Restoration of an awesome 386 retro machine (Part2)

In this video I continue the restoration of a 386 PC. I'm going to install DOS, make cool upgrades and do benchmarks, which I was interested in for a long time.
CPU Galaxy video about Cx/Ti486SXL2-50:
• TI486SXL2-50 OverDrive...
Unisound Driver:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...

[@CPUGalaxy]

so I think… you did a perfect job on that awesome machine. I loved the video and the results are outstanding as well your technical explanations. Thanks for mentioning my channel. 😻. Cheers.

[@necro_ware]

Thank you too. As I told, your Cyrix video helped me to get faster into the topic. It wouldn't be fair not to mention your great work.

[@distwaveps1]

Guys, do you have issues with the floppy drive when the internal cache is enqbled in the dlc/slx CPUs? If I enable the flush input in a slc/sxlc CPU the floppy drive gives read errors (possible DMA corruptions caused by cache inconsistency)

[@necro_ware]

@@distwaveps1 Please read the documentation of the Cyrix tool. There you will find the explanation of exactly that behavior. Some boards don't implement flush properly and so, you have to take another options.

[@Ramdileo_sys]

@@necro_ware At 10.:02... rise your hand 🙋‍♀if you... like me... are finally knowing now _almost 40 year after_🙄 what the fu^%$ck *0 W/S*.. *1 W/2*.. and *Slow Refreh* actually are for and means😟.....+.... thank you man..!! .... nice video 👍👍....

[@JapanPop]

486 is the best option. Still not Intel, still working with older hardware to push it to the ultimate limit. However, the purists would no doubt push for the actual 386. Whatever makes you happy is most crucial. We don’t build and use our systems for the opinions of others.

[@ms-dosman7722]

Lovely machine! I wouldn't bother much about your "is this a 386 or a 486" question. Instead, see it as a great opportunity to use that Cyrix/TI CPU in this mainboard. Your goal was to max out this system and you did, so job well done. I like the choice of a CDROM Instead of a 5,25 FDD. Even though the CDROM titles are quite limited in this era of pc history, it adds to the "maxed out" feeling of the system. Great CDROM title to try is Dune. It's the only CD title I know that is even playable on a Turbo XT 8088!

[@brokenone22]

This is almost a clone of one the computers I grew up with so rarely do I see the 486 DLC always puts a huge smile on my face

[@EKrieger]

I must have watched 3 times your video!! I ❤ like these stuff of old PC!!!! 😊😎😎👌 being meticulous and perfectionist with this stuff is undeniable right, because these are jewels which get rarer every year after year.

[@MrElsmitty]

Very cool videos. Doom felt playable when you where done. It always blows my mind the performance boost computers get with different lvls of cache.

[@gokhansarioz7150]

The most enjoyable 386 video ive seen, and 486 was the correct choice for the build, i love pushing all the limits that i can. Sound card was also a nice choice a different one that everyone has but still capable of doing everything that everyone has. I need to start building a 386 now...

[@darthtripedacus1]

Amazing build. I would have kept it a pure 386 bit that's me and this was still an amazing build.

[@LiLBitsDK]

Love these videos looking at old hardware... Brings back memories... Was an interesting era to grow up in, with the massive advances in hardware through the years.

[@thefirstmissinglink]

Gets me excited about the rescues I have in storage. My 386 being my favorite. It had the fastest windows start up time of any of my windows machines.

[@deendeen2459]

Wow! So cool)) 😎 I heard about Cyrix CPUs, but never heard about 466 in 386 socket package and also about that co-processor you used. Amazing 🤩

[@xaenon]

I had a lot of fun running a Ti486dlc/40 rig. I originally built it with 4 mb RAM, but it had eight memory slots which I eventually populated with 4 mb SIMMs for a total of 32 megs. Ran a 1.6 gb hard drive via an overlay. I was none too happy with the CPU's high temps so I later rigged an 'active' heat sink intended for a 'true' 486 to the chip, complete with fan. MUCH more satisfactory. I miss playing with old hardware.

[@nobushi]

Loved the video and the channel's content. Subscribed. Greetings from Brazil.

[@thereallantesh]

I really enjoyed watching you put together this build. It really came out amazing.

[@minombredepila1580]

Excellent video. You not only revived the PC but boosted it!. Congrats.

[@up2tech]

Great job, fantastic description, very hard work, including retrobrighting and painting to finish it. Keep doing the awesome job, Necroware!

[@Coolit2683]

I love your video. Great job on maxing out your 386 with all of the best period appropriate parts.

[@ismail3404]

the best restoration vintage pc i've ever seen

[@grennymaster]

ohh man :) i can remeber everything :) so nice to see someone still have the passion to take care about that good old machines :)

[@pipschannel1222]

Lovely machine! I really like this slim desktop/pizzabox design. Also: nice badge! I recently built a similar machine myself: A TI486DLC-40 on a 386DX mainboard with 8 megs of RAM, only mine has only 64K of cache as I ran out of SRAM/TAG chips. It's quick enough though. I'm going to use your tips on the BIOS settings! Might squeeze some extra FPS out of the old beast.. I love this era of CPUs/machines. Recently upgraded my 1988 Compaq Deskpro 386/25 behemoth (which only has 32k of L2 cache) to a TI SXL2-50 with 8k of L1 cache (the exact same CPU that CPU Galaxy also featured in his video, only mine came with a little cache coherency circuit). This thing is a hell of lot faster now, feels like a 5 year advance from 1988! My next build is a little harder: desoldering a i386SX-20 and soldering in a Ti486SXLC(2)-40 and clocking the board to 80MHz(40MHz CPU speed). Wish me luck ;-)

[@necro_ware]

Sounds like fun an interesting experiment! I wish you a lot of luck ;)

[@GGigabiteM]

I have the IBM variant of the SXLC2 at 66 MHz. Coupled with a VLB IDE and floppy controller card, it's well into 486 performance territory. The only thing I haven't been able to get working is the cache, enabling it causes the system to become unstable and hang when attempting to boot into DOS.

[@Rivenworld]

Superb result, well done on a magnificent restoration.

[@SanzarBellow]

Beautiful work, nicely done.

[@Stratotank3r]

Glückwunsch zu diesem wunderbaren Stück Hardware. Das Gehäuse ist absolut ein Gewinner und super schick! BTW: Mein erster PC war ein DLC40 und hatte mit SimCity2000 stark zu kämpfen. Typische 386er Games liefen logischerweise richtig super.

[@teknologyguy5638]

I know this is an older video but great to see it all come together. Gave me some ideas of what I might do with some of my builds.

[@RalonsoF1]

Very impressive machine!! 👍👏 Congrats for this amazing work!! 😃👌

[@Shmbler]

Afaik the size of the tag SRAM only defines the maximum cachable RAM area. I know for sure that i430xx based Socket 7 boards will slow down if you insert more than 64MB of RAM (I tried that myself). I have a 430HX based board that can cache up to 512MB, but only after you upgrade the tag SRAM.

[@jinxterx]

Brilliant and the case looks amazing! :D

[@VikingDudee]

Idk what it is, I'm not huge into old hardware, but I love watching people tinker with this stuff, you got my Sub man, Love your content!

[@HeavyD6600]

Great video, thanks for sharing!

[@catriona_drummond]

Fantastic! I have one of these Cyrix/ti chips but it sits on a dead board - never got around to try and fix it. New motivation I guess. Am especially grateful for the BIOS explanations - those will come in VERY handy.

[@necro_ware]

Your are welcome! Wish you a lot of fun and luck getting your dead board running again.

[@tekglitch4484]

Great Video! I have a 495SLC motherboard with a populated AMD 386/40 I really need to finish. The interesting this about this board is the VLB bus with the 386 CPU with which I use a CL GD5428 vga card with. I have it populated with a ULSI 387 Maths co-processor at 40mhz.

[@Natures_Intentions]

That computer looks and runs phenomenal. For what it is doom even runs well. The first pc I ran doom on was a customer whitebox intel 80486 dx2/66 awesome video I have been watching your videos all day. Great content

[@necro_ware]

Thank you very much! Glad you liked it. Not only is that machine really cool, it also was a lot of fun to build.

[@homelessEh]

its GLORIOUS

[@Sixkill3r]

Wow that looks great good job!!

[@qwertNickqwert]

Good job!

[@R.N.42]

Love your channel! I like how cover different topic in such detail! Cool idea with the ftp server, though I don't have a permanent network at hand, which is why I find it easier using CF. As for the question of 386 vs 486: I have lots of good memories of my trusty old 386DX back in the day. I only switched to 486 when DX2 came around. :)

[@konsul2006]

That desktop sure brings back some childhood memories. 386 sx25❤️. Sure was devastating when I was poking around and deleted some system files that made it not boot into Windows properly 😂

[@JamieBainbridge]

Huge cooling and overclock. You're so close to playable Doom on a 386 motherboard.

[@fabiogiehl2627]

386 with a matematic coprocessor runs a Lot better

[@GeorgesChannel]

Great video! I enjoyed it, because the 386dx40 was my first PC!

[@TheSulross]

the final result sure is purdy!

[@necro_ware]

Thank you, I just learned a new word from you ;)

[@kgoncharov]

Thanks! Your video confirms my suspicion that my 386 system is rather slow. With a similar DLC cpu it achieved only 7749 realtics in Doom, while your test shows 6382. This is better than my current CPU, which is an SXL2-50. I need to investigate. There was one hint when I switched from one motherboard to another - a video throughput rate reported by Speedsys dropped significantly, although the graphics card did not change.

[@necro_ware]

You are welcome and thank you too. Good luck with the investigation.

[@ruxandy]

AMD AM386 DX-40 for me… always! :-D PS: Great video, as always! Keep them coming! :-)

[@necro_ware]

Thank you! And for your opinion as well!

[@jurgenskrause]

I really enjoyed your video, keep it up!

[@angelodagnolo984]

God that takes me back! great job btw 👍

[@the-THORNSPAWN]

My 3rd pc was a 386 dx40 with maths co-pro. It was a huge step up from the 286-12 I had before.

[@danielsmullen3223]

This glorious machine would have made my father's IBM PS/1 extremely jealous. The price point for a machine of this quality when it's original components were available would have probably been around the same as a mid-tier car. Impressive!

[@necro_ware]

Yes, I guess so :D

[@ctiborkoza8944]

Nice DOS PC , I will quietly envy you :-)

[@cd-lf8xm]

Put the 386 back in :-) The DX40 is a classic and important chip and deserving of a build. Those cyrix cpu upgrades are fun and even useful but were really designed to help extend the life and investment for existing users and not so much for retro experience

[@wishusknight3009]

The extra cache will be more noticeable in windows while multitasking or with a few background tasks going. It would be interesting to have a couple of benchmarks with the L2 disabled as well. Both with the ram tweaked and not. With either cpu. That will show the impact cache really has on a system. However that is a lot of consumed time for something that isn't really important. Phil did something similar a few years back, and I may make something like that in future.

[@bitkarek]

this is like a magic in 2021 :)

[@krizator]

I love this old pc sounds on startup ))

[@Lyvarious]

As cool as it would be to keep it 386 I think that going the "MORE POWER" route would be amazing. Grab the best in slot for each spot that allows replacement, slap in that 486 combo and see how far you can take it.

[@Kilen81]

Nice build! About the question whether it should be pure 386 or no, i think in this case, when the motherboard wasn't original from the day they built the system, it doesn't really matter. A max upgrade 386(486dlc) like this build is much more interesting and relevant. IMHO.

[@glab333]

Great vid 👍

[@whoevertf]

Ahhh this was an important series of videos for me to watch. I needed to learn a lot & your channel is definitely a great place for that. Too bad I found it too late. haha Unfortunately the 386 board I rescued with a soldered in AMD386-40 did not survive my attempts, as while trying to mod the board to accept the 40mhz DLC, a wire touched a positive connection & effectively sent 12 volts to the poor 386 instead of bridging it to the nearby ground. Somehow the 486 continued to work with 386 bypassed, but after some time, it died outright, probably from the previous damage. At least I have the 128kb cache to use later, and some knowledge from that idiotic experience. Talk about necroware, this board was found on the ground in a junkyard.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

Hm, that part with the 486DLC's uncacheable region was quite interesting. I'll definitely look into it later with my own boards with 486DLCs. Therefore I'm grateful to CPU Galaxy too for the groundwork.

[@necro_ware]

But take a closer look into documentation. There are quite some differences between 486SXL2, which was shown on CPU Galaxy and 486DLC, which I showed here. Some parameters have different meanings, even if the tool is the same.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

@@necro_ware Thanks for the warning! And I have 486SLC and SLC2 boards to try with this too...

[@helldog3105]

I'm a big fan of the Aztech soundcards myself. True OPL3 chip, and with the right card Sound Blaster Pro support that even supports older games that work only with the Sound Blaster. I don't know about their later triangle cards when it comes to support. I use the older cards quite a lot on 486 and 386 machines. They seem to be pretty decent. I do know some of their earlier cards have issues on faster pcs though.

[@fra4455]

Great video

[@johng.1703]

I really can't remember the make or model of the board we had, but it could take a 386 or 486 CPU and it had a slot for cache that could take 128, 256 or 512. we just used to call it the writeback board. also running a 40Mhz chip at 1 x 50Mhz makes a massive difference, as long as the cache and ram can keep up.

[@dalecomer5951]

Lots of valuable info. Upgrade processors should be regarded as a separate species. I never bothered with any until a given generation became obsolete and so inexpensive I couldn't resist.

[@necro_ware]

I also never made such an upgrade back in the days. That's why it is twice as exciting to try it out today ;)

[@KrissBartlett]

wow nicely done really tidy in side to

[@foxvulpes8245]

My system is beefed out.. talking 3090 rtx and the works... I spend 1h a day making midis. I got gigs of midis. When I heard that prince of Persia intro it filled me with joy. Nothing seems to match that beautiful retro sound. I have spent weeks making sound fonts , but nothing seems to match. I originally notice the difference from the original xcom game... I could never get the intro to sound as awesome as it did on the old family pc.

[@ArtemAleksashkin]

С тех пор как я видел эти слайд-шоу ставлю только топовое железо себе

[@erikmerchant567]

Thank you for this video set. I loved your work and I think you made terrific choices. Question: Do you think you could get a 5.25" Floppy drive installed below the CD-Rom? Adding that would make that desktop cover just about all areas of retro gaming and give it an even more retro look. Keep up the good work!

[@necro_ware]

As I built this one, I had only dark grey and black 5,25" floppy drives at hand and both would look ugly in this machine. So I decided to go without such a floppy drive.

[@oldschooldude8370]

That 10base2 card. Wow thats going back.

[@MrVipeg]

Ok, first, thank you for the great content. I really like your channel. Now, about the 486DLC. I think, real, "pure" AMD 386-40 should be used in this PC for couple reasons. First, I you told by yourself, some hardware are too new and belong to the incorrect period of time, like AWE64 in this case. I think, trying to get maximum performance using some tricks is not needed. It should not be the goal, because of Second: obviously, you need pure 486 PC in ADDITION to this one to play games suited for 486 - like Doom. This is not a race and not desperate need to get max performance. Otherwise, you could just buy a "classic" pentuim-100 which will cover all those games with no issues at all, but this is not the point. 386 PC is just 386 PC, suited for 386 games. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyway, you decide.

[@necro_ware]

Thank you very much! I partially have the same opinion, but here is my point of view and why I was struggling with the decision. First of all, the period correctness - where AWE64 is indeed an expansion card from another time, a 486DLC on the other hand is a CPU from the same time (1992) and was even made specifically for 386 mainboards. So period correctness was not my concern. It was more the question, what makes the system complete? Today a mainboard has almost no logic anymore, almost everything is integrated into the CPU, but back than a mainboard was a very important part of the system. So if I use a 386 mainboard with such a 486DLC upgrade, is it still a 386? For me, the system is still 386, but with a CPU with 486 instructions. Similar as with Pentium Overdrive in a 486 mainboard. If you have a VLB 486 system with such a CPU, is it then Pentium or still a 486?! Depends on how you define your system, I guess. So, this is a rhetoric question....

[@MrVipeg]

@@necro_ware Thank you for your answer. I agree this is a rhetoric question. All we can do is to share opinions. My opinion is mostly above. But the only part I want to add is that (AFAIK) DLCs, Overdrives and so on was released for the only purpose: convert (or upgrade?) existing systems to the Next step, Next generation in a budget way, because of true NextGen was really expensive. Did upgaded machines became really NextGen? I think, no. But this is not important in this case, because all we got going that way was "simplified", "cost reduced", "emulated", but NextGen. P. S. I really like those times I had a 386SX machine. Now I got 386DX-40 soldered on Opti-495SLC m/b and deliberately downclocked to 33Mhz. This m/b supports real 486 CPUs, but this is no fun to use 486, because 386 is 386. For everything else, more demanding, I use another machine - 486 one. P.P.S. And again, thank you very much for your great content, especially with repair series.

[@nickwallette6201]

Casting my vote here too - just my opinion, and everyone should do what makes them happy. There aren’t any wrong answers. But here goes: IMO, if you want a 386, there’s not much reason to push it to extremes. Let it be a 386. :-) I am just not into living by benchmarks. Most of us retro nerds have a few (or .. maybe more than a few) old systems to pick from, so if something doesn’t run well on a 386, who cares, just run it on something faster. :-) You don’t have to make do. The upgrade chips were a relic of the time, IMO. That may be interesting to some, and I have certainly chosen hardware based on a quirky interest, so there’s nothing wrong with that. But, I feel a 33 or 40MHz DX is fantastic for representing that era. (I have an SX25 and a DX40.) I would drop the cache back to 64K - since it didn’t help any, may as well save the SRAM for where it could help. Since you have a 387, fine, but I definitely wouldn’t go seek one out if I didn’t already have it. Are you going to be processing large data sets in 123? ;-) Ok, then integers are probably enough. Haha Obviously Quake has no business on a 386 anyway, so no loss that it wouldn’t run w/o. The CDROM is probably too fast for this PC, but it came with the case, so may as well use it. :-) Those MKE drives are quintessential for builds like this - but also pricey at this point. SCSI is a good option too, but perhaps a bigger hammer than most would want to deal with. This is one area I go overboard. I love collecting optical drives and matching them to systems. :-) You’ll never see me with a 52x CD centrifuge in a DOS box. Haha I can’t imagine a 386 without a 5-1/4 drive but that tiny case looks like it would be something from the tail end of the 386-era - a budget option when 486s were still too pricey for someone just getting their first PC - so I give it a pass. It works here. As for sound - would’ve gone with the SB 2.0, but the Aztech is a good pick as well. I’m a bit of a Creative purist, since it was so de facto for the time, but more that who needs stereo on a 386? There weren’t many titles that would use the OPL3 (vs OPL2), and hardly any that would have stereo digital audio, so the original SB would be a perfect fit. Yeah it’s noisy. It was the early 90s. :-) Your Labtec speakers wouldn’t have the resolution to tell the difference. But really, an SB Pro (or clone) is just as at home, even if it only helps with Wolf3D. So that’s my thoughts. :-) It’s what I would do differently if it were mine, but life would be boring if everyone always did the same thing. I enjoyed watching this even while I shook my head in disagreement. 😄 You are amazingly thorough with the restoration. A man after my own heart, there. Got a few tips from this video that I’ll be using too. So thanks!!

[@necro_ware]

@@nickwallette6201 Hehe, thank you for the detailed answer. Many of this thought are the same as mine. In regards of CPU, I think the same way, but I never tried the 486DLC in a 386 mainboard, so that was my curiosity, as well as cache. The 387 is a good add-on if you want to play SimCity, Falcon 3.0, or use MS Windows/Office. At least the last one is nothing for me. I only enjoy DOS and Linux ;) I also had the same thoughts about the CD-ROM. I think, that a 5,25" floppy drive would be a better fit for that time, but I only have grey colored drives here ad they wouldn't look great on this machine. On the other hand, I have plenty of old games as CD-ROM versions, which even work on this machine, so I decided to go with that. And about the Sound Blaster, I'm collecting sound cards and have really a lot of them, but back in time I had only DIY Covox and later only SB Pro clones, so I'm used to them. Furthermore, I really don't think, that Creative made good sound cards, especially back then. They were "standard", but noisy and full of bugs. I have them in my collection, and I'm really proud about it, but if I build a system for myself, I usually don't use a Creative card. They always go into PCs, which I'll definitely give away :) This were my two cents. I'm glad you liked the video anyway. Even if many people are not agreed with the 486DLC (I'm also not 100% convinced), at least I hope to resolve the curiosity of many people out there about the benefits of such an upgrade.

[@BreakingBrick]

Great machine, it was inspiring, although I'm not so into 386 (or special 486). Time to tackle my socket 5!

[@wishusknight3009]

Midrange 386 is my favorite era. The single biggest leap in features to have ever hit the PC industry. And arguably one of the big leaps of performance too.

[@BreakingBrick]

@@wishusknight3009 indeed, its like a sibling in middle.

[@lioneld1300]

great ! merci mon ami !

[@LightSoundGate]

Landmark rose to 69 points.... NICE! 😁

[@testovaciidentita846]

I like the build! It looks like new! I am less precise in the exterior detailing. There is so much inspiration in this video. I have just ordered 486 SXL2/50 CPU and SXL40( made by TI as those are the most common). It looks they produced a lot of these for the OEM market. I am looking forward to benchmark those. But finding good 386DX boards is a pain. Is the SXL2/50 the fastest or is there a performance penalty for lower FSB? I like those last Mohicans CPU such as these or Am5x86/133 prolonging the life of the platform and fighting in a smart way...

[@JorjaoVideoBR]

Very nice machine! About the CD-ROM, those from the quad-speed era can normally read CD-R media? Or is it neccessary to tweak the laser gain?

[@ayan.debnath]

Just WoW!

[@osgeld]

good tip on the slow refresh ... pretty sure when that option was available to me I thought slow = bad luckily the 386 to me is kind of like the pentium 4 of its era ... rather have a 486 or pentium for more modern games, and a 286 or XT class machines for older games (and that is my personal history, in the early 90's my parents bought a pretty beefy decked out 486 to replace the apple II for my dad's home business, and I got a AT&T xt class machine as my very own paid for myself totally mine first pc I did have a 386SX and a 387 setup for a bit and that's where I get my apathy towards the 386)

[@necro_ware]

Probably yor relationship to 386 is so bad because 386sx is actually a 286 in disguise. A real 386dx is another level and was an absolute killer of its time.

[@alynicholls3230]

those 486 upgrade chips were great, i got i 386 a few years ago and it has an upgrade cpu a 40 mhz cyrix, unlike yours though mine is the piggyback type since the 386 cpu is hard soldered, but it works which is what matters.

[@Michael_Brock]

IBM had some proprietary '386' chips in the BL blue lightning range, though missing an FPU, clocked @ 100Mhz, (3*33), with a massive 16kb cache. Also were made to run 486 microcode. But the 386 core ran poorly compared to a 486sx but the cache largely compensated gather was similar to a 486dx 66 in doom. IE if you didn't need an FPU. Would assume quake would be even worse of a slideshow.

[@necro_ware]

Quake doesn't run without an FPU.

[@qzorn4440]

o-yes... these PCs may do the job if you pick out the correct combo... 🤔 or have an on going mess of almost working. 🙄 thanks a lot, 🤩 could of used this video years ago. ☺

[@034G63EVO]

seeing doom brings me back to my childhood. I dont have a clue where I got the codes because the internet wasnt really a thing. IDDQD and IDKFA. Beat the game no issues lol

[@mr.stealyourgirl]

can it run Cyberpunk 2077? lmao nice job man.. didn't expect someone still have that kind of setup. if u sell it the price gonna be high for sure

[@RetroPeKar]

Пересмотривал сейчас, всё-таки крутая машина получилась, и в настройках биоса ты как всегда глубже копаешь ) Удивительно, что Cyrix настолько быстрее обычной трешки. Архитектура реально совсем другая, близко к 486SX! Ну а софт, включающий внутренний кеш это совсем дичь.. А остальные опции в нем не пробовал? ) Ну и подсмотрел, в чем ты тестил производительность - у меня конечно не такие пафосные материнки с 386DX, но как минимум надо будет сравнить.... )

[@necro_ware]

Ну в этот комп я, конечно, хотел поставить самую "пафосную" из того, что имею :)

[@_film_flashback]

Hi, I mistakingly installed my i486DX CPU upside-down in my NCR 3150. How do I know if it's damaged now? I don't have another system to test in and the system I have didn't work when I bought it. There's a chance that it's damaged and not putting any power out to the CPU socket. Any advice for testing the CPU or the socket is welcome. Thanks.

[@mattparker9726]

I know this is an old video, but if you still have this PC, please do some extreme overclocking with watercooling or something. I am super curious if you, or anyone, can do something like that.

[@vetalos]

Cyrix создавал DLC еще до того, как это стало мейнстримом ))))))

[@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev]

Hi my friend! What a great video!! Loved your voice-over about speed of some games :D. Thank you for the tips on bios settings, I have done them on my 386 and the benchmarks got better. How about give a chance to an Opti 929A sound card? The mobo chipset is opti also :) I have it installed on my 386 and the sound is great, it has a "pirate" opl chip also 1:1 with the original

[@necro_ware]

Hi Jorge! Thank you very much, always glad to see you on my channel. I have multiple OPTi292 cards at hand too, but they are not supported yet by Unisound. I wanted to go with cards, which run with that software, because this way I can swap the sound cards and don't need to reinstall the drivers. So, just out of laziness. However, Aztech made also a really good hardware.

[@robbirobson7330]

i overclocked a 386 dx40 to 60 mhz back in the day but i dont remember if it ran stable

[@danielwolf958]

I'd prefer a 386 CPU - it is called "awesome 386"; not "awesome 486 on a 386 motherboard"... Nevertheless: nice video!

[@necro_ware]

Thank you!

[@britlion]

Fun stuff! Did you look at overclock options? I also think IBM did a version of the cyrix chip with more L1 cache and clock multiplication up to 100 mhz?

[@necro_ware]

This system is at 40MHz already quite at it's limit. With faster L2 cache and memory, may be it would make it to 45MHz. There was another Cyrix, SLC2 if I remember right, that could make 2x multiplier at 25MHz FSB and that was the fastest CPU for a 386 mainboard. IBM didn't have something like that back then and the cooperation with Cyrix was at the times of Pentium with the 6x86 line.

[@mattparker9726]

Also another question, Necroware, but are there any capture cards specifically made with 2/3/486 PCs in mind? If so who makes them?

[@SibinGrasic]

Will you do any newer cpus? I'd like to see some benchmarks for AMD K6-III, the first processor with onboard L2 cache :)

[@necro_ware]

Very unlikely. I don't even have a K6-III and I usually prefer more older hardware to tinker with.

[@ghinckley68]

no wya man the am386/40 is a bad ass

[@kosmosyche]

I am all for maxing out the particular configuration, so if there is an option to put a 486 into a 386 m/b, I'd say go for it! I look at it this way. Would I have been happy in 1992 to make a swap from an AMD 386-40 to a Cyrix/TI 486-40 and run everything a bit faster? You bet I would have.

[@ShamblerDK]

You should link part 1 in the video description :-)

[@i386dx]

As an 386-enthousiast, I would say stick with the 386. However, I know, this added speed is tempting ... ;-). Nevertheless, nice video and nice speed improvement!

[@necro_ware]

Yes, in this project I actually combined two things. I built a nice retro PC and I satisfied my curiosity about the 486DLC, which was waiting for it's time to come far too long :D Great you liked it, thank you!

[@gothfather8741]

Hey, great job! Can I recommend the testing the performance using the pure 386 cpu + fpu? That should be interesting.

[@necro_ware]

For the most use cased FPU on a 386 is just a nice looking gap filler. It is not utilized by most of the games except SimCity and Falcon 3. It can give you some benefit in Excel and was required for CAD software. First famous game which absolutely relied on (good) FPU was Quake and for that one you need a Pentium machine.

[@gothfather8741]

​​​​@@necro_ware agree with you! I was just responding to what you said in the video at 13:57, about dropping a comment, as I am one of the "purists" and would be curious to see the benchmarks for the "pure 386 configuration". 😀

[@michaelperugini4199]

pure 386

[@user-mc5mu1xl4w]

Wow, very nice machine! Could you please share the contents of your magic pink floppy?

[@necro_ware]

Thank you! I have to think how to make that. Not because it's a secret, not at all, but because I have MS-DOS there and I don't know if it's legal to make it publicly available as is. However, there is no magic, you can even see the whole content in the video. It's just minimal DOS with format, fdisk and edit, Volkov Commander, packet driver for the realtek network adapter and ftpsrv and dhcp tools from mtcp project. May be I'll just make a video how to create such a boot disk yourself. Everybody has a different network card anyway and will need slightly different settings and a packet driver.

[@Dxceor2486]

If you're scared to share a DOS floppy maybe you could make one using freedos ? :)

[@worroSfOretsevraH]

@@necro_ware Enough to just share the NET directory. Would be a good start.

[@herauthon]

does the driver for 8029 also work - and have you tried the packetdriver for ne2000 ?

[@run4restrun259]

I'm voite for 386DX! :)

[@PicaDelphon]

If it is Me the Math Processor I would of used would of been the Cyrix FasMath..But Still a Great System Setup..

[@jbinary82]

IIRC, there are versions of Doom compiled for slower machines. Not official, but easy to find.

[@necro_ware]

I know, FastDoom

[@jk180]

DLC. Go for the most.