Chadti99 wrote on 2022-03-18, 12:54:

feipoa wrote on 2022-03-18, 11:45:

From my experience: with a cool head and a fresh scalpel, there's a 50% chance you break only 1 clip. Practice on a dead board. Check your box of dead boards to see if you have a spare top. Brand A top sleeves don't necessarily fit brand B's.

EDIT: I've taken off quite a few of these because previous owners like to jamm in CPUs with bent pins. Those bent pins mess up the sockets inside and they need to be bent back into place without the top sleeve on.

Not to go too far off topic but how did you diagnose bent socket pins or was it a hunch from experience? Did you use a post diagnosis card?

If you insert a CPU with perfectly straight pins into the socket 3 and there are areas where the CPU won't sit flush, then that zone of the socket is bent inside or there is some debris in there. In most cases, you can fix the existing female socket piece by bending it back into shape, but in other cases you cannot, and will need to desolder that one particular piece of metal.

How worthwhile is it to add a Voodoo 1 to a Cx5x86? What kind of glquake fps should I expect?

This thread will answer your question in chart form: Voodoo 1 vs. Voodoo 2 on a 486

Re-watching CPU Galaxy’s record run, I bet he would have hit 21.8fps in Quake if he had L2 set to WT instead of WB.

Do these figures look OK for a Cx5x86-120?

A preview to what I’ve been testing this weekend. Currently verifying stability.

SiS@1024k L2

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-04-16, 01:41:

SiS@1024k L1

And when you write L1, you mean L2, I presume?

How often do these buggers take 200 MHz? 133ADZ, BGC or other?

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-04-16, 01:41:

A preview to what I’ve been testing this weekend. Currently verifying stability.

SiS@1024k L1

Go on ...
(Breathes heavily)

This is not VLI. Which board is then ?
Hope not the MSI one.
Chaintech 486SPM maybe, or SOYO something ?

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-16, 03:07:

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-04-16, 01:41:

SiS@1024k L1

And when you write L1, you mean L2, I presume?

How often do these buggers take 200 MHz? 133ADZ, BGC or other?

Corrected, must of been a bit tired when I posted.

On air cooling fairly rare, with a peltier it’s a bit easier.

pshipkov wrote on 2022-04-16, 05:43:

Go on ... (Breathes heavily) […]
Show full quote

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-04-16, 01:41:

A preview to what I’ve been testing this weekend. Currently verifying stability.

SiS@1024k L1

Go on ...
(Breathes heavily)

This is not VLI. Which board is then ?
Hope not the MSI one.
Chaintech 486SPM maybe, or SOYO something ?

Lol, you caught me red handed with the MS-4144. It seems to be performing quite well, posting the best scores I’ve seen in Duke3D, Quake, GLQuake, and Turok for this CPU+GPU.

With a 16MB FPM 60ns module, EDO won’t post, at the fastest memory and cache timings, 200MHz(50x4) AMD 5x86, 1024k “10ns”cache, Voodoo 3. I think this is at a 1:1 CPU:PCI ratio but not 100% certain as the documentation is sparse.

I only have one memory module in my pile that will run this combo, in Windows, with memory speed set to “fastest”, dropping down to “faster” loses 0.3 fps from this score but works with the other FPM modules I have.

I need to test stability further, it’s cool to see a new score though.

WOW! I never thought anyone would exceed 22 fps in DOS Quake on a non-Pentium socket 3. Can it run Windows 95 on "Fastest"? If not, what about on Faster?

feipoa wrote on 2022-04-16, 09:00:

WOW! I never thought anyone would exceed 22 fps in DOS Quake on a non-Pentium socket 3. Can it run Windows 95 on "Fastest"? If not, what about on Faster?

It can boot into Windows 98 and I can run GLQuake or Turok for an hour or more at “Fastest” yes. But I’m not convinced it’s “Biostar UUD” stable just yet. With “Faster” it is Windows install stable. I later recalled pshipkov’s advice of disabling slow refresh and this may be the extra bump I need for Windows install stability at “Fastest”.

Also oddly enough this mobo posts it’s best Quake score with L2 set to WB.

Also if you are aware of a way to run EDO memory or a 66MHz FSB on this board let me know.

@Feipoa - both Chad and myself hit 22+ fps in Quake 1 before.

@chadti99
MSI-4144 is slow board but apparently that allows it to scale a bit further than the rest.
It motivates me to check bunch of mobos here at 4x50MHz. Bofer i was pushing them at 3x66 and most didnt do that well.

Hope you get it fully stable. That will be awesome.

pshipkov wrote on 2022-04-16, 19:23:

@Feipoa - both Chad and myself hit 22+ fps in Quake 1 before.

haha, I guess I'm not keeping up on the latest events and/or my memory is lousier than I thought.

pshipkov wrote on 2022-04-16, 19:23:

MSI-4144 is slow board but apparently that allows it to scale a bit further than the rest.
It motivates me to check bunch of mobos here at 4x50MHz. Bofer i was pushing them at 3x66 and most didnt do that well.

Is one of the reasons I don't get rid of boards I've previously determined to be junky.

Pentium Overdrive dethroned.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-04-17, 03:05:

Pentium Overdrive dethroned.

...at 83 MHz.

Superficially reading through this thread gave me memories, not only of my own attempts to overclock a 486 way back when it was my only machine -back in the late 90's, but something that came a few years later. I am sure many of you know about project E.U.N.U.C.H but for those who dont...

http://totl.net/Eunuch/index.html

Quite a laugh.

Donovan V. wrote on 2022-04-17, 04:48:

Superficially reading through this thread gave me memories, not only of my own attempts to overclock a 486 way back when it was my only machine -back in the late 90's, but something that came a few years later. I am sure many of you know about project E.U.N.U.C.H but for those who dont...

http://totl.net/Eunuch/index.html

Quite a laugh.

Lol! I think I remember reading this back in the day, pretty funny. Glad it’s still around.

So unfortunately I’ve not seen a completely stable Windows install at the “fastest” memory timings setting although it did complete after I powered through a dozen or more blue screens towards the end. How that works I’m not sure, booted up just fine. But it appears to be quite stable once in Windows. The “faster” setting still posts a 22.3 Quake score and appears to be quite reliable so far, no issues during Windows install. I bet there is a FPM module out there that will bring it to 100% stability at the “fastest” setting. I’ll try sourcing a few more.

Now the issue which is killing this setup for me is that my Rio444 ISA/PS2 adapter doesn’t appear to work reliably at 50MHz FSB and specifically in Windows on this board. It either doesn’t detect a mouse on boot or stops working after a minute or after launching GLQuake or after quitting GLQuake. I’ve tried everything I can think of, disabling onboard com ports, changing com settings on the adapter, adjusting ISA clock in the bios, multiple Award BIOS versions, different ISA slots. I know this board can be modified to use a PS2 mouse so maybe that is the route to go, or a different PS2 adapter. It seems to work fine in DOS, so maybe a Windows driver issue? And to be clear I don’t fault Rio’s adapter, this is an edge case, as it works reliably in every other setup I’ve tested it in.

I am the last person who will tell others how to build their retro computers but we know that these assemblies dont get much action once put together other than some testing and occasional quick runs. Assuming all the good things you achived with the MSI board - is ps2 mouse such a deal breaker ?

Btw, did you run some of the heavy compute tests ?
I remember the board being slow overall.
Wonder if at 4x50 things changed for the better.

I just love to see all the things people could do with the 486 computer. Lots of applications, programs, and games
That run on DOS/Win3x.

But the 1st gen Pentium has twice the power. Maybe even 10 times more the productivity. That 1st gen Pentium CPU put allot
Of UNIX and RISC based computer companies out of business.
It came in like a Wreaking ball and Dominated the computer industry back in 1990’s.