Hardware & Technical Intel 486 compatability issues

Sir SaiCo · Jun 3, 2015

Morbad said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos

+rep for getting wierd Al into a post.

jmg · Jun 3, 2015

Midnight_Sun323 said:
486. Man... there's some old memories.

Yeah.. I actually remember building my first 486dx2 out of a spare ibm 5150 case (hellllooooo dremel). This was to "upgrade" from my awesome 386 machine.
I know this guy is a troll, but the biggest issue with the 486 wouldn't necessarily be the processor, but really the graphics. "VESA" was the standard back then, pci IIRC was only on high end machines. And I'm not talking pci-express, or e-pci. Just plain old 33mzh pci. That was the high-end back then.
.
Since my car is in the shop, maybe this could be a summer project -- build a 486 from the best vintage parts and see if ED can run on it ...
.
and yeah, +1 rep on weird al. funny video.

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Griefertroll said:
Nah.. I have a Pentium-MMX 233MHz with 256MB RAM and a PCI Voodoo 3 3000 with 16MB VRAM Graphics Card and I can not run Eliteangerous even at lowest settings!! Can you believe it?!
However it runs all previous Elite versions at max settings !

you need to drop in a 3d expansion card man!!

robbyp · Jun 3, 2015

486? Thats very fancy. My first PC was a 8088.

Now thats hardcore - 2-3 mins boot up time, and the response of a dead snail. Made the BBC micro look like a Cray supercomputer.

Cmdr Gazer__ · Jun 3, 2015

DOS pah! CP/M's the future.

jovanni · Jun 3, 2015

I had made to run elite with full settings no problem in a 386 SX please with 4MB ram ....I don't get it why you can do it......aaahh sory I was running Frontier: Elite....sorry for that

jmg · Jun 3, 2015

Sir SaiCo said:
Ahhh, this brings back memories.... my first PC was a 486 DX2 66... back in '94... sooo old.

8 Meg of memory and 500 meg hard drive... i remember my friends saying "why the hell do you want a 500 meg hard disc?... you will NEVER use all of that space"

Surfing the internet on a dialup 9600 modem.... ah those were the days.

ha.., my first "pc" was an 8088. I rememver "upgrading" to the drop-in nec v-10 -- running at a cool 6mhz (vs. the 4.77 MHz for the 8088). Note, that's a "M" after the number, not a "G". Amazing how far we've come !

Anuranium · Jun 3, 2015

robbyp said:
486? Thats very fancy. My first PC was a 8088.

Now thats hardcore - 2-3 mins boot up time, and the response of a dead snail. Made the BBC micro look like a Cray supercomputer.

My first "Laptop" looked like this:

Now THAT's fancy!

TriumphANT · Jun 3, 2015

This is interesting for people who are semi-serious about the silliness of this kind of thing:
http://forum.thewindowsclub.com/windows-hardware-devices/28053-windows-7-dinosaur.html

Splunkjamma · Jun 3, 2015

Think you might need a maths co processor for it to run

Jim Steinman · Jun 3, 2015

Spam said:
Nah, just get the DX2.
That extra maths co processor kicks butt.

He might need this bad boy.....and don't forget to tweak your config.sys for memory.

S'Haad · Jun 3, 2015

jmg said:
Yeah.. I actually remember building my first 486dx2 out of a spare ibm 5150 case (hellllooooo dremel). This was to "upgrade" from my awesome 386 machine.
I know this guy is a troll, but the biggest issue with the 486 wouldn't necessarily be the processor, but really the graphics. "VESA" was the standard back then, pci IIRC was only on high end machines. And I'm not talking pci-express, or e-pci. Just plain old 33mzh pci. That was the high-end back then.
.
Since my car is in the shop, maybe this could be a summer project -- build a 486 from the best vintage parts and see if ED can run on it ...
.
and yeah, +1 rep on weird al. funny video.

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you need to drop in a 3d expansion card man!!

VESA wasn't a slot type like PCI. Cards back then were generally ISA. VESA was a "standard" for driver compatibility. You need to get your VESA driver properly loaded to play the 7th Guest! (don't cloak your mouse driver or you'll crash after doing the can puzzle!)

EDIT: After chatting with my older brother...I guess there WAS a VESA Local Bus extension to the ISA slot. It was still an ISA slot but was a "VLB enabled ISA slot" which had an extra connector for the VESA portion alongside the ISA connection. In my defense I was 12 the last time I had a populated ISA slot on my computer.

Jim Steinman · Jun 3, 2015

Anuranium said:
My first "Laptop" looked like this:
View attachment 40843

Now THAT's fancy!

I had this bad boy with two floppy drives....

bend_r · Jun 3, 2015

S'Haad said:
VESA wasn't a slot type like PCI.

Yes it was

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Local_Bus

I had that in my PC (pre-Pentium era, and some Pentium boards had both, VLB and PCI).

SirGeldi · Jun 3, 2015

QEMM should help you.
Google Quareterdeck expendet memory manager.

Stigbob · Jun 3, 2015

If a 486 chip is good enough for the hubble telescope, its good enough for you.

Nasa may be willing to buy it second hand.

cherbert · Jun 3, 2015

Struggling to download the launcher onto my 486. Gonna try and run Doublespace on my hard drive to see if I can get some more megabytes.

S'Haad · Jun 3, 2015

bend_r said:
Yes it was

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Local_Bus

I had that in my PC (pre-Pentium era, and some Pentium boards had both, VLB and PCI).

Ha, I just edited my orignal post! Yeah there was a VESA extension to the ISA slot. It was still an ISA slot, just a "VLB" ISA slot.

jmg · Jun 3, 2015

Jim Steinman said:
I had this bad boy with two floppy drives....

View attachment 40850

NICE!!! I remember when "convertible" pcs were the rage.. I actually had an HP convertible I used in a MIDI setup with a Yamaha dx7 and a casio CZ (I'm also an amateur musician .. equally vintage keyboards in that crowd). the Idea of having the "power" of a 286 .. in a PORTABLE form.. my god... I could do anything!! Green 80 character ascii screen only and all!

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S'Haad said:
VESA wasn't a slot type like PCI. Cards back then were generally ISA. VESA was a "standard" for driver compatibility. You need to get your VESA driver properly loaded to play the 7th Guest! (don't cloak your mouse driver or you'll crash after doing the can puzzle!)

That's incorrect.
the first cards were ISA. 8-bit, or 16-bit.
The next rage was VESA. TECHNICALLY, they were an extension to the ISA bus, but IIRC, they didn't share bandwidth with the ISA slots. They were phyisically incompatible with ISA cards, so, yes, they were really a different slot. For a while, VESA video cards were the best you could get.
PCI came out after VESA.

EDIT: ok, I see we're all on the same page on the vesa front.
Don't go mess'n with my MONSTER video card + 3d add on board !! all VESA and SUPER fast!

salad · Jun 3, 2015

I was the weird kid that had a Cyrix 686 MX instead of a Pentium.

fgenesis · Jun 3, 2015

insidah said:
Should I buy an Adlib or Sound Blaster sound card to hear the intro theme?

You should ditch that 486 completely and upgrade to a real multimedia-capable machine like a C64. Forget that beeping PC-speaker or obsolete technologies like GUS or this annoying SoundBlaster thing that never really works until you try out all possible combinations of SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6 in your Autoexec.bat. You want real sound, 3 channels instead of just one, and a soundchip with a voice dirtier than your mom, now in STEREO with 6 channels of bleepy goodness. *

This is what you get with commodore. Do not hesitate and order your personal home computer today! **

* (Two soundchips and soldering material required)

** (5 minutes loading time for Elite unless a fastloader cartridge is used. Available separately.)