luckybob wrote:

got a couple boards off of ebay. I swore to myself that I wouldn't build a 486, but it looks like I'm going to be building two! Well 1 & 1/2.

looks like a top of the line 486 motherboard: http://www.ebay.com/itm/270912095100 looks like it has everthing I want in a 486.

I also have a "super" 386 setup. A sweet setup with scsi, 32mb of ram. I thought I was DONE with it. Until I found this guy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/270912174499 Yes. its a 386 board! with VLB! and a 386>486 upgrade chip! Which means I need to put a pod83 into the other board to balance my karma...

Wow, you totally ripped that guy off on the 486/IBM 5x86c auction. Congratulations! He probably could have gotten $25 for the board alone, and another $20 for the CPU. I like seeing the 9 DIP-32 sockets as it implies it may work with 1024 KB of L2 cache. The main fault I see is the lack of a PS/2 port header, but if it works with 1024 KB of cache, I suppose that is a balanced trade-off.

If you are gunnin' for a prized IBM 5x86c-133 (2 x 66) be forewarned that of the two IBM 5x86C-100HF chips I own, only one of them was stable at 133 MHz, with a voltage as low as 3.7V! The other chip worked well only at 2x60 (120 MHz).

I'm surprised I didn't see this auction and bid on it... oh, I see why now, he only ships to the United States. He could have greatly increased his profit margin by selling internationally.

As for the 386 board -- looks promising. Unfortunately it didn't come with the FPU. If you don't already have one, I think there's a rip-off USA-only auction for the Cyrix 40 MHz FPUs at $29. Very curious how it has no L2 cache.

Fantastic finds!

feipoa wrote:

Wow, you totally ripped that guy off on the 486/IBM 5x86c auction. Congratulations! He probably could have gotten $25 for the […]
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luckybob wrote:

got a couple boards off of ebay. I swore to myself that I wouldn't build a 486, but it looks like I'm going to be building two! Well 1 & 1/2.

looks like a top of the line 486 motherboard: http://www.ebay.com/itm/270912095100 looks like it has everthing I want in a 486.

I also have a "super" 386 setup. A sweet setup with scsi, 32mb of ram. I thought I was DONE with it. Until I found this guy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/270912174499 Yes. its a 386 board! with VLB! and a 386>486 upgrade chip! Which means I need to put a pod83 into the other board to balance my karma...

Wow, you totally ripped that guy off on the 486/IBM 5x86c auction. Congratulations! He probably could have gotten $25 for the board alone, and another $20 for the CPU. I like seeing the 9 DIP-32 sockets as it implies it may work with 1024 KB of L2 cache. The main fault I see is the lack of a PS/2 port header, but if it works with 1024 KB of cache, I suppose that is a balanced trade-off.

If you are gunnin' for a prized IBM 5x86c-133 (2 x 66) be forewarned that of the two IBM 5x86C-100HF chips I own, only one of them was stable at 133 MHz, with a voltage as low as 3.7V! The other chip worked well only at 2x60 (120 MHz).

I'm surprised I didn't see this auction and bid on it... oh, I see why now, he only ships to the United States. He could have greatly increased his profit margin by selling internationally.

As for the 386 board -- looks promising. Unfortunately it didn't come with the FPU. If you don't already have one, I think there's a rip-off USA-only auction for the Cyrix 40 MHz FPUs at $29. Very curious how it has no L2 cache.

Fantastic finds!

well TOTAL he did alright. I saved like $15 on shipping because they are from the same person. I have a cyrix math-co in my other 386 board so i'm not worried. If this new board works out I'll sell the contaq board that i currently have. (the same one that doughnut king used in his famous 386 build) Now I wish I hadn't sold my 2mb #9 vlb video card now. That and I MUST get a vlb scsi card. I'm hoping an adaptec comes across cheap soon.

The 100mhz ibm 586 chip is a bonus. I have a green cyrix one here. But if i remember correctly, ibm was very conservative on their speed ratings. therefore the 100 should be a 133 part. or at least capable. That said, there is a 95% chance I'm going to sell it. And use the money to get a pod83. All my dos 5 and under games are going to my "386" and instead of under-clocking my Pentium pro's, i'll just use the 486/pod setup.

oh, and if the 486 board does NOT support 1mb cache, expect to see it on ebay. I'm picky that way.

luckybob wrote:

If this new board works out I'll sell the contaq board that i currently have. (the same one that doughnut king used in his famous 386 build)

Don't tempt me!

I'd personally only be able to sacrifice a PS/2 port if the board accepted 1024 KB of cache and had a 4th PCI slot (for a USB & PS/2 card). I like the neatness of having 4 retro boxes on a single 4-port KVM (w/audio). For awhile I had two mice on my desk, one for serial, and one for PS/2 but it became annoying.

In Windows 98, you can use a PCI USB card to convert a USB port to a PS/2 port. I've tested this configuration and it works with a PS/2 mouse. Unfortunately, the NT4 USB mouse driver didn't like the USB-PS/2 adapter, however the NT4 USB mouse driver works fine with a standard USB mouse.

I haven't been able to find a PCI 486 motherboard that accepts 1024 KB of cache and has a working PS/2 port.

My 2 cents.

feipoa wrote:

I'd personally only be able to sacrifice a PS/2 port if the board accepted 1024 KB of cache and had a 4th PCI slot (for a USB & […]
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I'd personally only be able to sacrifice a PS/2 port if the board accepted 1024 KB of cache and had a 4th PCI slot (for a USB & PS/2 card). I like the neatness of having 4 retro boxes on a single 4-port KVM (w/audio). For awhile I had two mice on my desk, one for serial, and one for PS/2 but it became annoying.

In Windows 98, you can use a PCI USB card to convert a USB port to a PS/2 port. I've tested this configuration and it works with a PS/2 mouse. Unfortunately, the NT4 USB mouse driver didn't like the USB-PS/2 adapter, however the NT4 USB mouse driver works fine with a standard USB mouse.

I haven't been able to find a PCI 486 motherboard that accepts 1024 KB of cache and has a working PS/2 port.

My 2 cents.

I guess I shouldn't show you this guy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/250991016713 takes ps2 keyboard and has what looks like a mouse header next to it. i would have tried harder to win it, if it accepted 256mb of edo ram.

My 1 megabit cache chips arrived today 😁

Upgraded my 486 system with them.

Current system specs are:
486DX4-100MHz overdrive
486SV2G motherboard
16MB RAM
VLB ET4000W32/p with 2MB RAM

With the extra cache my 3dbench improved from 71.4 to 76.9 😀

Here are speedsys results:

All tests were performed with tightest timings and fastest optimizations allowed by the BIOS.
Not sure why my memory bandwidth is so low in the first test but I didn't touch anything that might have affected that. CACHECHK also confirms all cache is working.

Pretty happy with the result 😀

luckybob wrote:

I guess I shouldn't show you this guy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/250991016713 takes ps2 keyboard and has what looks like a mouse header next to it. i would have tried harder to win it, if it accepted 256mb of edo ram.

VIA chipset? That looks like a FIC 486-VIP-IO2. Those were horribly unreliable. The one I had years ago had terrible memory and cache throughput and was operably flakey.

Support for 256 MB of RAM isn't all that it is cracked up to be. With 1 MB of L2 cache, you can only cache up to 128 MB of RAM in write-back mode. The FIC 486-VIP-IO2 should work with 128 MB of RAM.

DonutKing wrote:

My 1 megabit cache chips arrived today :D

Upgraded my 486 system with them.

Congratulations! Have you tested it for stability in Windows 98SE? Does your PS/2 mouse header/port work? Does that board work with write-back L2 cache?

Will an IBM 5x86C run in that board?

Would you mind uploading a photo of the cache you received? I want to see how it deviates from my 10 ns and 15 ns 1024 Kbit pieces.

feipoa wrote:

Congratulations! Have you tested it for stability in Windows 98SE? Does your PS/2 mouse header/port work? Does that board work with write-back L2 cache?

Will an IBM 5x86C run in that board?

Would you mind uploading a photo of the cache you received? I want to see how it deviates from my 10 ns and 15 ns 1024 Kbit pieces.

I'm only running DOS, and I haven't tried the PS2 mouse port (I'm using a serial mouse).
This board supports write-back for both L1 and L2 and I've enabled both in the BIOS.

This board has empty solder pads for the 3.3V regulator, apparently later revisions included the regulator, mine does not. I've upgraded to the latest BIOS and I can see the text 5x86 if I look at the BIN file. It should at least work with an Am5x86. I don't have an IBM 5x86C, nor a voltage regulator, so I can't test this.

I'll try to upload a photo tomorrow but the chips are ISSI IS61C1024-15N

DonutKing wrote:

I'm only running DOS, and I haven't tried the PS2 mouse port (I'm using a serial mouse). This board supports write-back for both […]
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I'm only running DOS, and I haven't tried the PS2 mouse port (I'm using a serial mouse).
This board supports write-back for both L1 and L2 and I've enabled both in the BIOS.

This board has empty solder pads for the 3.3V regulator, apparently later revisions included the regulator, mine does not. I've upgraded to the latest BIOS and I can see the text 5x86 if I look at the BIN file. It should at least work with an Am5x86. I don't have an IBM 5x86C, nor a voltage regulator, so I can't test this.

I'll try to upload a photo tomorrow but the chips are ISSI IS61C1024-15N

I don't think the Am5x86 came standard with an overdrive kit, so I don't think you can run that processor either (it runs at 3.3-3.45 V). Evergreen did, however, make the Am5x86-133 in an overdrive kit with an onboard regulator, which should work fine for you. The IBM 5x86C-100HF also came in an overdrive kit from Gainbery, which should also work well with your setup.

The other option is to source the voltage regulator and SMD resistors and capacitors that come on the regulated version of this motherboard. If you can get a high resolution image of the board, I can look into that for you. I'd need the top and bottom of the board in high resolution. You can just as easily get away with using larger thin film and carbon-based resistors. The voltage regulators are easy enough find, I might even have the exact one you need in my IC cabnet drawers. Other regulators can be used as well if the pin-outs are the same.

I got a slew of new-to-me parts over the last week, a few too many to take photos of (plus I'm a bit lazy), so I may as well mention what they are here:

Video Cards:
Voodoo3 3000 16mb
GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb
GeForce FX 5200 128mb
GeForce 6200 AGP 128mb

Sound Cards:
Sound Blaster Vibra16 CT4180
Creative CT5808 PCI
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital SB0220
Turtle Beach Montego A3DXtreme

Processors:
Pentium II 233MHz Klamath
Pentium II 400MHz Deschutes
Pentium II 400MHz SECC2
AMD K6-2 450
VIA C3 733MHz (6x133)

Other:
Panasonic 1.2mb 5.25" Floppy drive
3 sticks of 256mb PC133
iMac Puck mouse
Philips TV Tuner (with Win7 drivers)
4x unopened boxes of Maxell MF2HD Floppies.
GAL for CMS functions on SB2.0 (arrived today! Thanks DonutKing!)

Whole Retro Computers:
Power Macintosh 6400/200 (Tower only)
Commodore 64 (main unit only) and a working 1702 Monitor
2x 1989 Macintosh Classic's (one salvageable)
iMac G3 233MHz Bondi Blue (in Box!)
iMac G3 600MHz Graphite (Also in box!)

F2bnp: I paid $60 for all of it. Mostly for the voodoo, I got some other stuff also, a few cables and adapters.

yesterday I picked up a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for $5 too.

maddmaxstar: quite the haul!

@RoyBatty :
keep in mind to only use TB drivers with the santa cruz , it has an eprom on it that "brands" it and if you install a sonic fury driver for example you won't be able to use TB's drivers again.

Just got this (sellers picture)....

In these are also Diamond Fire GL 3000 and 2x Elsa Gloria L/MX. Quadro 2mx too. Adaptec adapter has on box for Apple, so think it wont work on PC (dont need it anyway).

keropi: Oh thanks for the heads up on that... hopefully that hasn't been done already by previous owner.

keropi wrote:

@RoyBatty :
keep in mind to only use TB drivers with the santa cruz , it has an eprom on it that "brands" it and if you install a sonic fury driver for example you won't be able to use TB's drivers again.

Argghh! I wonder, does this lead to the driver claiming there is no santa cruz installed? I recall chucking at least one of these cards after that problem, assuming the card was dead 😒 .

Today is ancient video card day for me. I bought a '89 video seven, a '91 paradise and a '94 tseng et4000ax. Total cost was 8 euros.

Both of the older ones came with 256kb memory, and had empty sockets for upgrading to 512kb. I had a broken Trident 8800 card that had 512kb on socketed chips, so I decided to upgrade my new ones. The Video7 card finally turned up to have the exact same memory chips, only slower. 100ns instead of 80....

🤣 I have the same v7 card too! haven't tested it though...

> I bought a '89 video seven

You actually paid money for this crap? xD

is it that bad? 🤣

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

> I bought a '89 video seven

You actually paid money for this crap? xD

Well, I liked it's color... Also, it wasn't that expensive. I think I paid 1euro for that, and 3,5 for each of the other two. And while a friend also bought quite a few from the same seller, we split the shipping cost.

When those three cards arrived, I was testing a pentium board I also got, and used that just to see if the cards work. So, I had a pentium 233MMX with a 4MB S3 Virge card, which scored 163 on 3DBench. First I replaced the Virge with the Tseng card, and it dropped down to 68. And using the other two, it was around 35....