Got a hold of an old 486 DX/2 66

[MusicallyInspired]

My dream come true! Well, sort of. What I really wanted was a DX/4 100 (was so stupid to give away my old one for a lesser model way back which I, in turn, traded for a Celeron 266), but this does not dissapoint! I found this in my church's upcoming rummage sale. I've already added a 5.25" drive and am working on finding a sound card and hooking up a CD-ROM. I've already intalled Thexder 2 (first 5.25" disk I grabbed) and it works fine.

Apparently it was used by TD Bank as there was a program called TD Bank Software, or something (what's ODD is it also had a shareware version of Duke Nukem 3D :shock: . Although I don't know why, I tried running it and it took forever to load and then froze ingame). I'm guessing they used it in banks way back. I deleted it anyway as I was purging it. There's a nice big 500Mb HD in here! And also 8Mb of RAM. I'm not sure what type. I might try pushing that up to 16 if I can get a hold of some for it.

Anyway, they said they'd give it to me for somewhere around $20. I'm thinkin, not too bad.

Here are some pictures:

http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/486_shot1.jpg
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/486_shot2.jpg (with turbo button pressed. I'm not really sure if this actually makes a difference or not. It didn't make anything any faster)
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/486_inside.jpg
http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/486_ram.jpg (sorry about the blurry shot, the camera I used isn't good at focusing up close)

Looks like I'll have a nice old games machine sooner than I thought!

[Dustin]

Nice find Brandon,


The 486 DX2/66 is the ideal gaming machine. Timer bugs are completely eliminated. There's a turbo button on my 486, and when I turn it off, it knocks the CPU in half to 33Mhz. Turned out to be quite useful in some situations where I was trying to run a few PCjr programs.



If you want years of trouble free operation, I suggest formatting the hard drive, and installing Windows 95 if you have it. Alternatively Windows 3.11/DOS 6.22 also works well.


Enjoy it.

[QBiN]

I suggest formatting the hard drive, and installing Windows 95 if you have it. Alternatively Windows 3.11/DOS 6.22 also works well.

I would avoid Win95 like the plague for anything less than a Pentium 90. You'll end up having to reboot into "MS-DOS Mode" 90% of the time anyway.

But I agree with Dustin; it's a good find. See if the jumpers allow for more than a DX2/66. You may be able to get the DX4-100 you always wanted with just a CPU swap.

Or if you wanted to be really adventurous, try finding an AMD DX4-120 or a Cyrix 5x86...

[MusicallyInspired]

Well I got the CD Rom working (although it's not the one in the pictures now). Tried out Monkey Island and it works fine. Although I get REALLY loud PC Speaker sounds because I still don't have a sound card for it yet. I have a PERFECT one, but long ago when I had a 286 I blew it somehow by trying to make the pc speaker sounds come out of my sound card instead of my pc speaker. Now all the adlib sounds are really low volume and distorted and I don't think I can hear digital sounds at all (if I can they're quieter than the adlib sounds).

I don't think I'll go for Win95. I want to keep it a pure DOS machine. It currently has DOS 6 and Win 3.11 on it. I want to format it and put Win 3.1 on it, though. I don't like Win 3.11. This computer is no longer for workgroups anyway . I have the original disks for DOS 6, too, so if I'm in trouble and have to format I'm not really in trouble .

All I need is a decent ISA Sound Blaster compatible card. I have one (besides the blown one), but I can't get the DOS drivers to work for it. It's a Zoltrix and I think it's SBPro compatible. But it's meant for Win95 mainly. There's a directory on the disk that says DOS and it looks like it has DOS drivers in it but they're all like this "FILENAME.EX_" and "FILENAME.SY_". Actually the underscore might be a different symbol instead I can't remember, but there's something else there other than the end of the file extension. It seems like the files have to be expanded (I know that DOS does that when it installs on your system) or something. It would be the perfect card. But if worse comes to worse I can always just hook up my Music Quest MIDI card and use my MT-32 or CM-500 with it.

[gortmertl0]

My dream come true! Well, sort of. What I really wanted was a DX/4 100 (was so stupid to give away my old one for a lesser model way back which I, in turn, traded for a Celeron 266), but this does not dissapoint! I found this in my church's upcoming rummage sale. I've already added a 5.25" drive and am working on finding a sound card and hooking up a CD-ROM. I've already intalled Thexder 2 (first 5.25" disk I grabbed) and it works fine.

...

Looks like I'll have a nice old games machine sooner than I thought!

Congrats, MusicallyInspired, but you stole my thunder...  I got one, too, last week.  (See my post)

Gary

[MusicallyInspired]

Thanks! I'll check out yours...

Just digging through the old closet and I found 2 empty computer cases both with motherboards inside them. I'm not sure what kind they are and I can't take pictuers as I've returned the camera I was using to its owner. But one of them is LOADED up with ram! So I'm gonna swipe it all and use it in my new 486! Also found some old mice and power cables that I was looking for! It's a good day today!

[MusicallyInspired]

A little update (for those who care), I've tried installing the RAM I got from one of my other "empty cases" and only 2 of them would work in my new 486. It came with one 8Mb stick. I took it out and put 2 of my other ones in and it also said 8Mb. So obviously they are 4MB each. Now I have a 4Mb and the original 8Mb to make a total of 12Mb RAM. I don't know why the others won't work. I think they're higher up (16MB or 32MB). They might be EDO, too (some 486s don't support EDO, right?), but I have no way of knowing. It's too bad. Wish I could have at least 16MB.

[robertmo]

You need (cause you have a DX processor)
4 short SIMM modules of the same size
or
2 long SIMM modules of the same size

You cannot use short and long simms together.

So if you want 16MB of ram the only option is:
4x4MB of short simms
or
2x8MB of long simms
No other option possible

If you had a SX processor you could have
only 1 long simm (of course you could have 2 of them and even different sizes)
or only 2 short simms of the same size (of course the other two could be  of other sizes)

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah that sucks. Right now I'm using 2 long ones. 1 4Mb and 1 8Mb. There are indeed 4 smaller ones which I tried filling up by themselves but the computer got all cranky. I don't think it liked my ram. I don't even know if they work anyway lol. Too bad about the longer ones, though. My old 486 DX/4 100 had room for 2 SD RAM sticks. That got us over 16Mb back then...ah well. Maybe I can find another 8Mb somewhere....

[gortmertl0]

It's too bad. Wish I could have at least 16MB.

Brandon, I was asked the same thing by the guy who built my new 486.  He was going to give me 8MB: "Why do you [think you] need 16MB?"

In his opinion, you only needed that much for certain CAD programs or other programs requiring a large number of calculations -- relative to the capabilities of a 486 machine; for most other programs, 4MB-8MB will do fine, even running them from the Windows 3.x environment.

My opinion was when it comes to computers, more RAM is always better.  So I got the 16MB.  


For example, looking back at the specs from my old 486, it had two banks: 0 & 1; each bank had 4 slots.  Each slot was filled with 1 MB x 9(3) 70 ns [nanosecond] SIMMs for a grand total of a staggering 8 MB of RAM.  Everything I ever ran on it was fine...


However, I would think you should be able to find some old RAM on line relatively cheap.  The trick is determining which type you need.  Robertmo gave some good advice -- look for 60-80 nanosecond (ns) SIMMs and fill each bank with the same size of memory -- don't mix and match sizes, or it will get 'cranky'...

Here is what C-Net shopper pulled up for 4 MB SIMM:

http://shopper-search.cnet.com/search?part=&q=4+MB+SIMM

Check the "Kingston memory - 4 MB - SIMM 72-pin" entry on page 2 -- they go for $15 a piece, and I've been quite pleased with Kingston in the past.

I'm not certain of your monetary situation, but that's not a bad price, seeing as how you got the computer itself for such a steal...


Gary

[DrJ]

Totally agree.. You don't need 16mb when it comes to DOS programs. If you're planning on running Windows 3.11 or maybe try 95, then it might come in handy. But for DOS programs you certainly do not need 16mb of memory.

It's more of a challenge to get your 640kb of DOS memory as empty as possible

Now THAT's a challenge!!!

On that note, I would not recommend a memory manager like QEMM.. Oh the days that I got the "This is not a QEMM error"-lockups..

[MusicallyInspired]

I was running with 501Kb - 530Kb (which some programs didn't like. A couple demanded 580!) but I ran memmaker and it freed me up to 571KB which is a little better....the only weird thing now is that whenever I use the restart button or press CTRL+ALT+DEL it takes forever to reboot and the computer is significantly slower after! I have to actually turn the power off and on to get my normal speed back!

And now I'm having troubles with my Zoltrix (SB Pro) and Music Quest MPU-401 that I never had before. I was getting very nice OPL-3 sounds (in stereo...thats OPL-3 right? Sounded very amazing, actually. Better than what DOSBox or VDMSound produces in emulation) as well as music from my CM-500/MT-32 through my Music Quest card but now I think they're fighting over the 330 MIDI port. I know I can change the Music Quest port via jumpers on the card itself, but I wish I could do it for the Zoltrix instead as I'll be using the Music Quest more often and you can't change the MIDI port settings on some DOS games. I don't know why it's started all the sudden.

And I guess I don't really need 16Mb of RAM then. I just seem to remember some older games needing it. Oh well. I'll live with 12 for sure as I can convert that all over to EMS which is very nice! And I still have a lot left over.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ok, my 486 is running pretty pathetically slow. I'm trying to run Star Trek 25th Anniversary (CDROM edition) and the entire game (especially the combat and space sequences) is unplayably slow. The old dx/2 66 I used to have was never this slow...at least I don't think it was. I don't really understand why. Can anyone help?

[Locutus]

Hello!

Maybe, you didn't connect the turbo switch? On some motherboards, the turbo connector can be shorted (if your casing doesn't supply a switch that fits). But that should all be described in your motherboards documentation.

It's also possible that the clock speed jumper settings are not correct or maybe you disabled some performance options in the BIOS (e.g. 2nd Level Cache etc.)

Regards,
locutus

[MusicallyInspired]

Hmmm, the turbo switch does seem to do nothing for the speed of my computer. I'll check inside to see if it's actually connected or not.

And since it was bought second hand, I have no documentation for my motherboard .

EDIT: I've fixed the turbo switch connector on the motherboard and made some changes to the BIOS and now not only does my computer's speed change when I press and depress the turbo button but both speeds are faster than what I had before I fixed it! Thanks a lot!

[Locutus]

(...) now not only does my computer's speed change when I press and depress the turbo button but both speeds are faster than what I had before I fixed it! Thanks a lot! :D

That somehow doesn't sound very right, however I am glad to be of help.

I would recommend you to search for some kind of documentation online and be very careful concerning jumper settings / BIOS changes. It might even be possible that you just overclocked your system.

Regards,
locutus

[MusicallyInspired]

Actually I was wrong, It's not faster in both instances. I see now that when I depress the turbo button it was as slow as before. But at least now the turbo button works.

I don't think I overclocked my system. I enabled some external cache (256kb) in the BIOS too, I don't know exactly what that means. I'm not overclocking it am I? I have some experience with fiddling with BIOS settings but I'm certainly not experienced.

Anyhow, Star Trek 25th Anniversary is running perfectly smooth now.

[Locutus]

Well, that sounds better. Everything should work fine, if you just load the default BIOS settings using "Load CMOS defaults" or "Load BIOS defaults" or similar options (depending on BIOS manufacturer). Normally, it makes no sense to disable external cache, unless it is damaged or you actually WANT your computer to be slower. :)

Star Trek 25th Anniversary was a great game by the way. I'd also recommend the sequel titled "Judgment Rites". Same game makeup, yet different adventures.

Regards,
locutus

[MusicallyInspired]

I have both, actually. Awesome games. I have yet to finish either of them, though. And also Star Trek TNG A Final Unity . Rare find I acquired on Ebay. All I really need to do is get a slightly faster CDRom drive for the game to even feel ok to install.

[Locutus]

A Final Unity was one of my all time favourite DOS games. However, on my 486/66 DX-2 with 8 megs of RAM and double speed CD-ROM back then, it was really a bit slow. With enough patience it was playable though. ;-)