particular?

just got that from ebay

still sealed. I plan to install it in my IBM PS1/pro , my childhood pc. Maybe I can even find the other parts I need to make it complete, I only have the main unit 🙁

dionb wrote:

I recall the impact was pretty severe. If I have time this afternoon I'll give it a spin on my AN430TX. […]
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The Serpent Rider wrote:

so normally it will run significantly faster with 64MB than with higher amounts of RAM

There's no significant perormance difference between 64mb and 128mb configs. 128 is slower, but just slightly.

I recall the impact was pretty severe. If I have time this afternoon I'll give it a spin on my AN430TX.

A lot does depend on what you are running. WinNT and later (and Linux) tend to put most OS stuff in the cached part though, so impact will be minor, but Win98 manages to run mainly in the uncached part, which is less good news.

But even if it's only minor: why even take that hit? What will you be running on a TX board that would be limited by 64MB? It's more than possible to run Win98SE with hundreds of MB of RAM, but long before you could utilize that in gaming or regular desktop stuff, you'd be CPU limited.

I plan to run 98SE with a bunch of tweaks. I don't think the impact will be really severe - machine booted pretty fast FWIW.
As for the mouse header - it has 5 pins,if that helps. I guess the 2nd pin going from left (my board does have it in place) is NC? It is actually in the same orientation as your picture and it goes up to the 5th pin.

PcBytes wrote:

As for the mouse header - it has 5 pins,if that helps. I guess the 2nd pin going from left (my board does have it in place) is NC? It is actually in the same orientation as your picture and it goes up to the 5th pin.

>>
>>
Beware, there are variations. This below is a layout I found on VX and 486 boards. Connecting the wrong wires may or will produce smoke.

Yep, I really would check for the 5V line before anything else. If you don't have a multimeter, you can always use a LED...

An IPC MediaMagic Telemetry-32 soundcard/modem.

Supposed to have onboard wavetable as well. And looking at it, I bet those two large ROM chips confirms it. Just have to wait for it to get here and find drivers.

Original price was $399 I think. from what I could find. Maybe $299.

Edit: Found the drivers.

Here are a few links that mention this card:
https://books.google.com/books?id=eMKimy4DFaE … etry-32&f=false - This one actually shows a breakdown of what it supports.

https://books.google.com/books?id=PITtFPwTaWw … etry-32&f=false

https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue1 … ultimedia_p.php

https://books.google.com/books?id=hzgEAAAAMBA … ry%2032&f=false