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Ontario [Ontario, Canada] - Looking for a Socket3 VLB motherboard /w 72pin dimm slots

Ontario
J

jc179

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2007
Messages
128
Looking for a Socket3 /w 2-3x VLB slots motherboard /w 72pin dimm slots (mix of 72/30 is OK) too.
bonus if it has onboard IDE

Prefer items located already in Canada as shipping is getting a lil ridiculous these days.

thanks,
Jonathan
 
What are your intentions for it, so we can guide you to the right board? Do you want to run just 486s or an Pentium Overdrive or a 5x86? Basically do you need 3.3v? Also what size cache? Do you want built in PS/2 ports for mice and keyboard, or old Din style keyboard connector?
 
thanks - good questions. No intentions at the moment on a 5x86 or Pentium, just 5v all the way!
Cache, I'd like to go for at least 256k if I have a choice here heh.
PS2 ports would be great if such a beast exists!

Jonathan
 
Suggest a Micronics board then, most have dual ps/2 which is amazing since you can use modern optical mice. They can be Micronics brand, Dell or Gateway 2000 labeled. Keep a good eye on the boards , some are just regular Din connectors, but have headers for ps/2 mouse and keyboard.
 
Also seen this, could be a gem in the rough... But alas PCI not VLB. But cards would be cheaper... If you decide to not grab it I might, don't have a PCI socket 3 board yet.

www.ebay.com

Motherboard A-Trend ATC-1415 486 Socket 3 / not tested | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Motherboard A-Trend ATC-1415 486 Socket 3 / not tested at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
 
Last edited:
Thanks for sharing that link, that board is pretty much what I'm after, sadly they state won't ship to Canada! Gah.

Will keep looking for a board!

Jonathan
 
twolazy said:
Also seen this, could be a gem in the rough... But alas PCI not VLB. But cards would be cheaper... If you decide to not grab it I might, don't have a PCI socket 3 board yet.

www.ebay.com

Motherboard A-Trend ATC-1415 486 Socket 3 / not tested | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Motherboard A-Trend ATC-1415 486 Socket 3 / not tested at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
Click to expand...
I didn't end up picking this one up either, I do presently have a 486 non VLB board, but have my cards saved from my old VLB system from the end of the 90's, and wanted to stick them back into a working system! And so the adventure begins...! Why I didn't save the whole thing back then, I don't know, I suspect it wasn't me who disposed of it all though!

Jonathan
 
VLB is an expensive hobby nowadays. Not going to lie and deny that, unless you are a very patient soul. And even then, PCI is better. If I was going to start a killer 486/586 right now I start with EISA or PCI based board. If you can deal with duke3d being barely playable, or doom under 20fps, then regular ISA is fine. End of the day , what do you intend to use the system for?

Just throwing it out there...

I've seen people, think that a 486 is going to be the ultimate retro machine and become disappointed. For most, socket 5 or socket 7 is more what they really want. Pentium 90-166 era. And that is ALOT cheaper in the long run. An s3 virge example, 20 dollar video card blows the doors off anything ISA in dos.
 
I agree with you whole heartedly, but I don't want to build this machine solely to play games on, at least not entirely games. I always thought the VLB bus was cool, and would just like to reuse my original cards in a machine to fire up from time to time and poke about, nostalgia, memories, maybe use as a win/unix terminal, front end for basic stuff, even productivity related stuffs! I have a single DX66 with a pretty heatsink which needs a home in something, so I figured one more 486 could never hurt... much...I hope! At either rate, I only have a very middle of the road ATI Mach32 1meg card, and some memory to try out to make it 2 meg I hope [further research needed here as to what chips are supported!] , so it won't win any awards here! I am patient when it comes to this, there is no rush, its just an idea...

I have our family's first computer 486 from 92, DX50 on a Seanix SB-SYM-486C which has the " ATI VGA Wonder XL24 " with a bus mouse, I use for testing out old hardware on a bench setup, occasionally toms rtbt poking about, but it isn't really capable of running any games like duke3d et el ... For that I agree with you a socket5/7 mmx or even P2 is the sweet spot, I have one with a motherboard that needs sometime to fix the VRM setup properly so it doesn't cook itself any further.
 
twolazy said:
VLB is an expensive hobby nowadays. Not going to lie and deny that, unless you are a very patient soul. And even then, PCI is better. If I was going to start a killer 486/586 right now I start with EISA or PCI based board. If you can deal with duke3d being barely playable, or doom under 20fps, then regular ISA is fine. End of the day , what do you intend to use the system for?
Click to expand...

In what reality are we talking about where VLB is expensive? You can get VLB video cards on Ebay all day for under $60, same with disk controller cards. If anything is an expensive hobby, it would be EISA anything. EISA was almost exclusively used in servers and high end workstations, and wasn't widely adopted, unlike VESA was. EISA cards are far more expensive and harder to find. They're also a lot slower, and can be a PITA to configure due to needing special configuration disks and software.

Also, in what reality is PCI better than VLB? VLB has more bus bandwidth available (160 MB/s @ 40 MHz), shared amongst fewer devices than PCI, and is arguably lower latency than PCI due to VLB basically being an extension of the raw 486 bus. PCI on 486 motherboards is a minefield due to all of the different variations of PCI, many of which won't work on 486 motherboards. Due to bugs on early PCI implementations, or later cards that started using option ROMs that used Pentium code that wouldn't run on a 486, thus making the card in question not work. The 486 has the same problem as PowerPC, or any other non-x86 arch using PCI slots. If the option ROMs on the cards doesn't speak the native CPU language, it won't work. That is, unless it's a purely software driven device, like a Voodoo/Voodoo2.

twolazy said:
I've seen people, think that a 486 is going to be the ultimate retro machine and become disappointed. For most, socket 5 or socket 7 is more what they really want. Pentium 90-166 era. And that is ALOT cheaper in the long run. An s3 virge example, 20 dollar video card blows the doors off anything ISA in dos.
Click to expand...

Gotta be careful on what PCI video card you choose, many of them have broken VBE and cause problems in DOS games that use VESA modes. Pick most any Matrox card and you'll have a bad time. I still remember my first gaming rig with a Matrox G200, it HATED Duke3D and any other game based on the Build engine. Transparent sprites would tank the framerate on the card, which got worse the closer to the sprite you got. Eventually the game would crash with a granular page fault.
 
There were numerous VLB boards with integrated IDE. Late 486 boards even with no external VLB slot, often had the video chipset and IDE controller on the VLB bus internally on the board for the speed boost.

IDE isn't something you want on a board of that vintage regardless, because DMA wasn't common on early IDE controllers. They most often used Programmed I/O, which would destroy the CPU performance wise. A fun trick is to initiate a large disk transfer and toggle the turbo button on and off. You can hear the hard drive R/W heads speeding up and slowing down as the CPU clock changes.

I had a lot of SCSI stuff back in the day, and the performance uplift was considerable. The CPU wasn't burdened with setting up and bit banging data across the system, SCSI devices handled it on their own for the most part.
 
Still think if games are your thing, Doom, Duke3d etc, a pentium system is a better investment. Far as 486 boards, an s3 virge is a good pairing. Voodoo if you wanna get fancy. PCI is just a better investment nowadays. From a vintage gaming standpoint. Now if you just want to build an era correct machine, I get it. But why spend more for less I dont get it. In any event, that board I linked was a really good deal.
 
twolazy said:
Still think if games are your thing, Doom, Duke3d etc, a pentium system is a better investment. Far as 486 boards, an s3 virge is a good pairing. Voodoo if you wanna get fancy. PCI is just a better investment nowadays. From a vintage gaming standpoint. Now if you just want to build an era correct machine, I get it. But why spend more for less I dont get it. In any event, that board I linked was a really good deal.
Click to expand...
Games aren't the real thing here though, using the VLB cards I have around from before is, that's really the reason, if I didn't have the cards already, to be honest I wouldn't bother...

I agree 100% that board is exactly what I'm after, but the seller won't ship to Canada ! That is the real kicker, or to be honest I'd have just bought it. I will try bugging the seller but from experience that never seems to go anywhere...

For now still looking for a VLB board...

Jonathan
 
Thanks, I didn't know about either of these services...! They do seem a bit better price wise based on the calculator for shipitto.com - I will have a look and see what transpires - thanks for sharing!

You have a point on crossing the boarder, I have a tough time doing that, all because many many years ago I brought a modified laptop across the boarder on a family vacation, which had some externally wired in parts they didn't like.... /sigh. Crossing the boarder has never been a fun experience since then. It seems I have got myself flagged for life...*yay*!

Really want to try to goto midwest vintage computer fest in September however, not so sure on the travelling bit...

Jonathan
 
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