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Thrift store PC- AMD 5x86

DeepFriedCookiesDeepFriedCookies
edited May 2012 in Hardware
$5 and I've gotten that out of it already (72-pin SIMMS that I assume are fine, not sure of capacity yet though)

But whenever I turn it on, it doesn't do anything. I hear the fans spin up, and that's it. No beeps, but I haven't inspected it enough to really find out if it's plugged in or not. When I first opened the case, the processor fan and heatsink were off of it, and as mentioned on the chip itself, "heathsink and fan required".

Could it be a bad processor? These chips have gold in them, so if anything I'll send it in, but it's socket three. I'm thinking my other 486 board is socket 1.. it also has some cache memory, which I guess I can put in the other beast.

If not, what could it be?

This is literally just a toy, and maybe a learning experiment for some of my friends. DOSBox is for n00bs. :P

Oh and is an AMD 5x86 faster than a 486DX2 at 66MHz? I'm not sure of this thing's clockrate, but hell, if it's faster, and this chip isn't fried.. I guess I can upgrade my other system. Just for fun. XD

Comments

  • Lupinthe3rdLupinthe3rd
    Wiki is your friend for basics.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am5x86

    Might be worth getting to work, as it's speed would make it a super hot 486 era rig.
    Does the board have PCI ports? If so maybe worth keeping as a good Dos machine.
  • gdea73gdea73
    It would be a cool PC to rebuild, though I don't really know where you'd get a heatsink for that. Maybe try to find a "socket 3" branded one, but I'm not seeing anything ATM... would any 486-based HSF work? I'll try to find out.
  • DeepFriedCookiesDeepFriedCookies
    THis thing has been upgraded to the 5x86. The board reminds me of one of the smaller 1993-era boards. VESA, ISA and it's baby AT.

    Turns out it runs Windows 95, has 16MB of RAM, and the reset switch was stuck in the down position. XD

    The board also has slots for 36-pin (I think 36?) SIMMS as well. I wonder if I can find some cheap SIMMS to bring this to 32, like my old packard bell. I don't wanna put that thing out of commission by removing it's RAM though.

    Btw it has a heatsink and fan, they were lying at the bottom of the case. I put it back on. XD
  • Lupinthe3rdLupinthe3rd
    The smaller SIMMS are 30 pin, If it's an older board, the 5x86 is probably the fastest chip you can get for it. Is it running an ISA or VLB graphics card?
  • DeepFriedCookiesDeepFriedCookies
    Pretty sure it's VLB. It's a Trident card, that doesn't support 16-bit colour. I'm going to look through my junk and see if I have a better card. My other 486 had a Cirrus SVGA onboard that supported 16-bit colour, so it's surprising that this thing doesn't have that. I guess this really was a budget system. 8-bit colour is horrible to look at, even for Windows 3.11, lol.
  • Lupinthe3rdLupinthe3rd
    Is the card really long and has two sets of pins, standard ISA and a seconds set that looks like a PCI port connector in reverse? If so that's a VLB card, and should be able to do 16bit just fine if the correct drivers are installed. Which they probably aren't. IF it's a Trident it's probably an 8xxx or a 9xxx series ISA card, ranging form 128K to 1Mb RAM, sometimes 2MB.
  • JoshJosh
    I've got some older SIMMS I'll send to you if you need them. Not sure of the density or anything but if it's helpful...
  • DeepFriedCookiesDeepFriedCookies
    Lupinthe3rd wrote:
    Is the card really long and has two sets of pins, standard ISA and a seconds set that looks like a PCI port connector in reverse? If so that's a VLB card, and should be able to do 16bit just fine if the correct drivers are installed. Which they probably aren't. IF it's a Trident it's probably an 8xxx or a 9xxx series ISA card, ranging form 128K to 1Mb RAM, sometimes 2MB.

    Yeah it's just ISA, lol. Thought it was VLB, but the hard drive controller is actually VLB. It also supports an IDE CD-ROM drive, weirdly. I'm just going to keep this little guy in it for now.
    Josh wrote:
    I've got some older SIMMS I'll send to you if you need them. Not sure of the density or anything but if it's helpful...

    Thanks, but it wouldn't be worth the hassle. It's just a toy system, and it works fine for DOS and Windows 3.11. That's all it's useful for anyway.
  • Lupinthe3rdLupinthe3rd
    That's pretty sweet, a VLB controller card, I have one or two but haven't got the correct jumper settings for them, so can't use them, for now at least.
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