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486 pc freezes randomly

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First post, by markpot4

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My 486 pc freezes especially when playing games and loading graphics. For example if in wolfenstein3d it freezes when loading a new picture and also it freezed when I scroll through the menu to fast with the keyboard.

I already testet the memory with memtrsr and it have no problems.
I also used scandisk to test the hdd also no problems there.
And also no cpu errors with checkit.

Also I realized when I turn off the internal cache the freezes occur more rare than with internal cache on. However underklocking the cpu with 35mhz instead of 50mhz make freezing worse.

What I also realize: when I turn the color depth higher in win95 the lcd monitor i use have some strange noise. But this could be also because a analog signal goes to a digital lcd monitor.

So my guess is: broken onboard graphics/vram, power suply, broken cpu, broken motherboard

What do you think is the problem here?

I have no other AT power suply, no isa vga graphics card or other 486 cpu at home to test and i dont want to buy all 3 things bc they are all very expensive. So I want to find out the problem to only buy oke of those to fix the problem.

Reply 1 of 2, by DaveDDS

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Does this happen right after cold start?
Or after running a while?

If latter, could be dried thermal paste/cooling.

- Dave ; https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ; "Daves Old Computers" ; SW dev addict best known:
ImageDisk: rd/wr ANY floppy PChardware can ; Micro-C: compiler for DOS+ManySmallCPU ; DDLINK: simple/small FileTrans(w/o netSW)via Lan/Lpt/Serial

Reply 2 of 2, by rasz_pl

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Start by listing specs of the computer.
50mhz 486 could cause problems with VLB graphics

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS Zenith Z-386 MFM-300 ZBIOS disassembly