Great video and awesome vintage build. Also love the moment you said the control is much better you launch the car your driving into a police car. Prue Gold!
@@AncientElectronics Also with the 40Mhz AMD CPU if you de-turbo(also nice you also look at the turbo as going faster) the CPU it should run at 20Mhz which maybe perfect for Wing Commander. Have a good one.
With the turbo button, I'm curious if anyone has figured out if you can modify the bios or settings to change its behaviour. I believe it introduces wait states to make it slower?
@@AncientElectronicsthere might be i386 motherboards where the turbo switch (short/open behaviour is not standardised) might switch to XT speed (7 or 8 MHz AFAIR)
It is possible to check if the board uses wait states, just use turbo button and check the frequency with CPU check app. You would need to consult the spec sheet of the chipset but good luck with finding one for UMC ones. I've checked SiS 471 chipset datasheet before and that one can use only wait states. It is however possible to configure some registers to make it either 1/3 or 1/2 speed but never tried it out. It would definitely involve editing the registers through Modbin, or maybe finding some utility that could do that in real time.
@@AncientElectronics DRAM SPEED Faster, DRAM CAS Pulse Width 1T, Cache Write Back enable, Cache Write Cycle 3T, Cache Burst Read Cycle 2T, BUSCLK 7.159 MHz or CPUCLK/4, DRAM Hidden Refresh enabled. Some MBs do recognize a keystroke combination for setting into slow/turbo mode.
It's possible, I have a friend with a 386 board with a working VLB slot though I have my doubts even if it was soldered on that it would work. I believe the BIOS and the chipset would need to support it which is no guarantee.
@@AncientElectronics Yes, it's not guaranteed to work. Btw i am rebuilding my first PC (Baby AT system, originally a 486 VLB DX2-66) from the mid 90's and it's missing the MHZ display (got removed) one with two full digits and a one with jumper settings. But i have now a working replacement, only that it has 3 full digits, is not controlled by jumpers but by a chip. Also has a changable battery on there, a small LR41 coincell battery. It will work in my case but i am wondering how to set up this thing to show the correct MHZ??. It has 10 pins and they read from the left. LTHRR+-SST. PD 900 also on the board, the model perhaps?.
Your footage of Wing Commander definitely illustrates a major advantage of DOSBox...being able to control the number of CPU cycles available at any time to dial in the right speed.
Great video! To be honest, I'd be pretty happy with the performance of 33mhz with cache off, it's a *bit* fast, but in my experience, not much. Also, it'll get slower with more ships on the fight (the simulator is basically just you against a bunch of foes, and it starts 1v1) Awesome build you got there, kudos!
Difference between 386SX and DX models is in the bus size: both processors are internally 32 bit (full 32 bit instruction architecture), but the DX model has also a 32 bit data and address bus, while the SX model has a 16 bit data bus and 24 bit address bus. So half the data throughput between DX and SX models, which has a tremendous impact on overall speed.
In 1993, my neighbor got a 386SX-33 Mhz, 8MB RAM, 40 MB HDD, no sound card. I was at his house every single day, I'd watch him play games for hours, I wasn't allowed to touch it, but I didn't care, I was witnessing history in the making, those 'puters were fascinating! I myself had only been "exposed" to an 8-bit MSX computer before that and my Atari 2600. 4 years later, I had a computer of my own, in 1997, it was a Pentium 100 Mhz, 32MB RAM, 1Gb HDD, CD-ROM, Soundblaster, the typical setup of that time I guess. I wish I still had that PC.
sup about the markings on the cdrom drives, i use a bong cleaner called klear kryptonite, it removes any markings right up and removes a bit of yellowing too, my old compaq uses a modern lg dvd rw drive and no one can tell lol
Btw I've tested many ISA VGA cards too and came to the same conclusion - the WD90C31 is a very good fast card. They also tend to play nice with LCD displays. Some of the ET4000s I tried (and all the Trident 8900D ones which are - surprise surprise - nice and fast too) exhibit jail bars sampled by the LCD ADC circuitry. On the other hand, (at least?) most WDC cards showed a nice and even picture. ....And I've reached the end - well, you can keep the CPU, it'll work just this fine underclocked with another (40-50MHz) crystal. If you have to go out of your way to get another one with lower rating - be assured it doesn't really matter.
For systems like this, I wonder if a crystal oscillator multi-socket adaptor would be practical or of any benefit. For instance, if you could just install a 40MHz DX for example, and then have an adaptor in the crystal socket that had 80, 66, and say 50 MHz crystals with a switch you could run out the back. That way you could have three different CPU speeds, really more if you count the lower speeds you would get with the turbo button. Probably overkill but it would make the ultimate 386 for speed compatibility.
Good choice on the WD90C31. I use to run the WD90C33 VLB variant in a former DX4 build and it was speedy with DOOM and other DOS games. They continuously trade blows with the ET4000/W32. Never had an issue using my WD90C33 with LCD displays. Sadly the VLB board died, and it was replaced with a 5x86-P75 / S3 Vision864 PCI build.
Fun fact: The first-run batch of DX 33 chips had some defective CPUs. The one you have, marked with a double sigma, is ok for 32-bit software. The defective ones were marked "16-BIT S/W ONLY"
I’m blown away that they wouldn’t just issue a complete recall and replace the affected chips, but I suppose early yields must have been bad enough to need to satisfy demand in anyway possible.
Not all 386SX-40 boxes were made equal though - what chipset? What were your ram timings? Any cache, or wait states? ISA clock? What VGA card were you using? That’s simultaneously the most annoying thing and the most interesting thing about the PC platform, you can get some very interesting differences between builds that nominally would seem the same. You could go from something that would feel utterly glacial to something that’s still rather slow but has a bit of pep in its step in its own way.
@@sedrosken831 ram speed - no idea, I just plopped in 4x1mb 30 pin simms I had lying around and hoped for the best. Chipset - Acer Isa Clock 12 MHz VGA Card Trident 8900 with 512kb ram No cache All wait states are set as minimum as possible without bricking the machine. The next time I open it /relook at the biosI will happily update this comment :) - currently messing around with a 486dx4 100 a lot lately so that has taken over my memory a bit :)
I actually considered a video testing this. I got a hold of a 386sx-40 board and started putting it together until I found out the board was defective so I ended up not making that video and doing my other 386sx-25 video instead.
The first PC I bought was a 386 cost me £1350 which was about $2500 US in about 1991, came with an AMD 386DX 40mhz, Asustek motherboard, 4Mb RAM, 130Mb HDD on a cached HDD controller, 1Mb Trident Graphics card, floppy drive, 14" CRT. I upgraded it to 8Mb, added another 210Mb HDD, swapped the Trident for a Tseng ET4000, added a Cyrix Maths co-processor, Adlib compatible soundcard, CD-Rom drive. I remember throwing the motherboard and all the bits in the bin about year 2002, wish I hadn't now really.
love it! and love Ultima VII. used to play it on my 486dx2-80, the game was too fast xd uhh i remember some games were picky about memory management programs, some needed it, some refused to run with it
This is interesting to me right now as I plan on building a 386 DX. Assuming the parts are working, then I will have a CX486 upgrade chip in there at 33MHz. I am very curious to see how that performs when de-turbo'd. I'm wondering if the extra boost from the instruction set and genuine L1 cache combined with low clockspeed might make a difference. I'm planning on using a Cirrus Logic GD5422 1MB which as I recall should be highly compatible, fast and have the bit blitter for sprites and Windows accelleration. I will pit that against mt ET4000.
This is one of my "gap" PC builds. I've yet to find a stable or working 386 board. All 3 so far have either been Doa or they stop working and even a recap doesn't do much. Someday but for now I have my 486 and soon my 5170 will be upgraded so the 386 will just be a nice to have rig lol Love the parts selections tho, definitely a higher end with the pro and that video card.
sorry to hear that about the 386 boards. I've had generally good luck with 386 motherboards over the years myself. Good to hear your 5170 is on its way to being finished. Mine blew the PSU and I still haven't found a replacement yet.
@@AncientElectronics yea..so far 2 with the dx40s don't even boot or post... A Packard bell doesn't power up at all but each part does when connected to separate board And bummer about your 5170, I've been thinking about seeing if there's a way to rebuild the supply just to prolong mine but haven't dug too far.
@@AncientElectronics I just got done with my upgrades and that weird load circuit is super sensitive. I had to install a bad hard drive just for the load lol
1. Those are some fat scanlines in DOS - I like it. 2. Feels like a 25 Mhz 386 would have been more appropriate for some of the games trialled But that was a nice trick you pulled with TD3 and especially WC. 3. Blake Stone could probably run fine on a fast 286. I seem to recall ROTT being a more 386-appropriate game. 4. I'd love to see (hear) how Planet X3 performs on your wonderful MT-32. 5. I wonder how necessary a retro-PC is for Duke Nukem 2 now that Rigel Engine exists. Same for Blake Stone and BStone, although the historical value of playing on original hardware is undeniable. 6. Your build is perfect for 25th Anniversary, and I'd love to see Judgement Rites on it. The way 25th Anniversary runs on it justifies the entire build. 7. Let's see how well it runs Doom. And that cut-down version of Doom for low-spec computers. 8. Curious about how XCom runs on it - a game that required a 386 at minimum.
Scratch Blake Stone on a fast 286. It was going to run on 20 Mhz 286 originally, but that was later nixed for a min. 25 Mhz 386. In terms of games well-suited to the system: A somewhat 386-specific game is Frontier: Elite II, as the CD-rom release requires a 386SX. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe recommended at least a 386. Maybe your fast one is right for it. XCom runs okay on a 386 [maybe well on your fast one], good on a 486, too fast on XP-era systems. Someone else noted this on VOGONS: Knights of the Sky (1990)--runs too fast--recommended 386SX-20. When I disable L1 on my P200MMX, it runs at about Am386DX-25 and is still a little too fast, hence my estimate of 386SX-20. Ultima VI (1990), Savage Empire (1990), Martian Dreams (1991)--runs too fast--recommended any 386. I've seen this game run acceptably on a fast 286, but if you can get into any 386 range by disabling L1, you should be fine. "Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood has one of those tricky timer issues. Near the end of the game you need to go through a maze and make it to the girl in time. This timer expires too soon (=you are not given enough time to reach your destination) even on a 386/40MHz. On 386/33Mhz it's doable but still marginal, turn turbo off and then it's easy. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else so I though to document it here, the scene being one the the final scenes in the game doesn't help with popularity."
If you also have a 486 then I'd probably slow this 386 down to 25MHz or so. But I think it just depends which games you're in the mood to play and what other machines you have to cover different speeds.
the comparison benchmarks I have seen on vogons seem to put the wd90c31 at the top of the pure ISA video cards. not sure if it keeps up at higher clock speeds. try putting one in a #ISAdoom25fps build? From Phil's computer Lab: "WD ISA card is the fastest by the tiniest of margins. It also doesn't need UNIVBE, the ET4000 does"
I've run the WDC against an et4000 in an OCed AMD 5x86 build @ 160MHz and it still was as fast or faster. Where did Phil say that about the card? I didn't know he benchmarked it in the past, didn't see anything about it on his website.
@@AncientElectronics I tried to give the link but the youtube deleted it. As expected. it's a Vogons thread titled "14 ISA and VLB graphics cards on a 486DX2 66" from 9/9/2016.
@@AncientElectronics if you are having a hard time finding it, the TLDR is basically the same results you had. the biggest improvement was in doom and that was not even 1 fps.[19.1->19.4]
@@Miasmark I found it. Im glad that at least confirms my results. I'm a bit surprised people in the retro community won't shut up about the et4000 but no one ever mentions the WDC card when it comes to suggesting fast ISA cards. Not to say the et4000 isn't a great card.
@@AncientElectronics yeah I think it doesn't help that the video card does not have a sexy name. Other than the diamond Speedstar 24x. I have to lookup the numbers after WD everytime I think about it to just ensure there is not some other WD card I do not know about.
Yeah, 16MHz mode seems to mostly hit the spot, with the fast components and cache it's probably running about equivalent to the 20MHzDX that most sources prescribe as being the optimal CPU speed. I've only played the 25th anniversary edition twice but I found the ship combat to be especially difficult. I hope to seriously tackle the game one day so maybe with some experience it won't be so punishing.
For combat in Star Trek 25th Anniversary you really have to learn the keyboard controls. The thing I notice almost nobody knows about is how to change the ship speed (use the number keys). Default speed is too slow so you get hammered by all the enemy ships. Speed up to be more evasive, slow down if you want to land more hits. You can even move backwards (slowly). The current speed setting and the actual output of each engine are shown in those bar graphs above the viewscreen. Also you can prioritize specific repairs. If your impulse engines get damaged you will lose speed, so it's very important to keep them in good condition.
Because you don't want it there. Having CD-RW or DVD on a drive installed into a 386 era PC looks wrong. It kills the esthetic IMO and breaks the illusion. Its the same reason I dislike using floppy emulator drives.
@@infinitecanadian I feel like we've had this conversation before. There are literally MILLIONS of PC CD-ROM and DVD drives. They are virtually worthless and I wouldn't be surprised if some factory somewhere was still making them. We're not talking about some rare x2 caddy drive, we're talking about $2.99 DVD drives at Goodwill.
That time there had been propritary CD Drives around (Panasonic, Mitsumi, ...). The first CD ROM Writer had been SCSI. AFAIR burning software firstly had been available for Windows 95. To be professional these days you had to go for SCSI anyway. ☝️
I am not sure why there still exists throughout the enthusiasts this old misconception that ET4000 are the fastest ISA VGA cards..This was the truth around when the cards with this chip were released up until 1993-1994..But there are faster (not by small margin) ISA cards with Cirrus Logic GD5429/GD5432 and 1MB of RAM..These are the fastest ISA video cards I have encountered - almost close to a slow VLB one.. Of course they are rare as a dodo but still 😂
@@AngelDemonn The Tseng Labs 4000ax. Also the mach 32 is a 64 bit 2d accelerator with a built in coprocessor, has memory interleave, compatible with cga and ega for older games, 2mb ram max, and it displays true color unlike Tseng Labs 4000. Imagine 16 bit and 24 bit color in Dos compared to other cards of the time with 256 colors.
Certainly everyone's idea of 'ultimate' is subjective. My own 'ultimate 386' is by far the 'worst' of those I own, being that big 16MHz one which is worse in every way than the younger, smaller and vastly less dumb 33MHz machine on the desk. I do remember the discussion about the WDC card and do suspect it's just the BIOS holding it back. I even have another one that's much faster so should try swapping the ROMs, if I didn't already and just forgot. Almost wonder if it's stuck in 8-Bit compatibility mode for some reason. In any case, ET4000s are grossly overrated by some and there are plenty of other cards, those WDC ones included, that will work just as well most of the time. Outside of synthetic tests, your CPU will probably be the limit long before that video card will be. Not sure how I've never heard of The Legacy: Realm of Terror before, but want to find time to try it now. As a guy who deliberately ignores system requirements and plays things at single figure frame rates, I can't answer your question about switching the CPU. You'll just have to do that one by feel yourself, I think. It's another one of those subjective things where only you can decide what you want the machine to do, how you want it to do it and whether this goal was achieved. It at least looks fine to me.
Although I haven't played very far into Legacy: Realme of Terror I do eventually plan to. It feels like an interesting mix of RPG / Adventure game with a survival horror theme. I'll likely keep the 33MHz 386 since when it's running in 16MHz mode it feels about right as it should be roughly equivalent to the 20MHz 386 that a lot of these speed-sensitive titles call for.
Mine is 386DX-40. It was highly integrated, cheap to mass produce and kept selling for way longer than was at all reasonable (into the pentium era!). It made IBM PC affordable. Before this I would say the amiga was just so clearly superior. It also coincided with CD-rom drives being somewhat affordable and affordable adlib clones and SB16 and clones. It also happened to coincide with ultima underworld, wolfenstein 3d and ultima 7.
clock for clock a 486 is still noticeably faster than a 386 at the same clock speed so a 25MHz 486 would still be likely too fast. Regardless, using a 486 would completely take the fun out of this build.
I just looked up some benchmarks and testing and it appears even the slowest 486, the 486sx-16 is roughly equivalent to a 386dx-33 so any 486 will be too fast.
Test Drive 3 was such a horrible execution of a great idea. You can see the speed of the 'game time' by following the clock in the top left. The more stuff that is going on, the slower the game runs. It is worse even than Geoff Crammond's F1GP / world circuit game, where the game would at least never run faster than real time, only slower if you set details too high.
Sorry, but that video title is total clickbait. I was expecting something completely different. Nothing against the machine, it's just fine, it's just completely ordinary and there's nothing high-end about it at all. Maybe just a disc, if we're talking about eras.
I'd have to disagree with you and I admit I take a small amount of offence to accuseing me of clickbaiting. You could say it's merely a matter of semantics but I certainly would call this system high-end as far as pure 386 builds go. The 386DX-33 was Intel's fastest 386 and 386 boards with L2 cache were the higher-end offerings though not necessarily rare. high-end doesn't necessarily mean exotic or fastest (the AMD 386DX-40 was faster). It's like the guy at the yacht club looking down at the Lamborghini driver because you own a Rolls Royce, they are both high-end.
@@AncientElectronics There is no need to be offended right away. I am aware that things are relative, but I still see it differently. I will try to explain it. I look at it from the point of view of any exceptionality. Most of the 386s that I have encountered, not only today, but also at the time when they were relevant work machines, had a frequency of 33MHz or 40MHz. (I am talking about assemblies made of standard components, not branded machines with proprietary components such as IBM and the like.) I had a lot of them back then (the first half of the 90s). I can count the others on my fingers during service work. 33MHz is therefore a completely common frequency in terms of representation. The absolute majority of 386DXs were equipped with some L2 cache. I have only experienced one case where this was not the case and it was not possible to add a cache. All of this cache was level 1 (L1), 386 cannot have an L2 cache in principle. So I do not take this as an argument. But 386 can be exceptional and above-standard in something else, whether in design or equipment. For example, the Compaq SystemPro is a completely exceptional and high-end machine. But we don't have to go that far and I have no problem admitting that for gamers it may not be high-end. From a gamer's perspective, the setup I have myself could be interesting (even though I'm not a gamer, I just enjoy tinkering with old electronics). Its 386 is not exceptional in frequency. It's a normal AMD 386DX 40MHz, but there are other interesting things. For example, the fact that it has an above-standard L1 cache of 256KB. Or the fact that it has a VESA local bus, which allows you to connect more interesting (and therefore high-end from a 386 perspective) peripherals. That's what makes the setup interesting. That I have a graphics card there that has decent 2D acceleration in Windows, can handle higher resolutions and colors (CirrusLogic GD5429 2MB). The use of a fast SCSI disk is also above-standard and high-end from a high-end perspective, which is there because using the IDE interface significantly burdens the processor and therefore limits its performance for other activities (which is a problem especially when multitasking). The SCSI interface is more powerful and less burdensome, which is why it was also used in workstations and servers back then. As a bonus, SCSI disks themselves are usually faster and it is possible to use higher capacities without having to bypass the original BIOS board with modern means (for example, XT IDE). I also consider 32MB RAM or AWE32 to be above-standard from the 386 point of view. I'm not saying this to brag, but because I'm trying to explain what I was looking for and what the title of the video promised me. I expected something above-standard, something that goes beyond the ordinary and I didn't get that. Just a regular, comfortable, but not out of the ordinary 386. I have nothing against that or against your work at all, your work is fine, only the title of the video doesn't match the content. Hopefully Google translator will translate it sensibly.
@@Thales_WH Thank you for the detailed reply and explaining your thoughts. That said, I'm still going to have to disagree as I feel the video description is still perfectly representative of the build. I think it's a matter of our definition of "high-end" and as you said, it's all relative. I approached this build from both a pre-dominant 486-period correctness as well as from an average consumer viewpoint where you seem to be defining things from a more professional point or a point of having to be the most powerful possible build. I couldn't use things like an AWE32 as they didn't exist in the very early 90s and 32MB of RAM would have been absurdly expensive at the time. I almost want to say the word "exotic" fits what you're looking for rather than "high-end" as things like VLB on a 386 board seem pretty uncommon if not rare. I am looking at high-end more from the perspective of a consumer in the early 90s where compared to the vast amount of OEM machines, budget 286 PCs and even home builds my machine would be quite the premium build even if it is, as you say, ordinary. I'm not really a car guy but to make a comparison I'm looking at this more as going to a car lot and high-end being the Cadillac or a Mustang GT and your definition of high-end seems to be more like, it needs to be a limited edition straight from Alfa Romeo kind of view. I don't mean that as a dig, my view of the word is just a bit broader I think. All that said I did do a video after this one titled "AMD 386DX-40 PC, the fastest 386" and it's more or less what you're describing. I threw any sense of modesty or attempt at strict period correctness out the window with that build as it features a AMD 386DX-40, 256K of cache, 32MB of RAM, Cyrix FastMath co-processor, ET4000 ISA video and SCSI for the HDD and CD-ROM drive. That machine may be a little more to your definition of a high-end 386 though it doesn't have a VLB slot or anything as exotic as a 4MB ATI mach64 video card.
@@AncientElectronics Interesting discussion, I'm quite enjoying it (in a good way) :) We'll discuss it, but it'll be longer. Redy? :) If we look at it in terms of time, the last 386 boards (not complete sets, but sale-out alone boards) were still being sold in my area in 1995. I'm talking about boards where you couldn't put a processor other than a 386. OK, that was the definitive end of the 386 era, but in 1993 the 386DX 40MHz were still a sales hit and their sales were in full swing in the lower price segment, because the 486 + 486SX 25MHz motherboard, which was almost similar in performance, was still much more expensive. At that time, magazines also wrote about this duel, where it was often the main topic of an issue. (I also still have magazines from that time hidden away. Not all of them, but I have the one with this topic.) It's little more complicated with this board, because the board has a 386 soldered on it, but it also has a socket, where according to the manual (yes, I have the original printed manual for it), it supports a whole range of processors up to DX2 66MHz, including overdrive processors, and it can handle bus frequencies from 25MHz to 50MHz (check out the retro website for the DataExpert OPTI-495SX board, only they have a photo with a 486 soldered on, otherwise it's the same and they don't have a complete manual). The date 6.6.1992 is written on the EEPROM BIOS of my board. The Opti 82C495SX chipset used also dates back to 1992 and Intel introduced the 486 DX2 in mid-1992. I looked in the manual to see if there were any copyrights and they weren't to determine when the board started being produced, but I would see it as 1992. Such a board could easily have been sold in 1994 and it certainly wouldn't have been a resale, only a year later. It was a board for normal people, and the manual says right on the first line, I quote, "The Opti-495SX 3/486WB Cache motherboard is a Low-Cost three-chip solution offering optimal performance for low to mid range 386/486-based AT system". So even a cheap solution :) So you can't blame me for the fact that the board was somehow financially inaccessible to the average person at the time. Your board from the video about high-end 386 is from 1991 at the earliest, but it was probably also sold in 1992/93. The used UMC 82C480 chipset also supports 386 and 486, also supports local bus (but not VESA), also supports up to 64MB RAM, even supports cache up to 512KB :) The same MSI3124 board from your second video about the fastest 386. The one built on the Contaq 82C591 chipset from 1992, which also does everything I wrote, even the Vesa local bus. So it's not that fundamentally different from mine in terms of the era. Basically, yours and my 386 are contemporary companions of comparable categories on the same level. Only I have VESA local bus, but yours has Opti local bus or nothing. I have a socket for a coprocessor/486, yours only for 387. So you can't really blame me for not being contemporary either. Only in 1994 did the 386 sales decline, but they were still sold and were commonly on price lists. In the same year, 1994, the AWE32 and Cirrus Logic GD5429 were introduced. So there was no problem that they met and were bought at the same time. However, I really don't insist on the time period. I myself have a newer hard drive in my 386 because it is much quieter. Yes, 32MB would have been expensive at the time, but if you were building a high-end machine back then (as you state in your video description), you would have put it there :) Although what was high-end at the time depended a lot on what the machine was built for at the time. For games at that time, more than 4MB was useless, later 8MB. But I didn't look at it from the perspective of games, but from the perspective of running a multitasking environment, and there it is definitely not superfluous, but more than appropriate. When you build a high-end thing, it's clear that it won't be for a few pennies, so it seems a bit strange to argue that it would have been expensive at the time. At that time, I myself had a 33MHz i386DX+i387DX, just like you, and I had 8MB of RAM in it, which was fine back then (1993). But 32MB was possible. Regular boards usually had a ceiling of 64MB due to the chipset used, but only servers had that at the time (but they also had a ceiling somewhere else). 32MB could be found on workstations, but at that time there were other processors than the 386. Don't forget, though, that back then the lifespan of a PC was much longer than in later times and because PCs were significantly more expensive, upgrades were more common. The individual generations overlapped more than they do today. When Win95 came out, many machines were not replaced, but upgraded to at least 16MB RAM, and those who had more and were serious about it, even 32MB appeared. That's exactly where I was going. I wanted a 386, where the only limit was the processor itself and otherwise it would be as well adapted as possible for the time to run with Windows95. But what I have is still not the top. At that time, even more expensive and interesting components could be put in it, such as the more powerful graphics card with 4MB VRAM you mentioned (I would really like that, but where can I get it and not pay nonsense for it like back then?) and there were even more expensive cards than the AWE32 (for example Gravis Ultrasound). There were also better SCSI controllers than I have, which had cache. I just have a regular Adaptec 1542. Exotic and high-end are not mutually exclusive :) They are two separate concepts that can work both separately and together. VL bus 386 is undoubtedly a minority issue, but that's a lot of old hardware these days that hasn't been preserved because it ended up in the scrap heap long ago. I recently missed the auction of a real unicorn - a 386, which had 4x72pin SIMMs and 3x VLBs :( You have a board with an even more exotic bus than VLbus (you have ECS bus there) and that doesn't prevent you from considering your setup as period. As for your other video (which would deserve that title much more), you also don't have anything that would fundamentally deviate from it. To sum it up: if you say that you are looking at it from the perspective of a consumer of the early 90s, then that doesn't fit either, because the 486 was introduced in 1989 and the Pentium in 1993. Two more short notes: 1.) The CD drive from your second video is not, in principle, a thing that would not be period. It's true that few people had CD drives back then, but I still have a Mitsumi LU005 from 1992 hidden away from that time. Why couldn't it be in a well-equipped 386? 2.) There are many ways to approach sound in old games and I'm glad that we don't all see it the same way (that would be boring). For me, AWE32 for DOS is a sure bet that if the game can do it, I'll get 16bit sound from it and as a bonus wavetable. Any other cards, even if they are 16bit (for example in Windows), in DOS games I'll get a maximum of 8bit stereo from them, because the compatibility is only at the Soundblaster PRO level, not Soundblaster 16. Of course, that's a shame, because even if the card is of good quality (which is not difficult considering how poorly the analog part of Creative cards is made), it will kill it. Outside of DOS, I don't care, there I'm more guided by the quality of the output. Backward compatibility in Windows, OS/2 or anywhere else doesn't matter.
@@Thales_WH Once again thank you for the descriptive and well-thought-out reply, your are obviously quite passionate about the 386 platform. regardless I still have to disagree with you on the base topic which is our definition of what is "high-end" although I feel at this point it's becoming a little Pedantic from both of us. I have to use a car reference again, I promise I'll try to make it the final reference but I think it illustrates my point best. On average something like a Cadillac or a Lincoln (at least the the USA) are largely considered to be "high-end" or premium automobiles by the average consumer. they aren't rare or the fastest or even out of reach financially for many people but they still hold that distinction. I had a friend who got a well-paying position and one of his first goals was to acquire a Cadillac. now, if we're being relative, to someone like Bill Gates or a Rolls Royce owner a Cadillac could be seen as downright low class, and to someone without money a Honda Civic may be seen as "high-end" but to the average car buyer a Cadillac is indeed "high-end" and I would assert this is true for retro computers as well. To an average retro computer user or if we're just looking at the line of 386 computers I would still strongly assert the computer I featured here does fall in the "high-end" category and I do believe most average users would agree with that assertion. It's partially evidenced by your comment, in over a hundred comments, is the only one taking any issue with the use of the word. It is however fair to say and I would certainly concede that if we placed the "values" of what is "high-end" on a scale my build would fall on the lower end, in a way I would say this makes it even more representative of what a "high-end" 386 build would be, again, to the average retro PC user. I feel your definition of what is "High-end" is too narrow in this instance and why I suggested the word exotic may be more fitting despite "high-end" and exotic not being mutually exclusive or things like the AMD 386DX-40 not being anywhere close to rare or expensive, but then again I suppose if we wanted we could dissect the 386 line and its components and create 20 categories and sub categories in several different ways if we wanted. It's the internet though and you can't please everyone. I guarantee if I did this video and made any kind of claim of being period correct, even using such broad terms as "early 90s" while building a PC as the one you described I'd have at least two or three comments chastising me about how 32MB of memory was ludicrous and only available to the rich and how I was totally misrepresenting the era. hence why I had to be careful about how I talked about my 386DX-40 and my stated purpose for it was. I will conclude by being slightly off-topic as this whole thing has reminded me of a discussion on 386SX boards I stumbled across on Vogons where several people were arguing over how to classify a 386SX board with cache. One side argues that all 386SX boards were low-end or budget while the other argued that because the SX board featured both an AMD386-40SX and cache that it is was high-end or at least on the high-end of the budget segment of the market. It also reminds me of an argument I had years ago over the definition of "total loss" and the subject of the Chernobyl power plant of all things, lol I have enjoyed the discussion though and thank you for being polite, perhaps with the exception of the clickbait comment, which I still feel was uncalled for and of which I assure you was not my intention at all when making this video. At the end of the day, thankfully, the topic of how we classify a 30+ year computer does not influence the fates of millions or control the tides of the earth so I think this is one topic where it is safe to politely agree to disagree.
*shrugs* I'm just a guy sharing his hobby, not a professional. On a k6-3+ there is L1 and L2 cache on the cpu. If there is L2 on the board it becomes L3. I assumed the same logic applied here and the first level of cache became L1. Just kinda all seems like semantics to me.
I kind of skipped around in the video and maybe missed the claim. But if there is no CPU cache, the motherboard cache is the first level of cache, L1. If the CPU has cache (e.g. cyrix "486DLC" which is really a 386 CPU with 1 kB on-die cache) that is the first level of cache and therefor L1. If you are able to activate both on-die cache and motherboard cache the motherboard cache is no longer level 1 cache and is therefor level 2 in the hierarchy; meaning that if the L1 cache misses it looks in the L2 cache and if the L2 cache misses it goes out to RAM. The motherboard cache is no faster than it was before, it is just the second cache in the cache hierarchy and is therefor called L2.
My first PC was 386DX-33MHz too. with 4MB RAM, 100MB HDD, Hercules card and monochrome monitor but no sound card... Now I miss it so badly!
Great video and awesome vintage build. Also love the moment you said the control is much better you launch the car your driving into a police car. Prue Gold!
heh, yea, though in that case it had a lot more to do with my terrible video game driving skills than the game speed.
@@AncientElectronics Also with the 40Mhz AMD CPU if you de-turbo(also nice you also look at the turbo as going faster) the CPU it should run at 20Mhz which maybe perfect for Wing Commander. Have a good one.
With the turbo button, I'm curious if anyone has figured out if you can modify the bios or settings to change its behaviour. I believe it introduces wait states to make it slower?
Not that I know of. That would be very helpful though if there was some method to customize what we can get with the turbo feature.
@@AncientElectronicsthere might be i386 motherboards where the turbo switch (short/open behaviour is not standardised) might switch to XT speed (7 or 8 MHz AFAIR)
It is possible to check if the board uses wait states, just use turbo button and check the frequency with CPU check app. You would need to consult the spec sheet of the chipset but good luck with finding one for UMC ones. I've checked SiS 471 chipset datasheet before and that one can use only wait states. It is however possible to configure some registers to make it either 1/3 or 1/2 speed but never tried it out. It would definitely involve editing the registers through Modbin, or maybe finding some utility that could do that in real time.
@@AncientElectronics DRAM SPEED Faster, DRAM CAS Pulse Width 1T, Cache Write Back enable, Cache Write Cycle 3T, Cache Burst Read Cycle 2T, BUSCLK 7.159 MHz or CPUCLK/4, DRAM Hidden Refresh enabled.
Some MBs do recognize a keystroke combination for setting into slow/turbo mode.
im not really into computers but hearing you talk about it is oddly relaxing
have a sub
I always look forward to your videos! 386 is an era that I have yet to explore. Right now I'm charting a course through VESA Local Bus land.
Thank you. VLB cards are pretty fun to mess around with. Certainly an interesting time in computing.
Very nice!! It takes me so much back to my childhood :)
Nostalgia for machines where you could really tell it was computing.
Same here. It played Wing Commander the best
back when western digital made video cards
Damn nice build, that would have been my dream machine in 92-93
Also seems to have vesa local bus at the bottom ISA slot, just need to add the connection perhaps?.
It's possible, I have a friend with a 386 board with a working VLB slot though I have my doubts even if it was soldered on that it would work. I believe the BIOS and the chipset would need to support it which is no guarantee.
@@AncientElectronics Yes, it's not guaranteed to work. Btw i am rebuilding my first PC (Baby AT system, originally a 486 VLB DX2-66) from the mid 90's and it's missing the MHZ display (got removed) one with two full digits and a one with jumper settings. But i have now a working replacement, only that it has 3 full digits,
is not controlled by jumpers but by a chip. Also has a changable battery on there, a small LR41 coincell battery. It will work in my case but i am wondering how to set up this thing to show the correct MHZ??. It has 10 pins and they read from the left. LTHRR+-SST. PD 900 also on the board, the model perhaps?.
U need parts of anything, got a warehouse full of 1980s components from housings to resistors. Nice videel
Your footage of Wing Commander definitely illustrates a major advantage of DOSBox...being able to control the number of CPU cycles available at any time to dial in the right speed.
Excellent Video.
Great video! To be honest, I'd be pretty happy with the performance of 33mhz with cache off, it's a *bit* fast, but in my experience, not much. Also, it'll get slower with more ships on the fight (the simulator is basically just you against a bunch of foes, and it starts 1v1)
Awesome build you got there, kudos!
Please show off more games from that era on this setup!
Someday I wanna do a 386 build with the exodos project
Difference between 386SX and DX models is in the bus size: both processors are internally 32 bit (full 32 bit instruction architecture), but the DX model has also a 32 bit data and address bus, while the SX model has a 16 bit data bus and 24 bit address bus. So half the data throughput between DX and SX models, which has a tremendous impact on overall speed.
Awesome Video !
In 1993, my neighbor got a 386SX-33 Mhz, 8MB RAM, 40 MB HDD, no sound card. I was at his house every single day, I'd watch him play games for hours, I wasn't allowed to touch it, but I didn't care, I was witnessing history in the making, those 'puters were fascinating! I myself had only been "exposed" to an 8-bit MSX computer before that and my Atari 2600. 4 years later, I had a computer of my own, in 1997, it was a Pentium 100 Mhz, 32MB RAM, 1Gb HDD, CD-ROM, Soundblaster, the typical setup of that time I guess. I wish I still had that PC.
I like that mini color crt
It has a little bit of screen burn but its not too bad. It makes a nice CRT for testing things on.
@@AncientElectronics oled screens have a similar burn in issue like that, my samsung phone already has a bit of burn in.
I have a PCI version of the et4000, i need to test compatibility on that
sup about the markings on the cdrom drives, i use a bong cleaner called klear kryptonite, it removes any markings right up and removes a bit of yellowing too, my old compaq uses a modern lg dvd rw drive and no one can tell lol
Btw I've tested many ISA VGA cards too and came to the same conclusion - the WD90C31 is a very good fast card. They also tend to play nice with LCD displays. Some of the ET4000s I tried (and all the Trident 8900D ones which are - surprise surprise - nice and fast too) exhibit jail bars sampled by the LCD ADC circuitry. On the other hand, (at least?) most WDC cards showed a nice and even picture.
....And I've reached the end - well, you can keep the CPU, it'll work just this fine underclocked with another (40-50MHz) crystal. If you have to go out of your way to get another one with lower rating - be assured it doesn't really matter.
For systems like this, I wonder if a crystal oscillator multi-socket adaptor would be practical or of any benefit. For instance, if you could just install a 40MHz DX for example, and then have an adaptor in the crystal socket that had 80, 66, and say 50 MHz crystals with a switch you could run out the back. That way you could have three different CPU speeds, really more if you count the lower speeds you would get with the turbo button. Probably overkill but it would make the ultimate 386 for speed compatibility.
@@AncientElectronics New to me, but I definitely like the idea!
Good choice on the WD90C31. I use to run the WD90C33 VLB variant in a former DX4 build and it was speedy with DOOM and other DOS games. They continuously trade blows with the ET4000/W32. Never had an issue using my WD90C33 with LCD displays. Sadly the VLB board died, and it was replaced with a 5x86-P75 / S3 Vision864 PCI build.
My childhood dream...meanwhile having AMIGA 500 1 MB ;) of course, without taking anything away from the Amiga 500 1 MB
In the 1980s, the Amiga was top of the range!
Fun fact: The first-run batch of DX 33 chips had some defective CPUs. The one you have, marked with a double sigma, is ok for 32-bit software. The defective ones were marked "16-BIT S/W ONLY"
I’m blown away that they wouldn’t just issue a complete recall and replace the affected chips, but I suppose early yields must have been bad enough to need to satisfy demand in anyway possible.
@@sedrosken831
At the time, almost nobody ran 32-bit software. It wasn't a huge problem.
I Found with a 40 mhz 386sx you can get perfect performance with wing commander.
Not all 386SX-40 boxes were made equal though - what chipset? What were your ram timings? Any cache, or wait states? ISA clock? What VGA card were you using?
That’s simultaneously the most annoying thing and the most interesting thing about the PC platform, you can get some very interesting differences between builds that nominally would seem the same. You could go from something that would feel utterly glacial to something that’s still rather slow but has a bit of pep in its step in its own way.
@@sedrosken831 ram speed - no idea, I just plopped in 4x1mb 30 pin simms I had lying around and hoped for the best.
Chipset - Acer
Isa Clock 12 MHz
VGA Card Trident 8900 with 512kb ram
No cache
All wait states are set as minimum as possible without bricking the machine.
The next time I open it /relook at the biosI will happily update this comment :) - currently messing around with a 486dx4 100 a lot lately so that has taken over my memory a bit :)
I actually considered a video testing this. I got a hold of a 386sx-40 board and started putting it together until I found out the board was defective so I ended up not making that video and doing my other 386sx-25 video instead.
The first PC I bought was a 386 cost me £1350 which was about $2500 US in about 1991, came with an AMD 386DX 40mhz, Asustek motherboard, 4Mb RAM, 130Mb HDD on a cached HDD controller, 1Mb Trident Graphics card, floppy drive, 14" CRT. I upgraded it to 8Mb, added another 210Mb HDD, swapped the Trident for a Tseng ET4000, added a Cyrix Maths co-processor, Adlib compatible soundcard, CD-Rom drive. I remember throwing the motherboard and all the bits in the bin about year 2002, wish I hadn't now really.
love it! and love Ultima VII. used to play it on my 486dx2-80, the game was too fast xd uhh i remember some games were picky about memory management programs, some needed it, some refused to run with it
This is interesting to me right now as I plan on building a 386 DX. Assuming the parts are working, then I will have a CX486 upgrade chip in there at 33MHz. I am very curious to see how that performs when de-turbo'd. I'm wondering if the extra boost from the instruction set and genuine L1 cache combined with low clockspeed might make a difference.
I'm planning on using a Cirrus Logic GD5422 1MB which as I recall should be highly compatible, fast and have the bit blitter for sprites and Windows accelleration. I will pit that against mt ET4000.
This is one of my "gap" PC builds. I've yet to find a stable or working 386 board. All 3 so far have either been Doa or they stop working and even a recap doesn't do much.
Someday but for now I have my 486 and soon my 5170 will be upgraded so the 386 will just be a nice to have rig lol
Love the parts selections tho, definitely a higher end with the pro and that video card.
sorry to hear that about the 386 boards. I've had generally good luck with 386 motherboards over the years myself. Good to hear your 5170 is on its way to being finished. Mine blew the PSU and I still haven't found a replacement yet.
@@AncientElectronics yea..so far 2 with the dx40s don't even boot or post...
A Packard bell doesn't power up at all but each part does when connected to separate board
And bummer about your 5170, I've been thinking about seeing if there's a way to rebuild the supply just to prolong mine but haven't dug too far.
@@AncientElectronics I just got done with my upgrades and that weird load circuit is super sensitive. I had to install a bad hard drive just for the load lol
The music from legacy was done by the same guy who did X-COM Terror From The Deep and it shows 😂 not that that's a bad thing. Nice 386 build btw 👍
1. Those are some fat scanlines in DOS - I like it.
2. Feels like a 25 Mhz 386 would have been more appropriate for some of the games trialled
But that was a nice trick you pulled with TD3 and especially WC.
3. Blake Stone could probably run fine on a fast 286. I seem to recall ROTT being a more 386-appropriate game.
4. I'd love to see (hear) how Planet X3 performs on your wonderful MT-32.
5. I wonder how necessary a retro-PC is for Duke Nukem 2 now that Rigel Engine exists. Same for Blake Stone and BStone, although the historical value of playing on original hardware is undeniable.
6. Your build is perfect for 25th Anniversary, and I'd love to see Judgement Rites on it. The way 25th Anniversary runs on it justifies the entire build.
7. Let's see how well it runs Doom. And that cut-down version of Doom for low-spec computers.
8. Curious about how XCom runs on it - a game that required a 386 at minimum.
Scratch Blake Stone on a fast 286. It was going to run on 20 Mhz 286 originally, but that was later nixed for a min. 25 Mhz 386.
In terms of games well-suited to the system:
A somewhat 386-specific game is Frontier: Elite II, as the CD-rom release requires a 386SX.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe recommended at least a 386. Maybe your fast one is right for it.
XCom runs okay on a 386 [maybe well on your fast one], good on a 486, too fast on XP-era systems.
Someone else noted this on VOGONS:
Knights of the Sky (1990)--runs too fast--recommended 386SX-20. When I disable L1 on my P200MMX, it runs at about Am386DX-25 and is still a little too fast, hence my estimate of 386SX-20.
Ultima VI (1990), Savage Empire (1990), Martian Dreams (1991)--runs too fast--recommended any 386. I've seen this game run acceptably on a fast 286, but if you can get into any 386 range by disabling L1, you should be fine.
"Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood has one of those tricky timer issues. Near the end of the game you need to go through a maze and make it to the girl in time. This timer expires too soon (=you are not given enough time to reach your destination) even on a 386/40MHz. On 386/33Mhz it's doable but still marginal, turn turbo off and then it's easy. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else so I though to document it here, the scene being one the the final scenes in the game doesn't help with popularity."
If you also have a 486 then I'd probably slow this 386 down to 25MHz or so. But I think it just depends which games you're in the mood to play and what other machines you have to cover different speeds.
the comparison benchmarks I have seen on vogons seem to put the wd90c31 at the top of the pure ISA video cards.
not sure if it keeps up at higher clock speeds. try putting one in a #ISAdoom25fps build?
From Phil's computer Lab: "WD ISA card is the fastest by the tiniest of margins. It also doesn't need UNIVBE, the ET4000 does"
I've run the WDC against an et4000 in an OCed AMD 5x86 build @ 160MHz and it still was as fast or faster.
Where did Phil say that about the card? I didn't know he benchmarked it in the past, didn't see anything about it on his website.
@@AncientElectronics I tried to give the link but the youtube deleted it. As expected.
it's a Vogons thread titled "14 ISA and VLB graphics cards on a 486DX2 66" from 9/9/2016.
@@AncientElectronics if you are having a hard time finding it, the TLDR is basically the same results you had. the biggest improvement was in doom and that was not even 1 fps.[19.1->19.4]
@@Miasmark I found it. Im glad that at least confirms my results. I'm a bit surprised people in the retro community won't shut up about the et4000 but no one ever mentions the WDC card when it comes to suggesting fast ISA cards. Not to say the et4000 isn't a great card.
@@AncientElectronics yeah I think it doesn't help that the video card does not have a sexy name. Other than the diamond Speedstar 24x. I have to lookup the numbers after WD everytime I think about it to just ensure there is not some other WD card I do not know about.
I want a dx40 so badly
They seem pretty common and not too pricy which is nice since most "end of an era" type parts seem to be rare and sell for a premium
@@AncientElectronics I’ve been looking for a while now, part of me almost just wants to settle for an early 486
is 128K cache a thing.. or can there be more.. and.. does it make sense ?
Many boards have an option to support 128k of l2 cache. On a 486 you start to see diminished returns after 256k.
I think it's running fine. And is ANYONE actually any good at playing Star Trek 25th Anniversary? I really tried but I was just downright terrible!
Yeah, 16MHz mode seems to mostly hit the spot, with the fast components and cache it's probably running about equivalent to the 20MHzDX that most sources prescribe as being the optimal CPU speed. I've only played the 25th anniversary edition twice but I found the ship combat to be especially difficult. I hope to seriously tackle the game one day so maybe with some experience it won't be so punishing.
@@AncientElectronics Judgement Rites, the sequel, has an option to disable combat or something like that.
For combat in Star Trek 25th Anniversary you really have to learn the keyboard controls. The thing I notice almost nobody knows about is how to change the ship speed (use the number keys). Default speed is too slow so you get hammered by all the enemy ships. Speed up to be more evasive, slow down if you want to land more hits. You can even move backwards (slowly). The current speed setting and the actual output of each engine are shown in those bar graphs above the viewscreen.
Also you can prioritize specific repairs. If your impulse engines get damaged you will lose speed, so it's very important to keep them in good condition.
Just finished a 386 build myself :D. Try an AMD 40Mhz 386DX. They turbo to 20Mhz.
Why would you sand over the logo on the drive?
Because you don't want it there. Having CD-RW or DVD on a drive installed into a 386 era PC looks wrong. It kills the esthetic IMO and breaks the illusion. Its the same reason I dislike using floppy emulator drives.
@@AncientElectronics Ah, defacing vintage hardware. Nice.
@@infinitecanadian I feel like we've had this conversation before. There are literally MILLIONS of PC CD-ROM and DVD drives. They are virtually worthless and I wouldn't be surprised if some factory somewhere was still making them. We're not talking about some rare x2 caddy drive, we're talking about $2.99 DVD drives at Goodwill.
That time there had been propritary CD Drives around (Panasonic, Mitsumi, ...). The first CD ROM Writer had been SCSI. AFAIR burning software firstly had been available for Windows 95.
To be professional these days you had to go for SCSI anyway. ☝️
@@AncientElectronics It would still be important if the drive was used by someone else who wanted to know what it was.
I am not sure why there still exists throughout the enthusiasts this old misconception that ET4000 are the fastest ISA VGA cards..This was the truth around when the cards with this chip were released up until 1993-1994..But there are faster (not by small margin) ISA cards with Cirrus Logic GD5429/GD5432 and 1MB of RAM..These are the fastest ISA video cards I have encountered - almost close to a slow VLB one..
Of course they are rare as a dodo but still 😂
ATI mach 32 was faster, and it was released in 1992.
@@moeschizlac faster than what?
@@AngelDemonn The Tseng Labs 4000ax. Also the mach 32 is a 64 bit 2d accelerator with a built in coprocessor, has memory interleave, compatible with cga and ega for older games, 2mb ram max, and it displays true color unlike Tseng Labs 4000. Imagine 16 bit and 24 bit color in Dos compared to other cards of the time with 256 colors.
I wish you'd played Wolfestein 3d or Spear of Destiny on this machine. :'(
What's the point of putting your hand in the intro?
I'm really not sure how to answer that. I never thought anyone would bother to ask such a question. theatrics maybe? I just kind of like too?
@@AncientElectronics Seems pointless but it's your channel. Other than that it was good content.
most hilarious comment i've read so far into this year
Certainly everyone's idea of 'ultimate' is subjective. My own 'ultimate 386' is by far the 'worst' of those I own, being that big 16MHz one which is worse in every way than the younger, smaller and vastly less dumb 33MHz machine on the desk. I do remember the discussion about the WDC card and do suspect it's just the BIOS holding it back. I even have another one that's much faster so should try swapping the ROMs, if I didn't already and just forgot. Almost wonder if it's stuck in 8-Bit compatibility mode for some reason. In any case, ET4000s are grossly overrated by some and there are plenty of other cards, those WDC ones included, that will work just as well most of the time. Outside of synthetic tests, your CPU will probably be the limit long before that video card will be.
Not sure how I've never heard of The Legacy: Realm of Terror before, but want to find time to try it now.
As a guy who deliberately ignores system requirements and plays things at single figure frame rates, I can't answer your question about switching the CPU. You'll just have to do that one by feel yourself, I think. It's another one of those subjective things where only you can decide what you want the machine to do, how you want it to do it and whether this goal was achieved. It at least looks fine to me.
Although I haven't played very far into Legacy: Realme of Terror I do eventually plan to. It feels like an interesting mix of RPG / Adventure game with a survival horror theme. I'll likely keep the 33MHz 386 since when it's running in 16MHz mode it feels about right as it should be roughly equivalent to the 20MHz 386 that a lot of these speed-sensitive titles call for.
@@AncientElectronicsbtw. AFAIK "WDC" stands for Western Digital Corporation
Mine is 386DX-40. It was highly integrated, cheap to mass produce and kept selling for way longer than was at all reasonable (into the pentium era!). It made IBM PC affordable. Before this I would say the amiga was just so clearly superior. It also coincided with CD-rom drives being somewhat affordable and affordable adlib clones and SB16 and clones. It also happened to coincide with ultima underworld, wolfenstein 3d and ultima 7.
Great✌
Cool, but wouldn't it be better to build the slowest 486DX with a clock of 25Mhz than a medium fast 386 ?
clock for clock a 486 is still noticeably faster than a 386 at the same clock speed so a 25MHz 486 would still be likely too fast. Regardless, using a 486 would completely take the fun out of this build.
I just looked up some benchmarks and testing and it appears even the slowest 486, the 486sx-16 is roughly equivalent to a 386dx-33 so any 486 will be too fast.
Test Drive 3 was such a horrible execution of a great idea. You can see the speed of the 'game time' by following the clock in the top left. The more stuff that is going on, the slower the game runs. It is worse even than Geoff Crammond's F1GP / world circuit game, where the game would at least never run faster than real time, only slower if you set details too high.
Get pentium and early 3d games, no more speed issue :)
"Aesthetics last.." Ha, no shit.. LOL
This not the most powerfull 386. The most powerfull 386 is the AMD 386 DX 40
I never said it was the most powerful.
Sorry, but that video title is total clickbait. I was expecting something completely different. Nothing against the machine, it's just fine, it's just completely ordinary and there's nothing high-end about it at all. Maybe just a disc, if we're talking about eras.
I'd have to disagree with you and I admit I take a small amount of offence to accuseing me of clickbaiting. You could say it's merely a matter of semantics but I certainly would call this system high-end as far as pure 386 builds go. The 386DX-33 was Intel's fastest 386 and 386 boards with L2 cache were the higher-end offerings though not necessarily rare. high-end doesn't necessarily mean exotic or fastest (the AMD 386DX-40 was faster). It's like the guy at the yacht club looking down at the Lamborghini driver because you own a Rolls Royce, they are both high-end.
@@AncientElectronics There is no need to be offended right away. I am aware that things are relative, but I still see it differently. I will try to explain it. I look at it from the point of view of any exceptionality. Most of the 386s that I have encountered, not only today, but also at the time when they were relevant work machines, had a frequency of 33MHz or 40MHz. (I am talking about assemblies made of standard components, not branded machines with proprietary components such as IBM and the like.) I had a lot of them back then (the first half of the 90s). I can count the others on my fingers during service work. 33MHz is therefore a completely common frequency in terms of representation. The absolute majority of 386DXs were equipped with some L2 cache. I have only experienced one case where this was not the case and it was not possible to add a cache. All of this cache was level 1 (L1), 386 cannot have an L2 cache in principle. So I do not take this as an argument. But 386 can be exceptional and above-standard in something else, whether in design or equipment. For example, the Compaq SystemPro is a completely exceptional and high-end machine. But we don't have to go that far and I have no problem admitting that for gamers it may not be high-end. From a gamer's perspective, the setup I have myself could be interesting (even though I'm not a gamer, I just enjoy tinkering with old electronics). Its 386 is not exceptional in frequency. It's a normal AMD 386DX 40MHz, but there are other interesting things. For example, the fact that it has an above-standard L1 cache of 256KB. Or the fact that it has a VESA local bus, which allows you to connect more interesting (and therefore high-end from a 386 perspective) peripherals. That's what makes the setup interesting. That I have a graphics card there that has decent 2D acceleration in Windows, can handle higher resolutions and colors (CirrusLogic GD5429 2MB). The use of a fast SCSI disk is also above-standard and high-end from a high-end perspective, which is there because using the IDE interface significantly burdens the processor and therefore limits its performance for other activities (which is a problem especially when multitasking). The SCSI interface is more powerful and less burdensome, which is why it was also used in workstations and servers back then. As a bonus, SCSI disks themselves are usually faster and it is possible to use higher capacities without having to bypass the original BIOS board with modern means (for example, XT IDE). I also consider 32MB RAM or AWE32 to be above-standard from the 386 point of view. I'm not saying this to brag, but because I'm trying to explain what I was looking for and what the title of the video promised me. I expected something above-standard, something that goes beyond the ordinary and I didn't get that. Just a regular, comfortable, but not out of the ordinary 386. I have nothing against that or against your work at all, your work is fine, only the title of the video doesn't match the content. Hopefully Google translator will translate it sensibly.
@@Thales_WH Thank you for the detailed reply and explaining your thoughts. That said, I'm still going to have to disagree as I feel the video description is still perfectly representative of the build. I think it's a matter of our definition of "high-end" and as you said, it's all relative. I approached this build from both a pre-dominant 486-period correctness as well as from an average consumer viewpoint where you seem to be defining things from a more professional point or a point of having to be the most powerful possible build. I couldn't use things like an AWE32 as they didn't exist in the very early 90s and 32MB of RAM would have been absurdly expensive at the time. I almost want to say the word "exotic" fits what you're looking for rather than "high-end" as things like VLB on a 386 board seem pretty uncommon if not rare. I am looking at high-end more from the perspective of a consumer in the early 90s where compared to the vast amount of OEM machines, budget 286 PCs and even home builds my machine would be quite the premium build even if it is, as you say, ordinary. I'm not really a car guy but to make a comparison I'm looking at this more as going to a car lot and high-end being the Cadillac or a Mustang GT and your definition of high-end seems to be more like, it needs to be a limited edition straight from Alfa Romeo kind of view. I don't mean that as a dig, my view of the word is just a bit broader I think.
All that said I did do a video after this one titled "AMD 386DX-40 PC, the fastest 386" and it's more or less what you're describing. I threw any sense of modesty or attempt at strict period correctness out the window with that build as it features a AMD 386DX-40, 256K of cache, 32MB of RAM, Cyrix FastMath co-processor, ET4000 ISA video and SCSI for the HDD and CD-ROM drive. That machine may be a little more to your definition of a high-end 386 though it doesn't have a VLB slot or anything as exotic as a 4MB ATI mach64 video card.
@@AncientElectronics Interesting discussion, I'm quite enjoying it (in a good way) :) We'll discuss it, but it'll be longer. Redy? :) If we look at it in terms of time, the last 386 boards (not complete sets, but sale-out alone boards) were still being sold in my area in 1995. I'm talking about boards where you couldn't put a processor other than a 386. OK, that was the definitive end of the 386 era, but in 1993 the 386DX 40MHz were still a sales hit and their sales were in full swing in the lower price segment, because the 486 + 486SX 25MHz motherboard, which was almost similar in performance, was still much more expensive. At that time, magazines also wrote about this duel, where it was often the main topic of an issue. (I also still have magazines from that time hidden away. Not all of them, but I have the one with this topic.) It's little more complicated with this board, because the board has a 386 soldered on it, but it also has a socket, where according to the manual (yes, I have the original printed manual for it), it supports a whole range of processors up to DX2 66MHz, including overdrive processors, and it can handle bus frequencies from 25MHz to 50MHz (check out the retro website for the DataExpert OPTI-495SX board, only they have a photo with a 486 soldered on, otherwise it's the same and they don't have a complete manual). The date 6.6.1992 is written on the EEPROM BIOS of my board. The Opti 82C495SX chipset used also dates back to 1992 and Intel introduced the 486 DX2 in mid-1992. I looked in the manual to see if there were any copyrights and they weren't to determine when the board started being produced, but I would see it as 1992. Such a board could easily have been sold in 1994 and it certainly wouldn't have been a resale, only a year later. It was a board for normal people, and the manual says right on the first line, I quote, "The Opti-495SX 3/486WB Cache motherboard is a Low-Cost three-chip solution offering optimal performance for low to mid range 386/486-based AT system". So even a cheap solution :) So you can't blame me for the fact that the board was somehow financially inaccessible to the average person at the time.
Your board from the video about high-end 386 is from 1991 at the earliest, but it was probably also sold in 1992/93. The used UMC 82C480 chipset also supports 386 and 486, also supports local bus (but not VESA), also supports up to 64MB RAM, even supports cache up to 512KB :) The same MSI3124 board from your second video about the fastest 386. The one built on the Contaq 82C591 chipset from 1992, which also does everything I wrote, even the Vesa local bus. So it's not that fundamentally different from mine in terms of the era. Basically, yours and my 386 are contemporary companions of comparable categories on the same level. Only I have VESA local bus, but yours has Opti local bus or nothing. I have a socket for a coprocessor/486, yours only for 387. So you can't really blame me for not being contemporary either.
Only in 1994 did the 386 sales decline, but they were still sold and were commonly on price lists. In the same year, 1994, the AWE32 and Cirrus Logic GD5429 were introduced. So there was no problem that they met and were bought at the same time. However, I really don't insist on the time period. I myself have a newer hard drive in my 386 because it is much quieter. Yes, 32MB would have been expensive at the time, but if you were building a high-end machine back then (as you state in your video description), you would have put it there :) Although what was high-end at the time depended a lot on what the machine was built for at the time. For games at that time, more than 4MB was useless, later 8MB. But I didn't look at it from the perspective of games, but from the perspective of running a multitasking environment, and there it is definitely not superfluous, but more than appropriate. When you build a high-end thing, it's clear that it won't be for a few pennies, so it seems a bit strange to argue that it would have been expensive at the time. At that time, I myself had a 33MHz i386DX+i387DX, just like you, and I had 8MB of RAM in it, which was fine back then (1993). But 32MB was possible. Regular boards usually had a ceiling of 64MB due to the chipset used, but only servers had that at the time (but they also had a ceiling somewhere else). 32MB could be found on workstations, but at that time there were other processors than the 386. Don't forget, though, that back then the lifespan of a PC was much longer than in later times and because PCs were significantly more expensive, upgrades were more common. The individual generations overlapped more than they do today. When Win95 came out, many machines were not replaced, but upgraded to at least 16MB RAM, and those who had more and were serious about it, even 32MB appeared. That's exactly where I was going. I wanted a 386, where the only limit was the processor itself and otherwise it would be as well adapted as possible for the time to run with Windows95.
But what I have is still not the top. At that time, even more expensive and interesting components could be put in it, such as the more powerful graphics card with 4MB VRAM you mentioned (I would really like that, but where can I get it and not pay nonsense for it like back then?) and there were even more expensive cards than the AWE32 (for example Gravis Ultrasound). There were also better SCSI controllers than I have, which had cache. I just have a regular Adaptec 1542.
Exotic and high-end are not mutually exclusive :) They are two separate concepts that can work both separately and together. VL bus 386 is undoubtedly a minority issue, but that's a lot of old hardware these days that hasn't been preserved because it ended up in the scrap heap long ago. I recently missed the auction of a real unicorn - a 386, which had 4x72pin SIMMs and 3x VLBs :( You have a board with an even more exotic bus than VLbus (you have ECS bus there) and that doesn't prevent you from considering your setup as period. As for your other video (which would deserve that title much more), you also don't have anything that would fundamentally deviate from it.
To sum it up: if you say that you are looking at it from the perspective of a consumer of the early 90s, then that doesn't fit either, because the 486 was introduced in 1989 and the Pentium in 1993.
Two more short notes:
1.) The CD drive from your second video is not, in principle, a thing that would not be period. It's true that few people had CD drives back then, but I still have a Mitsumi LU005 from 1992 hidden away from that time. Why couldn't it be in a well-equipped 386?
2.) There are many ways to approach sound in old games and I'm glad that we don't all see it the same way (that would be boring). For me, AWE32 for DOS is a sure bet that if the game can do it, I'll get 16bit sound from it and as a bonus wavetable. Any other cards, even if they are 16bit (for example in Windows), in DOS games I'll get a maximum of 8bit stereo from them, because the compatibility is only at the Soundblaster PRO level, not Soundblaster 16. Of course, that's a shame, because even if the card is of good quality (which is not difficult considering how poorly the analog part of Creative cards is made), it will kill it. Outside of DOS, I don't care, there I'm more guided by the quality of the output. Backward compatibility in Windows, OS/2 or anywhere else doesn't matter.
@@Thales_WH Once again thank you for the descriptive and well-thought-out reply, your are obviously quite passionate about the 386 platform. regardless I still have to disagree with you on the base topic which is our definition of what is "high-end" although I feel at this point it's becoming a little Pedantic from both of us.
I have to use a car reference again, I promise I'll try to make it the final reference but I think it illustrates my point best. On average something like a Cadillac or a Lincoln (at least the the USA) are largely considered to be "high-end" or premium automobiles by the average consumer. they aren't rare or the fastest or even out of reach financially for many people but they still hold that distinction. I had a friend who got a well-paying position and one of his first goals was to acquire a Cadillac. now, if we're being relative, to someone like Bill Gates or a Rolls Royce owner a Cadillac could be seen as downright low class, and to someone without money a Honda Civic may be seen as "high-end" but to the average car buyer a Cadillac is indeed "high-end" and I would assert this is true for retro computers as well. To an average retro computer user or if we're just looking at the line of 386 computers I would still strongly assert the computer I featured here does fall in the "high-end" category and I do believe most average users would agree with that assertion. It's partially evidenced by your comment, in over a hundred comments, is the only one taking any issue with the use of the word.
It is however fair to say and I would certainly concede that if we placed the "values" of what is "high-end" on a scale my build would fall on the lower end, in a way I would say this makes it even more representative of what a "high-end" 386 build would be, again, to the average retro PC user. I feel your definition of what is "High-end" is too narrow in this instance and why I suggested the word exotic may be more fitting despite "high-end" and exotic not being mutually exclusive or things like the AMD 386DX-40 not being anywhere close to rare or expensive, but then again I suppose if we wanted we could dissect the 386 line and its components and create 20 categories and sub categories in several different ways if we wanted.
It's the internet though and you can't please everyone. I guarantee if I did this video and made any kind of claim of being period correct, even using such broad terms as "early 90s" while building a PC as the one you described I'd have at least two or three comments chastising me about how 32MB of memory was ludicrous and only available to the rich and how I was totally misrepresenting the era. hence why I had to be careful about how I talked about my 386DX-40 and my stated purpose for it was.
I will conclude by being slightly off-topic as this whole thing has reminded me of a discussion on 386SX boards I stumbled across on Vogons where several people were arguing over how to classify a 386SX board with cache. One side argues that all 386SX boards were low-end or budget while the other argued that because the SX board featured both an AMD386-40SX and cache that it is was high-end or at least on the high-end of the budget segment of the market. It also reminds me of an argument I had years ago over the definition of "total loss" and the subject of the Chernobyl power plant of all things, lol
I have enjoyed the discussion though and thank you for being polite, perhaps with the exception of the clickbait comment, which I still feel was uncalled for and of which I assure you was not my intention at all when making this video. At the end of the day, thankfully, the topic of how we classify a 30+ year computer does not influence the fates of millions or control the tides of the earth so I think this is one topic where it is safe to politely agree to disagree.
386 мая любовь
Errrrrrr, nope. L2 Cache does not become L1 cache. Please read up on how cache works.
*shrugs* I'm just a guy sharing his hobby, not a professional. On a k6-3+ there is L1 and L2 cache on the cpu. If there is L2 on the board it becomes L3. I assumed the same logic applied here and the first level of cache became L1. Just kinda all seems like semantics to me.
Perhaps while he's doing that you could look up how to not sound like a smarmy dick in a comments section.
I kind of skipped around in the video and maybe missed the claim. But if there is no CPU cache, the motherboard cache is the first level of cache, L1. If the CPU has cache (e.g. cyrix "486DLC" which is really a 386 CPU with 1 kB on-die cache) that is the first level of cache and therefor L1. If you are able to activate both on-die cache and motherboard cache the motherboard cache is no longer level 1 cache and is therefor level 2 in the hierarchy; meaning that if the L1 cache misses it looks in the L2 cache and if the L2 cache misses it goes out to RAM. The motherboard cache is no faster than it was before, it is just the second cache in the cache hierarchy and is therefor called L2.
Who cares, right? Just enjoy your computers.