Building a high end 386DX PC

[@fe2044]

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!

[@clintthompson4100]

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]

heh, yea, though in that case it had a lot more to do with my terrible video game driving skills than the game speed.

[@clintthompson4100]

​@@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.

[@slytheraccoon1]

im not really into computers but hearing you talk about it is oddly relaxing have a sub

[@quantumfoam42]

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.

[@AncientElectronics]

Thank you. VLB cards are pretty fun to mess around with. Certainly an interesting time in computing.

[@patrickbateman3490]

Very nice!! It takes me so much back to my childhood :) Nostalgia for machines where you could really tell it was computing.

[@wallc777]

Same here. It played Wing Commander the best

[@NesNyt]

U need parts of anything, got a warehouse full of 1980s components from housings to resistors. Nice videel

[@philscomputerlab]

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?

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@borlibaer]

​@@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)

[@Paar86]

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.

[@borlibaer]

@@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.

[@mariobrito427]

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!

[@jorgeandrade20]

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.

[@yellowblanka6058]

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.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

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.

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

@@AncientElectronics New to me, but I definitely like the idea!

[@roasthunter]

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.

[@upgrade1373]

back when western digital made video cards

[@ABRetroCollections]

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.

[@yakovleitner]

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

[@Jerkwad152]

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"

[@sedrosken831]

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.

[@Jerkwad152]

@@sedrosken831 At the time, almost nobody ran 32-bit software. It wasn't a huge problem.

[@shakal615234]

My childhood dream...meanwhile having AMIGA 500 1 MB ;) of course, without taking anything away from the Amiga 500 1 MB

[@petersuvara]

In the 1980s, the Amiga was top of the range!

[@bunter6]

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 👍

[@ibazulic]

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.

[@kyky121911]

Someday I wanna do a 386 build with the exodos project

[@7828191]

Also seems to have vesa local bus at the bottom ISA slot, just need to add the connection perhaps?.

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@7828191]

@@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?.

[@brendanstone3073]

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.

[@brendanstone3073]

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."

[@Alianger]

Please show off more games from that era on this setup!

[@retrocompaq5212]

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

[@achaycock]

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.

[@pentiummmx2294]

I like that mini color crt

[@AncientElectronics]

It has a little bit of screen burn but its not too bad. It makes a nice CRT for testing things on.

[@pentiummmx2294]

@@AncientElectronics oled screens have a similar burn in issue like that, my samsung phone already has a bit of burn in.

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

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.

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

@@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.

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

@@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

[@twinshobbytwinshobby3863]

Awesome Video !

[@pentiummmx2294]

I have a PCI version of the et4000, i need to test compatibility on that

[@casualretrocollector]

I Found with a 40 mhz 386sx you can get perfect performance with wing commander.

[@sedrosken831]

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.

[@casualretrocollector]

@@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 :)

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@yorgle11]

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.

[@jorgeandrade20]

I wish you'd played Wolfestein 3d or Spear of Destiny on this machine. :'(

[@HighTreason610]

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.

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@borlibaer]

​@@AncientElectronicsbtw. AFAIK "WDC" stands for Western Digital Corporation

[@soylentgreenb]

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.

[@herauthon]

is 128K cache a thing.. or can there be more.. and.. does it make sense ?

[@AncientElectronics]

Many boards have an option to support 128k of l2 cache. On a 486 you start to see diminished returns after 256k.

[@Miasmark]

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"

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@Miasmark]

@@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.

[@Miasmark]

@@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]

[@AncientElectronics]

@@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.

[@Miasmark]

@@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.

[@angieandretti]

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!

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@brendanstone3073]

@@AncientElectronics Judgement Rites, the sequel, has an option to disable combat or something like that.

[@yorgle11]

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.

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

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.

[@charonunderground8596]

Cool, but wouldn't it be better to build the slowest 486DX with a clock of 25Mhz than a medium fast 386 ?

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@AncientElectronics]

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.

[@fenixlolnope361]

I want a dx40 so badly

[@AncientElectronics]

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

[@fenixlolnope361]

@@AncientElectronics I’ve been looking for a while now, part of me almost just wants to settle for an early 486

[@AngelDemonn]

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 😂

[@moeschizlac]

ATI mach 32 was faster, and it was released in 1992.

[@AngelDemonn]

@@moeschizlac faster than what?

[@moeschizlac]

@@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.

[@fra4455]

Great✌

[@infinitecanadian]

Why would you sand over the logo on the drive?

[@AncientElectronics]

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]

@@AncientElectronics Ah, defacing vintage hardware. Nice.

[@AncientElectronics]

@@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.

[@borlibaer]

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. ☝️

[@infinitecanadian]

@@AncientElectronics It would still be important if the drive was used by someone else who wanted to know what it was.

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

Get pentium and early 3d games, no more speed issue :)

[@naib_stilgar]

"Aesthetics last.." Ha, no shit.. LOL

[@soteful9949]

What's the point of putting your hand in the intro?

[@AncientElectronics]

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?

[@soteful9949]

@@AncientElectronics Seems pointless but it's your channel. Other than that it was good content.

[@MPEG]

most hilarious comment i've read so far into this year

[@lenrysmolero]

This not the most powerfull 386. The most powerfull 386 is the AMD 386 DX 40

[@AncientElectronics]

I never said it was the most powerful.

[@кирилборисов-с4и]

386 мая любовь

[@AmstradExin]

Errrrrrr, nope. L2 Cache does not become L1 cache. Please read up on how cache works.

[@AncientElectronics]

*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.

[@bunter6]

Perhaps while he's doing that you could look up how to not sound like a smarmy dick in a comments section.

[@soylentgreenb]

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.

[@Paar86]

Who cares, right? Just enjoy your computers.