I have no 386/486 system, and that is a real shame. I would like to build one, then I found out about this killer motherboard chipset from the Red Hill guide.

Motherboards using this chipset support 386DX, 387, 486DX. 486SX and 486DX/2 and Pentium Overdrive (P24T) processors. That is a huge range of performance options for one board. I obtained a manual scan of one board that uses the chipset, and it supports 2 VLB slots, up to 256KB of cache, an AMI BIOS, 64MB of RAM, and a turbo button. But does anyone have experience with boards using this chipset? If so, I have some questions :

This board in design seems to be early to mid 486 in its features. I believe it uses a PGA socket instead of a LIF or ZIF socket. Are 168-pin 486s what is needed? Are those easily available for the DX/2 models?

I assume that with a 386 processor, the VLB is disabled. Will graphics cards with a VLB connector work in a straight ISA only slot? I am looking at Tseng ET4000/W32 or S3 8** or 9** chipsets.

I assume this board only supports 5V processors and trying anything else in it would probably fry that CPU. Is there a way to use the 4V, 3.45V and 3.3V CPUs in this board?

This board does not come with expansion I/O. No floppy, hard, serial, parallel or game ports or headers for same are on this motherboard. Is it worth it to get a VLB controller with IDE? Will I run into problems with the 504MB hard drive limit? Any support CHS translation?

Anyone have practical experience in setting speeds with this chipset? The lowest advertised speed is 25MHz, apparently only for 486s? But can that speed be used with 386s? Is it possible to go even lower with trial and error on the jumper settings?

A 386 uses a 132-pin CPU package, are there any gotchas in fitting it into the larger socket? Also, can you have a 387DX in the coprocessor socket when a 486 is in the main socket or will the board protest?