Starting the 486

edited July 2015 in Hardware
So I've finally almost got most of the parts together. A fair share of it new such as the motherboard, video card, network card, sound card, and controller card.

Below is the motherboard:

20150703_100440038_i_OS.jpg

As you can see the battery was fortunately in good physical condition:

20150703_100350478_i_OS.jpg

Regardless, as a precaution I've snipped the battery off. Need to look at getting an external battery:

20150703_101022420_i_OS.jpg

Reading the manual, I've set the jumpers to 3.3 volts and the right clock speed. I'm pretty sure I've inserted the CPU in the right orientation:

20150703_102537969_i_OS.jpg

Today, I received from eBay locally a couple of 16 MB 72 pin sticks, Panasonic brand:

20150703_103334399_i_OS.jpg

I was then about to place the motherboard into the AT tower case, only to find it has only two mounting screws inside so the motherboard won't sit flatly. Will need to see if I can find any extras lying around.

Comments

  • What cards are you planning it put in a machine? Especially because you need some form of I/O controller.

    For network cards, I think I'd recommend any 3com or Tulip based card. Sound, you've picked an AWE AFAIK. Video will be interesting, especially on a 486. I think a Voodoo, while probably the best performing 3D card on a 486 is nice, it'd take two PCI slots, which are sparse on your machine. I liked ATI and S3 cards, because while their 3D is tolerable at best, (and not ideal on a 486 anyways) their 2D acceleration is the best.

    As for other stuff: Consider perhaps separate serial, and disk controllers instead of a combo I/O ISA controller? One thing is adding a SATA card, which opens a lot of doors. USB would be handy as well.
  • I don't think a 486 can handle a Voodoo card. Maybe a Voodoo 2 but that is a strictly 3d use. I know a ATI Rage XL will work great from my experience and they come in 8MB and 16MB flavors. Not to mention NT 4/2000 and Linux have great support for it since that chipset was used in a bunch of rack servers back in the late 90s early 2000s.

    If you're planning to add USB I think you'll only be able to get USB 1.0 working on that due to the front side bus. Not sure on SATA. doubt it would be able to cope with it. Still it would be fun to try.
  • Very nice motherboard! I'd expect a VIA 6421 PCI SATA card to work OK in that, just make sure you get one with a BIOS chip - many were manufactured without and mislabeled. VIA 6421 cards even have native drivers for Windows 95.

    I'd expect some PCI USB boards would "work", but they would be of limited use under DOS, and Windows 95 only recognizes such cards as USB 1.x due to OS limitations.

    Since you got the VLB slots, you might just want to go with a VBL video card.

    What are you planning on running on it?
  • SomeGuy wrote:
    I'd expect a VIA 6421 PCI SATA card to work OK in that

    I'd imagine there would be bottleneck issues, but might be handy due to easy availability of SATA drives. Might be interesting to give it a go.
    ampharos wrote:
    What cards are you planning it put in a machine? Especially because you need some form of I/O controller.

    For the I/O controller, I sourced the following card. It's from DTC Data Tech (1995) and supports EIDE:

    20150703_221207514_i_OS.jpg
    TCPMeta wrote:
    I know a ATI Rage XL will work great from my experience and they come in 8MB and 16MB flavors.

    That's precisely what I bought. An 8 MB card. I had spent a bit of time looking for S3 cards, though typically were mainly 1 and 2 MB and therefore not that good for higher resolutions of 800 x 600 considering it would drop to 256 colours. It was also based on the fact that it was a new card, local seller, and paid less than $20 for it. 3D gaming such as Quake, Half-Life etc. I will more inclined to do that on a Pentium MMX machine that I will be putting together at a later stage.

    20150703_221755993_i_OS.jpg

    For the network card, I bought this ISA card by Acer. It might not be a 3Com card, however reading the box and manual it sounds pretty standard for the network cards of the time. It has drivers for UNIX, OS/2, DOS through to Win 95 and NT so pretty much covered.

    20150703_221959046_i_OS.jpg

    This was the case I received earlier in the week to put it all together:

    20150703_233056859_i_OS.jpg

    For sound a new SB AWE 64 Gold ISA card is on its way.
    SomeGuy wrote:
    What are you planning on running on it?

    Initially the usual MS-DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11 combination. It's what I used when I was a kid and also good for DOS gaming obviously. Later, I was considering dual booting with NT 3.51 for productivity apps.

    Sure there's Windows 95 and 98 that could run, but I have a P III 800 for 98, and the P MMX to build later which I might throw 95 on it.
  • The Acer looks like a RTL-8029 type thing - basically a cheap NE2K clone.
  • Nice hardware. I'm filled with envy.
  • ampharos wrote:
    The Acer looks like a RTL-8029 type thing - basically a cheap NE2K clone.

    That sums it up.

    Well I've put it together and attempted to turn it on - just enough to see if it would POST. The power supply fan spins up, the LED display lights up, the keyboard's Num Lock light comes on, and that's as far as it goes. There's no video output and no beeps and yes the AT power cables are inserted the right way with earth cables in the middle.

    I've tried resitting the RAM, one by one, and together though made no difference.
  • Try removing all of the cards and leave in one stick of memory and see if it beeps.

    Here are beep codes.
    http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm
  • I realised later that the beep codes were in the WinBIOS manual, not the motherboard installation manual. Regardless, not hearing any beeps whatsoever so it's difficult to determine what the problem is.

    I removed all the cards as you suggested TCPMeta though didn't make a difference.

    I thought maybe the old PC speaker has died, so I tried the small one out of my Core 2 Duo machine, no difference. I later determined that the old PC speaker actually works, so I ruled out that issue.

    I then tried the AT power supply with the new Soyo Super Socket 7 motherboard I bought a while ago. I went to the trouble of inserting a Pentium 200 MMX CPU, with some SD RAM, and using the switches to set the voltage and bus frequencies. I then plug into a spare fan into the 3 pin CPU socket on the board. Frustratingly I wasn't getting a beep from that either, no video, though the fan plugged in was spinning. As it also has ATX power support, I tried that but received the same results.

    I then tried with a used Socket 7 motherboard with a Pentium 166 MMX on it. I was able to get beeps out of this one, appear to be RAM related thus no video would come up. From this I take it the power supply is okay considering I don't have a multimeter to test with.

    I also tested the PCI video card in my Core 2 Duo machine, and that worked fine.

    It would be a shame if this motherboard doesn't work, but then again its odd that that the Soyo board didn't do much either.
  • I would get a multimeter and probe the power supply to be safe. It could also be a memory issue. Try the beep code again with no memory in the system on the Soyo board to rule it out but I would hold on the 486 board until you know for sure the power supply is alright.
  • Looks as though I'll park this until I get some other memory to test with, or buy a multimeter (none of my mates have one).
  • Did your manual list jumper settings for this exact, specific model of OverDrive CPU? I recall there were several variants for different systems.

    Out of curiosity, does that board support the AMD 5x86 CPU?
  • SomeGuy wrote:
    Did your manual list jumper settings for this exact, specific model of OverDrive CPU? I recall there were several variants for different systems.

    Out of curiosity, does that board support the AMD 5x86 CPU?

    The manual's English isn't the best. The board mentions Cyrix CPUs, but not AMD. The manual was from July 1994 however, and according to Wikipedia the AMD 5x86 was released in 1995 as I thought. It's definitely a Socket 3 board, and mentions 3.3 volts only to be used for the DX4 100 CPU. In theory in should be able to accept a Pentium Overdrive, or AMD 5x86.

    Here's a couple of pages mentioning about the CPU:
    20150706_081114248_i_OS.jpg
    20150706_080953403_i_OS.jpg
  • Ok, the problem is the DX40DPR100 is a 5 volt part. This model of overdrive is intended as a drop-in upgrade for a 33-mhz 486DX. You would set the jumpers as if it were a 486DX-33. This is NOT a 486DX4 (the DX4 is not a CPU replacement/upgrade)

    Now that I look at it, that is actually the same model of overdrive I have stuffed in an ISA 486-33 motherboard here.

    More info: http://www.cpu-collection.de/?l0=co&l1= ... PR100(V1.1)
  • Shouldn't matter if it's a Cryrix, Intel or AMD. Nine times out of ten they use the same specs for voltage. SomeGuy is correct on the voltage supply being 5 volts and not 3 volts. Even those special upgrade CPUs that Kingston offered with 5 volts and has a voltage regulator to make it work correctly.
  • After changing the jumpers for 5 volts and 486DX settings, I'm getting beeps! I suspect the beeps relate to the RAM.

    When I have a jumper (JP45 DRAM BANK0 SELECTOR) in the default position with both sticks of RAM, I get 2 quick beeps, 8 beeps, then a two-tone beep, then a delayed 2 beeps. Having one stick of RAM, it's just 3 low pitch sounding beeps constantly which I believe relates to the 64KB memory failure.

    When I changed the jumper to the other option out of curiosity, it does the same as having one stick of RAM.

    The manual states for JP45:
    1-2 Only 72-pin SIMM type is available, cannot use 30-pin type, 72-pin SIMM1 is BANK0.
    2-3 Both 72-pin and 30-pin are available, but only 30-pin SIMM1 is BANK0, 72-pin SIMM1 is BANK1. (Default)
  • Odd, most boards I have seen that uses mixed types of memory don't have jumpers to play with. They just list you need at lest two sticks of 30pin to equal a single 72pin.

    I wish Wednesday can hurry up so I can ship you those memory modules.
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