So it appears the 486 motherboard has PCI - not all do as you may know.
Just remember that just because it's got PCI, it's not necessarily going to mean it will work before consideration of the drivers.
My real world example was a couple of years ago or so, I was building a 486 from scratch and managed to buy a new PCI based motherboard. I bought a new 8 MB ATI Rage XL PCI video card so I could run WFW at higher resolutions with decent colour depth. The PC wouldn't start at all and it took a while to figure out as the BIOS beep codes weren't giving me the right answers. At a later stage I bought from eBay a 4 MB Matrox Millenium II PCI card and soon as I plugged it into the 486 board it just worked. The 8 MB ATI card was fine, after testing it in a Pentium 200 and Pentium III. I put it down to the PCI specification that went from 2.0 to 2.1 that occurred with the original Pentiums.
So if you manage to find one of these Matrox Millenium cards or a Diamond Viper, I'd recommend it if you want to upgrade it. Some people have placed an early 3D PCI card into a 486, though that was really to see whether it would work. Generally there's little value if it does, as many 3D games require a Pentium as a minimum and the 486 processor becomes the bottleneck.
Well, the guy does have pictures of it working, including screen shots, so I am assuming it works.
He is also gonna set it up for me to see as well.
my issue is finding the drivers for using it to it's full potential.
I know this is an old thread, however I have something similar to this to ask and so I thought it'd fit in this thread, so I wouldn't have to start a new thread about an eerily similar subject.
Anyways, my "Solar" computer should be ready for pick-up tomorrow.
I have two ISA Modem card, one which uses jumpers, and one which use dip switches.
I have heard that Windows 3.1 doesn't need drivers for hardware modems.
So, if I just set the card I want to use COM3, then tell trumpet winsock that the modem is on COM3, I should be all good for dialling into my dial-up provider?
If worse comes to worse I could always buy an external modem that connects to a serial port, as I have two and my mouse is only making use of one.
And yes, I am sticking with 3.1 not going the WFW3.11 route as I did have it on there for a few hours, but it clashed with my video card drivers which worked perfectly on 3.1 when the 486 machine was still running.
and also, if I can't figure out a way to get this system on the internet, I guess it'd be ok since the vast majority of people didn't have the internet back in those days.
I'd probably be stuck using CD-RW's as a method to get large amounts of data onto the system from my modern main Windows 7 machine, which of course is connected to the internet which I can use to download things form the archives here and other places.
Comments
Well, the guy does have pictures of it working, including screen shots, so I am assuming it works.
He is also gonna set it up for me to see as well.
my issue is finding the drivers for using it to it's full potential.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=47&menustate=9,1
Anyways, my "Solar" computer should be ready for pick-up tomorrow.
I have two ISA Modem card, one which uses jumpers, and one which use dip switches.
I have heard that Windows 3.1 doesn't need drivers for hardware modems.
So, if I just set the card I want to use COM3, then tell trumpet winsock that the modem is on COM3, I should be all good for dialling into my dial-up provider?
If worse comes to worse I could always buy an external modem that connects to a serial port, as I have two and my mouse is only making use of one.
And yes, I am sticking with 3.1 not going the WFW3.11 route as I did have it on there for a few hours, but it clashed with my video card drivers which worked perfectly on 3.1 when the 486 machine was still running.
and also, if I can't figure out a way to get this system on the internet, I guess it'd be ok since the vast majority of people didn't have the internet back in those days.
I'd probably be stuck using CD-RW's as a method to get large amounts of data onto the system from my modern main Windows 7 machine, which of course is connected to the internet which I can use to download things form the archives here and other places.