I don't know why the IBM Valuepoint is showing as a 486DX instead of a DX2 - Any games that run diagnostic programs show it as a DX2 66mhz processor.

Probably an unsupported upgrade. The original IBM BIOS doesn't know of the DX2 and identifies it as DX. Shouldn't matter perf-wise. You can try updating the BIOS and it might recognize the CPU properly. This kind of behavior is very common on OEM machines which don't expect users to meddle with the machine themselves. It's one of the reasons why I like to stay away from OEM builds.

Why 95 & 98, is there anything for 95 that doesn't like 98? I was expecting DOS, 98 & XP

What are you using the 486 for that a K6-2 or the 233MMX can't do? Your CL-5446 and Diamond Voodoo 1 are the exact cards in my DOS era build. I run a 233MMX and can slow it down to 386 speeds to run Wingcommander without issue.

Your Win98 machine overall looks good, but you have a big gap going from a Voodoo 1 to a Radeon 9550XL. The Voodoo 1 had some support in the early version of Direct3D while the Radeon is on the tail end. So there are quite a few games in the Direct3D 6-8 era that can have issues on the Radeon. If you don't play any, that's fine. But something to think about.

Those do look like fun, and I'm sure you can squeeze an XP tower in there two with a little shuffling.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-03-22, 15:44:

What are you using the 486 for that a K6-2 or the 233MMX can't do? Your CL-5446 and Diamond Voodoo 1 are the exact cards in my DOS era build. I run a 233MMX and can slow it down to 386 speeds to run Wingcommander without issue.

Your Win98 machine overall looks good, but you have a big gap going from a Voodoo 1 to a Radeon 9550XL. The Voodoo 1 had some support in the early version of Direct3D while the Radeon is on the tail end. So there are quite a few games in the Direct3D 6-8 era that can have issues on the Radeon. If you don't play any, that's fine. But something to think about.

Those do look like fun, and I'm sure you can squeeze an XP tower in there two with a little shuffling.

Matth79 wrote on 2025-03-22, 15:03:

Why 95 & 98, is there anything for 95 that doesn't like 98? I was expecting DOS, 98 & XP

A WinXP machine will come later, since I have two ASUS boards that I can mess with, in-box, and with their respective components. I just need a proper Case, PSU, and Fans.

Reading posts on VOGONS, some people would kick Win95 to the curb. That's fine.

For me, it's preference/nostalgia. My first windows PC was a Win95 machine, but it was also a bog-standard PC that barely ran some 3D games in Software Rendering. I don't mess with any CPU clocking, so the slower 486 is there as a separate machine for games that are speed sensitive. I also really love my Sidewinder 3D Pro, which despite my best efforts, utterly hates my '98 machine (see:" Odd Issue with SideWinder 3D Pro in Win98 "). So I use it primarily on my '95 and 486 machines, with games like Fury3, Hellbender, Wing Commander: Privateer, and Descent (It works pretty good in DOS).

Yeah, the 9550XL leaves a pretty big gap between it and a Voodoo1. If anything, with the tests I've done it's a decent early XP GPU, with the 1000mhz Coppermine, and I'm considering making a second partition for XP on that machine. However, with the Win95 PC, it does at least feel authentic to a system that would run early 3D games like POD and Interstate '76 in Glide. I have a Voodoo3 PCI card, but it isn't being used (since my 98 machine stopped accepting it, and I haven't gotten an AGP variant just yet). To be frank, I probably should have aimed for a weaker card to stuff in there (if I ever do get an AGP Voodoo, that'd be cool - Or maybe even an early NVidia card might be neat), so that's on me.

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-03-22, 12:37:

Probably an unsupported upgrade. The original IBM BIOS doesn't know of the DX2 and identifies it as DX. Shouldn't matter perf-wise. You can try updating the BIOS and it might recognize the CPU properly. This kind of behavior is very common on OEM machines which don't expect users to meddle with the machine themselves. It's one of the reasons why I like to stay away from OEM builds.

I've considered making a 5x86 DOS PC, too, with a proper VLB-supported board, because of that weird technical niche between it and early PCI. I might do that some day. The 433DX was bought from a newspaper publisher for $5 (along with the '98 PC, it was $10), so I'm enjoying the heck out of it while it still works. From my research, updating the BIOS would be painful, so it's stuck as it is.

Alternatively to what I said earlier about making a 5x86 machine, I could go backwards and make a 386. However, I still want to seek out and build a VLB system, that weird little niche stepping stone between ISA and PCI. It probably won't be as interesting, performatively, when in comparison to doing something like making a first-gen Pentium/486DX4-100, but I'm okay with that. It's just an interesting little bit of tech, same as the 3D API's that existed before DirectX and OpenGL became the standard.

As an aside to the mention of WinXP machines, here are my board options:

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe

BIOSTAR N4SLI-A9

Hopefully this is fine as a part of this thread, since it isn't about the "Main 3" I listed up above. I'll keep things directed to those after this post.

Keeping on topic -

The Windows 95 Machine:

The one thing that I'm having issues with is that, unlike the P5A-B v1.5 board, the current board seems to be having issues with the Microsoft Sidwinder 3D Pro and Microsoft Gamepad.

With older games/DOS games, the controllers seem to work fine. Fury3, Hellbender, and Descent 1&2 all seem to work fine. However, anything else I've tried doesn't like these controllers, or barely registers inputs from them ( Final Fantasy 7, Tigershark, and Interstate '76 to name a few).

So far I'm still fiddling with the system, playing with drivers to see what will get them to work. I've tried underclocking the CPU from a K6-2 400 to a K6-233 to see if that might make things better, and have a PCI audio card with a gameport to see if it might be related to my ISA audio card. No luck there, unfortunately.

I -would- say that it's an issue where the Diamond Multimedia card is interfering with, then I don't know, but if Hellbender accepts it fine while running with Glide, then my thought is that that isn't the issue.

It'll probably be fixed with drivers, but if anyone has dealt with this sort of bizarre issue, let me know.

If I get it to work, I'll update the thread with a post explaining what I changed, and hope that someone else finds it useful.

The IBM Valuepoint PS/2 433DX --

I'm still thinking on replacing this with a 486 built from the ground up. I want to keep my DX2-66, but I'm wondering if a Socket 3 board wouldn't be out of the question. I really do want to get into VLB with a 486 machine, and maybe have a swappable CF card with Win3.11 on it. Since these are my first dives into vintage PCs (not great timing on my part, considering the bloated pricing of hardware these days - if I could go back in time, I think we all would want pre-2015 prices)

If I could find a decent board that fits the case, that'd be pretty cool! It uses a Riser card, and finding VLB-Riser cards isn't particularly easy, so the whole base system might have to go. I have to do a solder job on the coin-cell seating since the clip arm broke a while back; which I have a replacement for that entire seat, so it's just getting the kid and matte, then just going through with the work.

I've seen some PCs in the Valuepoint line for sale around, some of which have VLB support, and I could probably rip and swap to get the desired machine.

If anyone has tips on a Socket 3, or if Socket 2's are a better match, I'd appreciate the advice.