486 Project - Gaming Machine

Matzo · 3 Aug 2017 at 18:56

nkata said:
Jumper heaven!

My board was a little older than that shown as it came just prior to PCI and had 8 bit and 16 bit ISA slots and two vesa local bus slots which were 32bit like PCI but looked like ISA with an extension slot. These two supported a VLbus graphics card and a VLbus I/O card with FDD, HDD, serial and parallel connectors.

When i did get PCI later, I had the S3 Virge (upgraded memory) and a 3DFX Voodoo 2 3D card (for Doom etc.)

I wish I had kept my Computer jumble however it was taking up two wardrobes and so I had a massive clearout.

@nkata

Yeah, I remember the VESA cards. The stop gap between ISA and PCI. Took up huge amounts of space, they disappeared when Pentiums came about. My first 486 had a few of them, was an AST Premium II and was a beast, weighed a ton.

It's difficult to justify keeping a wardrobe full of old gear, unless you've got a big loft in which case they can disappear up there.

First graphics card I had was an S3 Trio 64 with 2MB of memory, splashed out a computer fair one weekend. Can't say I noticed the difference graphics wise but it made gameplay a little smoother.

Hagar · 4 Aug 2017 at 09:39

The VLBus card was 128kB I recall which was quite a lot in the day and ample for VGA. My S3 Virge was either 1MB to 2MB or 2MB to 4MB. I populated the empty memory socket. It was probably the former as 4MB was quite a lot.

Those 32MB 72 pin simms are quite hefty. My 80286 actually used 72 pin memory in 1990. When I upgraded it from 1MB to 2MB it cost me about £70 and I had to go to Stockport, some warehouse to collect it. It was a Philips proprietary system board. 30 pin was by far more common and available. My first desktop so a mistake was made in that.

Matzo · 4 Aug 2017 at 18:17

nkata said:
The VLBus card was 128kB I recall which was quite a lot in the day and ample for VGA. My S3 Virge was either 1MB to 2MB or 2MB to 4MB. I populated the empty memory socket. It was probably the former as 4MB was quite a lot.

Those 32MB 72 pin simms are quite hefty. My 80286 actually used 72 pin memory in 1990. When I upgraded it from 1MB to 2MB it cost me about £70 and I had to go to Stockport, some warehouse to collect it. It was a Philips proprietary system board. 30 pin was by far more common and available. My first desktop so a mistake was made in that.

Think I had a few transactions like that. Travelling miles and people travelling miles to buy items. Met one guy half way at a train station to sell him a Pentium III, 933 in early 2000.

I did have in mind for a 30pin simm system for this build but it hasn't work out. Having said that I've got a great motherboard and the project is coming together quite well.

Matzo · 6 Aug 2017 at 16:19

No surprise I couldn't find a 2x CD-ROM drive however the 32x drive I found is still late 90s.

Had to get a PS/2 to serial converter for the mouse too.

I knew there was going to be a few jumpers to play with and probably the odd buy here and there. The biggest surprise was going back to the big old ribbons for everything, floppy drive, CD and hdd.

Matzo · 6 Aug 2017 at 19:04

Quick check before I screw everything in place. It works! Reports 100MHz and 12MB memory.

Some reason the GeForce card didn't work so I've switched to the Voodoo 3, will come back later on that one.

Matzo · 15 Sep 2019 at 16:40

Came across this build in the loft the other day and it's a long time since I gave an update on this thread, so here goes...

I switched the Intel 486 DX4 100 with a later '94 edition Intel 486 DX4 100 with writeback cache.
Swapped the Creative Soundblaster AWE64 Gold with an early edition Gravis Ultrasound ISA Card
Swapped the ELSA Gladiac PCI with a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI graphics card
I've added a 3.5" Internal ZIP drive
Installed Windows 95C
Added a 'Intel Inside' case badge

Pictures to follow...

Also, now there is a vintage section on the site and I've dug up the thread - could it be moved there?

LewisRaz · 15 Sep 2019 at 16:51

Matzo said:
Came across this build in the loft the other day and it's a long time since I gave an update on this thread, so here goes...

I switched the Intel 486 DX4 100 with a later '94 edition Intel 486 DX4 100 with writeback cache.
Swapped the Creative Soundblaster AWE64 Gold with an early edition Gravis Ultrasound ISA Card
Swapped the ELSA Gladiac PCI with a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI graphics card
I've added a 3.5" Internal ZIP drive
Installed Windows 95C
Added a 'Intel Inside' case badge

Pictures to follow...

Also, now there is a vintage section on the site and I've dug up the thread - could it be moved there?

Glad to hear its still getting some use!

Matzo · 15 Sep 2019 at 18:40

... Forgot to mention I added a 5.25" floppy drive and the CD-ROM drives I tried weren't up to the job so I replaced it with an early DVD drive.

@LewisRaz Yeah, it'll have more use now it's all put together and out of the loft.

Matzo · 15 Sep 2019 at 18:46

Matzo · 15 Sep 2019 at 18:46

Drumroll · 15 Sep 2019 at 18:49

And we can only see how easier is to built a system now.
I am from the 486DX4 era, but just as an user.
Feeling old now.

LewisRaz · 15 Sep 2019 at 19:02

Michael Marini said:
And we can only see how easier is to built a system now.
I am from the 486DX4 era, but just as an user.
Feeling old now.

I have started a build from the same era and literally have no idea what to do with all the jumpers etc! Even tho it mimics my first machine I never had to do anything more than turn it on.

Matzo · 15 Sep 2019 at 19:19

It's a dream to build a PC today, much like the operating systems are much faster and easier to install.

I've found that building retro PC's you encounter problems much like you did twenty years ago, it's a strange mix of nostalgic pleasure and frustration. Today though one thing that's easier is the ability to buy the higher end hardware. My budget is a little more flexible that in was in my teens.

Yeah, crazy amounts of jumpers or dip-switches for setting multipliers, voltages and feature control.

The ATC 1425 socket 3 motherboard is pretty stable, the system has so much more memory installed (128MB) than I had back then (8MB and later 16MB). ZIP drive installed, which I could never afford back then - similar story for the Voodoo 3 and Gravis Ultrasound.

Drumroll · 15 Sep 2019 at 19:32

LewisRaz said:
I have started a build from the same era and literally have no idea what to do with all the jumpers etc! Even tho it mimics my first machine I never had to do anything more than turn it on.

No Youtube/Forums. Dark ages.
Same for games, on consoles, true they were simpler, but a bug would be forever. Now you buy a game and first thing is download a 15GB patch.

Drumroll · 15 Sep 2019 at 19:35

Matzo said:
It's a dream to build a PC today, much like the operating systems are much faster and easier to install.

I've found that building retro PC's you encounter problems much like you did twenty years ago, it's a strange mix of nostalgic pleasure and frustration. Today though one thing that's easier is the ability to buy the higher end hardware. My budget is a little more flexible that in was in my teens.

Yeah, crazy amounts of jumpers or dip-switches for setting multipliers, voltages and feature control.

The ATC 1425 socket 3 motherboard is pretty stable, the system has so much more memory installed (128MB) than I had back then (8MB and later 16MB). ZIP drive installed, which I could never afford back then - similar story for the Voodoo 3 and Gravis Ultrasound.

What about the (often) missing .dll file? Or when uninstalling a software would cause no end to blue screens? The Windows 95 was as frustrating as the Windows ME, at least for me.

wesimmo · 15 Sep 2019 at 20:00

So much nostalgia.

I had my mate's dad build my first PC with me watching, it would have been 96 I think.

He was in IT at Ratcliffe Power Station back then so was so far ahead of the curve.

Growing up his man cave was amazing, 2 x BBCs and an Archimedes(?) all set up on a huge bench with various monitors and printer and boxes of floppy discs with games at a time most people only got to play Granny's Garden on the BBC at school and the Turtle Robot thing was mind bending.

sideways14a · 15 Sep 2019 at 20:20

I must have built well over a thousand 486, p60/66 pentium (fixed) and various AM486/Cirex cpus through the 90s - none will likely have survived this long though.

Matzo · 16 Sep 2019 at 18:18

Michael Marini said:
What about the (often) missing .dll file? Or when uninstalling a software would cause no end to blue screens? The Windows 95 was as frustrating as the Windows ME, at least for me.

Fingers crossed it all seems pretty stable on this setup. Having said that I'm doing a few other vintage builds on the go and I've had one particular system with so many blue screen issues. I think the experience can be quite different based on the hardware. Back in the day the first family machine we had was a Packard Bell and it came shipped with Windows and had all the recovery software and we never had an issue, that was stable too.

Windows ME, was such a step up from 98SE as far as I rember and a much better user experience - until it fell over, reinstall... repeat experience.

Matzo · 16 Sep 2019 at 18:21

wesimmo said:
So much nostalgia.

I had my mate's dad build my first PC with me watching, it would have been 96 I think.

He was in IT at Ratcliffe Power Station back then so was so far ahead of the curve.

Growing up his man cave was amazing, 2 x BBCs and an Archimedes(?) all set up on a huge bench with various monitors and printer and boxes of floppy discs with games at a time most people only got to play Granny's Garden on the BBC at school and the Turtle Robot thing was mind bending.

The BBC Acorn was great, I had one as a kid which came with an external 5.25" drive and a heap load of games. Funny enough I've got one, might upload a few snaps of all the pixelated fun.

Matzo · 16 Sep 2019 at 18:24

sideways14a said:
I must have built well over a thousand 486, p60/66 pentium (fixed) and various AM486/Cirex cpus through the 90s - none will likely have survived this long though.

You've probably installed Windows more times than you care to remember, I know I have. If it wasn't for the bug of nostalgia I'd not be doing it again, it's bizzare.