486dx2 System Question

[Invisix]

Hey all,

Since so many of us here are classic gamers, etc and even though this is not Amiga related, I still didn't know where else to go to ask this, so here goes.

I recently acquired a complete 486dx2-50Mhz system (Monitor, System, Printer, Keyboard, Mouse, etc) for around $15 USD (cheap compared to eBay prices), and I found an 80Mhz DX2 produced by Cyrix I had laying around, and I am wondering how "fast" the CPU is running at now that I replaced the default 50Mhz DX2 with the 80Mhz DX2.

If I remember correctly 486 dx2 are a "speed doubler" technology from the system bus which as far as I know is 25Mhz bus (the computer is a Tandy 4850 EP)... so my question is this... what speed is the CPU really running at? My assumption is 50Mhz, even though the CPU is 80Mhz? If that's the case i'll just put the default Intel 486 DX2-50Mhz cpu back in and leave the Cyrix 486 DX2-80Mhz in case I ever get a 40Mhz bus 486 board.

[Invisix]

Thank you all for your comments, and help. I checked an old 1994(?) post from a DOS newsgroup and it stated the fastest CPU that the Tandy 4850 EP can handle is a DX4 75Mhz (DX4's are triple-clocked the system bus speed). My system BUS is apparently locked-in at 25Mhz, so my CPU is definately running at 50Mhz so I went ahead and switched out Cyrix I put in, and put back-in the default Intel 486 DX2 50Mhz chip.

The mainboard has a riser slot, so I have 3 ISA slots via a riser card. As for graphics, it is currently 512k on-board SVGA graphics, I can upgrade it to 1mb via on-board ram chips if I chose too for 1024x768x256-colour. The system doesn't have any VLB slots.

For now i'm happy with the system, I am just curious, as for now I am currently looking for a total of 32mb 30-pin SIMM's so I can max-out it's ram. I'll probably just get 8 4mb 30-pin SIMM's so I can fill-up all the SIMM slots, thus have 32mb RAM.

As for Dosbox, yes I have a modern PC... 64-bit AMD Dual Core, and all the bells & whistles... however just emulating the Amiga, Commodore, etc... nothing can beat having the real thing. :-D

[Invisix]

@DamageX

If you are willing to part with anything (4 4MB 30-pin SIMMs in my pile, as well as various 486 motherboards, VLB and ISA cards, and CPUs) how much would you like for each? Also what type of ISA cards? I'm hoping to hook myself up with a Sound Blaster 16.

Thanks.

[Invisix]

koaftder wrote:
@invisix

I have an SBPro 2 ISA and SB Vibra 16 ISA card you can have for post if you want 'em.

I'll look and see if I have any spare sims from that era.

:-o :-o :-o Dude, that would completely rock! PM me with details on how much shipping (post) would cost to Tampa, FL USA for them, i'm definately interrested in SIMM's too if you have any.

[Invisix]

@koaftder

You have a PM.  8-)

[Invisix]

@DamageX

How many megs are the SIMM's?

[Invisix]

@BlackMonk

I love old hardware also! I don't know if it's because I grew up with that stuff or what, but I adore older hardware. I honestly prefer my older 486 DX2 over my modern Dual Core AMD 64-bit PC! :crazy:

I think I feel this way about the 486 because A) DOS and Win 3.11 are pretty stable and a hell of alot safer for internet use than modern systems (due to OS flaws, holes, 'bugs', etc) and B) Nostalgia reasons. :-D
 
My absolute favorite computers of all time though are the Commodore 64/128 computer and Amiga computer(s).

I also dig the older PowerPC Mac's even though some; namely Power Mac and Performa 5200-53xx & 6200-6320 had bottlenecks; usually due to shoddy motherboard design. The 64-bit PowerPC CPU on a 32-bit data bus severely crippled the CPU from it's full potential. However replacing the default motherboard with a Power Mac 6360 motherboard and power supply resolved these bottlenecks.

I own a Mac Performa 6320CD for classic mac software.

[Invisix]

koaftder wrote:
A good game that uses adlib:
Catacomb Abyss

Wow! That screen shot brings back memories, this was one of the 1st 3D FPS, this came out in 1991 --- even before Wolfenstein 3D which was released in 1992.

Catacombs Abyss was the 1st in a series of 3 games, and was created by none other than the infamous John Carmack (creator of Doom), John Romero (Wolfenstein 3D), and Jason Blochowiak.

The trilogy is as follows:
Catacomb Abyss
Catacomb Armageddon
Catacomb Apocalypse

 :-D

[Invisix]

@da9000

Okay, okay I admit it, my A) comment was "off the wall" so to speak, however I still stick with my "I honestly prefer my older 486 DX2 over my modern Dual Core AMD 64-bit PC! :crazy:" comment. As I stated earlier in this thread... I only have a 486 for nostalgia, and classic gaming, it's not really used for anything "serious". Serious use comes from my Amiga 1200 (the system specs are in my signature).

Absolutely nothing can ever convince me to not prefer an Amiga system over any other system. AMIGA computers are simply THE most amazing computers of all time, period! Commodore 64/128 computers come second place in my heart. :-D

[Invisix]

All this talk about Sound Blaster, and GUS (Gravis Ultra Sound) cards, but... what about the mighty Roland LAPC-I cards?

Roland LAPC-I cards produced the best wavetable MIDI, music in games sounded like their actual instruments, one hell of an amazing soundcard. GUS is simular with emulation, but doesn't take the cake... a real Roland LAPC-I is amazing.

[Invisix]

Quick question... on my 486 DX2 50Mhz system, I recently installed a Sound Blaster 16 Value, and at random intervals the system's floppy and/or IDE bus and sometimes the mouse and keyboard seems to "halt" for about 5 or 10 seconds and then continues to run as usual, this needless to say is annoying when trying to play a game. The audio however continues to play as normal, without skipping a beat.

Any ideas what this problem could be? I took the card out, and it still does it, this is a new happening.

[Invisix]

Tonight, I have achieved what I once thought was impossible... I installed a 1.2GB Quantum brand HDD on my 486. I say "impossible" because before, the system was only seeing ~200 megs of the overall total due to typical year 1992 BIOS hdd size limitations. I think the max the BIOS supports is 514 megs.

I whipped out my Maxtor Max*Blast Plus 1.44mb Disk which is actually a re-labled EZ-Drive software customized for Maxtor, but it works with any drive. It partitioned, and formatted the HDD, I installed MS-DOS 6.22 and low and behold DOS sees the entire 1.2GB! I ran scandisk with no bad sectors.

So yeah, my 486 DX2 is now officially sporting a wicked 1.2gb HDD; which was unheard of in those days. :lol:

Oh so everyone knows, the issues I was having with the 5-10 second "halting" were I believe a failing HDD. I could literally hear the poor thing "churn / grind" sometimes during idle times, HDD access, and during the Johnny Castaway screensaver, which it never did before; it started the other night.

[Invisix]

@jnordness

Thanks for your post, I have to agree with what you stated in your "rambling", but I would also like to add that the lackluster of todays hardware also is that NOTHING has changed in the x86 world except for faster speeds, don't give me that "64-BIT!" which is utter bull, considering 98% of companies still code in 32-bit code. There are more 64-bit Linux users than 64-bit Windows users. "DUAL CORE! QUAD CORE!" *yawn* we had those since 386 days, just it was dual CPU, or quad CPU instead of all being on one die. Further more dual core, quad core, etc are all HYPE, it's not as if, for example, that a 3Ghz dual core CPU is running at 3Ghz each core, no it means each core is running at 1.5Ghz for a combined speed of 3Ghz. You'll be suprised the amount of people that are fooled into thinking that their system is running at 6Ghz. :lol:

The same goes for 3d accelerators; but I admit 3d accelerators are finally to a point where games are starting to look more like CGI quality but has along ways to go... due to x86 architecture limiations. I wonder when graphic card companies are going to finally come to the conclusion that the cards theoretical specs could be realtime specs if modern day CPU's were actually designed specifically for graphics hardware.

My opinion is this... the industry needs to go back to the custom chip set-ups of yesteryear for PC gaming... no wait... those already exist, they are called gaming consoles. :lol:

Seriously though, my theory is that PC 3D gaming is going to reach it's peak in a few years, and it's going to call for a drastic update in CPU arch in order to push on. 8-)

[Invisix]

Hodgkinson wrote:
Hey, re dual core/quad core processors...I wonder how much processing power the extra software is using to control the two cores? And what improvement does having 2 cores at 1.5Ghz have over 1 at 3Ghz :roll:
Besides, turning a core off when its not in use is nothing new...my Dell 400Mhz laptop just throttles back the processor to save power...


Hodgkinson.

That was my point, why it I said multiple core CPU's are nothing but hype... there is no improvement of having multiple CPU cores over a single core with the same Mhz/Ghz. It's a marketing gimmick.  :rtfm:

[Invisix]

@da9000

Perhaps I worded my posting incorrectly, and it has nothing to do with ignorance. :-D

For the record my CPU is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (Brisbane) @ 2.1Ghz. Idle, the core(s) run at 1Ghz, full load the core(s) run at 2.1Ghz.

I have done alot of research when it comes to dual-cores and it all seems to be leading to the same conclusion which I have outlined below.

What I meant by hype is that the total speed of the CPU is NOT what people think... it's each core running at a set speed... 2 cores running at 2.1Ghz each does not effectively equal 4.2Ghz. No, it's simply 2 cores running at 2.1Ghz each SEPERATELY from each other, not a combined total. A dual-core 2.1Ghz CPU is not necessarily faster than a 2.1Ghz single core. It's all about the threading.

The ability of multi-core processors to increase application performance depends on the use of multiple threads within applications. For example, most current PC games will run faster on a 3 GHz single-core processor than on a 2GHz dual-core processor (of the same core architecture), despite the dual-core theoretically having more processing power, because they are incapable of efficiently using more than one core at a time.

What may happen in the case of future multi-core games is that the main code can run on one core, and other code, let use for example the physics engine, can run on the other core. Both at 2.1Ghz for each core, but that does not mean the game is running at an effective rate of 4.2Ghz. That is how multi-core CPU's work.

Not many games are yet multi-core capable, however the infamous software developer Valve Corporation has stated its use of multi-core optimizations for the next version of its Source engine, shipped with Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Crytek developed similar technologies for CryENGINE2, which powers their game, Crysis.

:rtfm: Please note: These statements are not meant to be ABSOLUTE truth, these statements are based on information in which I have obtained overtime on the internet.