IBM ValuePoint 486 : Final chapter

[@EgonOlsen71]

QEMM was great. A friend of mine had a 486DX2 that he used to run some trading software on it. This was before the internet, so that software could dial some number via a modem and connect to the software vendor's server to get the latest stock data for trading. But he had ISDN so we had to install some DOS drivers for the ISDN card as well as some emulation layer that made the ISDN connection look like a modem connection to the software (they actually even briefly described that process in the manual of the software). And the software itself needed 6xx+ KB of ram to run. I fiddled around with QEMM for quite some time to make all this work. We then called the vendor's support for some other reason and I mentioned our setup. They were gobsmacked. They had never heard of anybody who got this setup actually running despite mentioning it in the manual. Thank you, QEMM!

[@CharlesOttman]

MEMMAKER was a cut down version of Netroom 3 from Helix software. Helix also made a mouse driver and CDRom driver that would also wedge itself up into UMB area. Using Netroom back in the day I could have a bit over 600kb of free conventional memory even with a mouse, CDRom and Novell network drivers loaded.

[@piecaruso97]

Those apple computer simm devices are the roms from an old style Macintosh, those machines relied heavily on roms and so those were made swappable

[@pgodwin]

Yep. Mac II and SE series definitely used them. Some still had the slot but the rom was on board. There's a product that lets you have a ROM drive for those old machines.

[@jimjusko7279]

Deployed hundreds of these back in 1992-1993. I worked for a pharmaceutical marketing company. Big token ring, main frame, db2, and at that time OS/2 shop.

[@piecaruso97]

When swapping hard drives pcbs keep in mind that those can contain roms with calibration data for the mechanical components of the specific drive you took the pcb from

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

Yeah I remember messing with QEMM. In the long run extended memory spec became obsolete and I only used umbpci and himem. But with QEMM you can set up a Desqview multitasking environment, that's as cool as Dos will ever get.

[@ArenClegg]

he'd only need himem/qemm for dos/windows apps because his cpu is 32bit only.

[@herauthon]

Add 4DOS - for more fun

[@JenniferinIllinois]

I remember QEMM. Absolutely a requirement for DOS gaming. My friends and I had competitions to see who could free up the most memory. Ah the memories.

[@Christopher-N]

That was a corny pun, and I 'liked' it.

[@herauthon]

optimize... optimize...optimize.. the numbers roll.. 10.593.535 combinations tested.. wow !

[@JenniferinIllinois]

@@Christopher-N I had to read it again. Did not even realize I made a pun. :)

[@oturgator]

Wow, what a coincidence. I had exactly the same setup, even with the exact CD-ROM drive, running QEMM. I have installed my own, registered QEMM yesterday on my Libretto 110CT for some DOS gaming. So much time has passes on, although I was the one using them, it feels like in another life time. I have upgraded to this machine from a 386DX-40 and that was an impressive upgrade. Had the VESA HDD controller, that thing was lightning fast. Just one note though, you can have ~720-730KB of base memory, if you play your cards right with QEMM.

[@doodles113]

I worked at an IBM reseller /Business Partner in the 90´s...just love at first sight work with PS/2´s, Valuepoints and PC Servers.The problem always was to find compatible memory (70ns w/parity) available for sale outside IBM,with affordable prices...A local company here in Brazil manufactured compatible parity SIMM´s, but now they are rare,hard to find and expensive just like IBM´s.Great video! EDIT: If your PS/ValuePoint doesn´t have cache, don´t worry....since the mid-nineties messsing with this machines,i NEVER,EVER see one of this type of planar model with cache attached.Looks like is a failure/error in project or, something like this who prevent the use with cache attached...

[@necro_ware]

May be I'm wrong, but I heard, that IBM can run with any PS/2 FPM memory sticks with parity chips included. However, they are not very common for 72 pin sticks.... would be interesting to know. I have a PS/2 as well, I'll check it later.

[@86smoke]

Unfortunately not all parity FPMs work. I only managed to make one work.

[@Darknecros7]

The original Warcraft brings back memories. That was the first RTS I played and loved it.

[@tpmadness1172]

Same, I bought mine at the PX while serving in Korea doing my first tour of duty. if I remember correctly I setup war to run on bootup xD

[@SandsOfArrakis]

Pinball Fantasies. My first pinball game back on my first PC (80 MHz Cyrix 486DX2). Spent countless hours playing it :) Recently bought all the good old DOS pinball games on GOG. They still hold up very well indeed :)

[@metalmulishajason]

since i started watching your videos, i actually learnt alot from you and repaired my old athlon slot a 550 system, i cant thank you enough mate. u really are a hero.

[@SatanicMac]

You had me tearing up with the "Whacky Wheels" music. Played so much of that when I was younger lol. Gosh knows what bbs that was taken from haha

[@nickwallette6201]

One of the few games I ever played that actually used the OPL3 instead of falling back to plain OPL2 AdLib compatibility.

[@wysoft]

still a great game, my 7 year old son loves to play it in DOSBox even though he has the latest Mario Kart on his Switch

[@Shmbler]

Hehe that Warcraft intro brings back memories. I bought this Dune clone in the last millennium when noone knew "Blizzard" yet.

[@BlaBla-pf8mf]

I thought it moved kinda slow from how I remember the game.

[@redavatar]

I have an IBM PS/1 (early 1993) and an IBM Aptiva (mid-1994) and neither needed IBM memory - one has HP memory even so I think it was only certain PCs.

[@RetroTechChris]

Agreed. The PS/2 Model 30 286 used proprietary memory (and possibly the model 25 as well), but I don't recall it being an issue for any of the PS/1 line.

[@redavatar]

@@RetroTechChris Well I'll soon discover which memory I need for a Valuepoint - I bought a 425SX/Si PS for €80 yesterday and will likely need to add a little more RAM (it only has 4MB and ideally I'd like 8). I'm curious to see how well it holds up against the PS/1.

[@thefenlanddefencesystem5080]

It's amazing what you can do in 320x240 pixels when you put your mind to it.

[@mattscomp]

Ahhh yes parity memory modules. 640k barrier plus extended memory juggling. All that stuff! Takes me back. Kids these days would never know the struggle. But with videos such as this they can see it at least. Well done.

[@bartosz1697]

I really like watching your videos. My parents bought my first PC in 1994, so I'm also a bit fanatic of this retro stuff. I can also learn a great English, cause your pronunciation is perfect.

[@olivierpericat9224]

Great video !!! Regarding the Apple ROM sticks, I am pretty sure that there are some Apple ROMs for old Macintosh (equivalent of PC BIOS). They were placed on slots that look like SIMM or cache slots from the early 90s to late 90s.

[@Ragnar8504]

Yeah, some of them had ROM SIMMs, while others had socketed/soldered ROM chips on the logicboard. I think the SIMMs came later, possibly PPC era.

[@juanschroder6519]

Very good video!!! Greetings from El Nihuil, Argentina 🇦🇷

[@fnglert]

Aw man, the sound of those four channel mod music, takes me back. I've written my fair share of music in that format back in the day.

[@BlackDragon-xn2ww]

All I can recall from dos days was loading as many things into upper mem . That wine from monitor sounds like the flyback went out big thing with cable going to screen had one fail on a tv made that sound and no picture

[@donpalmera]

Stuff like this is why I'm glad I had an Amiga as my main machine until switching to Linux and some Windows 2000. We had the chipram issue but at lot less of this painful DOS stuff.

[@urametroid]

My first PC was a IBM ValuePoint 433DX/Dp that I got for free in 2000, I upgraded the CPU to a DX4 100MHz and over did the RAM upgrade to 64MB (I had it to 96MB once).

[@RetroSpector78]

Gotten to like these ValuePoints ... everybody taks about the first gen systems and ps/2 machines but these ValuePoints are also nice.

[@JVHShack]

Neil (RMC) had a Phillips monitor have the same problem and he repaired it by replacing the fly-back transformer.

[@CRG]

Great video and some very useful information on memory management. Thanks!

[@THEtechknight]

the horizontal output transistor took a shit on that monitor for some reason. Need to ring-test the Flyback.

[@kiningroseburg9288]

aahhh Pinball Fantasy, one of my favorites on 486, the skulls and bones board.

[@FarBeyondDriven1978]

Allways good to see some 486 love

[@PaulinesPastimes]

Excellent. I particularly like the memory configuration information. Cheers

[@cyberjack]

If you do "DEVICEHIGH=" statements in config.sys rather than the default "DEVICE=" ..you will free up a lot conventional memory

[@86smoke]

I also have PS/Valuepoint 386SLC and it is also very picky when it comes to memory upgrade. However, I already have 4MB soldered into the board and 2 free SIMM slots but I only managed to get one of my entire collection of SIMMS to work. It is an 8MB Samsung stick labelled KMM5362203AWG-7. So it is not limited to IBM modules, I just think it needs to be FPM and requires parity, but I'm not sure about this pattern since I tested only ca. 20 modules. As I got one of 8MB sticks working I forefit further testing since 12MB of RAM is already an overkill for 386SLC. Hope that'll help people to get through memory upgrade on those machines.

[@michaelperugini4199]

the older drives you can do the board swap, as long as you use the same or new revision, i use to do it all the time with seagate ST-225 and 251 and Conner and maxtor IDE drives. The whining of the monitor sounds like flyback gone out.

[@maxtornogood]

You got this working pretty nicely! 😉

[@alex1520]

conventional memory (640k) is used by programs that run with the processor in real mode (which is the default mode for x86). Games like doom, sc2000 run with the processor in protected mode and the code and data all reside in extended memory, so freeing up conventional memory for those games is less important. Any program that you see the DOS/4GW or Pmode/w loader runs in that mode :)

[@idahofur]

Memmaker was a joke. It caused problems with the load high commands and such. I was able to get 618k of base memory if not 620 in the day. The big problem when you used enough programs is some of them would want that space the Load high used (assigned.) I'm not a programmer so I don't know if the program was written wrong or not. But Double space and memmaker got me tons of money back in the day for the small computer shop I worked for.

[@ville_syrjala]

I always used memmaker as the starting point. Afterwards I hand tuned the load order/etc. to squeeze out the remaining bytes. I also remember always being on the lookout for a smaller mouse driver. The driver that typically shipped with Logitech mice was rather big, and you could get quite a bit of memory back by using a third party driver.

[@wysoft]

I remember getting QEMM just to squeeze out every last bit of 4MB I had on my first 486. Amazing how cheap memory is today.

[@RickTheGeek]

"DOS=HIGH"? I knew it was on something! LOL

[@princemegahit]

DOS=HIGH,UMB

[@cyberp0et]

Those text-based installers remind me of the 90s, when I learned computers for the first time.

[@davidbrawn2828]

You can use Hydrogen peroxide and sunlight to turn the yellow plastic white again on them drives. You rap the plastic in paper towels dampened in hydrogen peroxide in the partial sunlight it causes a chemical reaction turning it white again. Just keep the towels damp for about 6 hours.

[@omfgbunder2008]

Those apple memory sticks might be the ROMs for a Mac classic Edit: also that foam might become conductive after all these years, might be worth peeling it off 👍

[@stonent]

Yeah I think they hold the mini-OS that you can boot into if you don't have a floppy with Command+Option+X+O at boot.

[@s8wc3]

Nah the Mac Classic ROM was on a big ol DIP chip on the board. This would be either video RAM or a ROM card for a newer machine. An LC, IIsi, Centris something along those lines maybe

[@yakovkhalip9714]

Tried QEMM on a 486 notebook. It was necessary to run a COVOX sound device. QEMM wasnt stable - gave issues and games crashed...

[@richardestes6499]

I forgot that the orcs from Warcraft sound like Grover from Sesame Street, but with a case of laryngitis.

[@8bitbubsy]

3:57 Internal L1 cache seems to be disabled? Any reason for this? This will probably slow down the system quite a bit.

[@stonent]

I noticed that too.

[@maikmerten]

Disabling the L1 cache for a 486 would severely limit performance. It would lead to a situation where the performance would just not be there. In fact, one may think the performance has, indeed, left the building. If one were to ask "where is my performance", the answer would a thorough and resounding "what performance?". After a while, people would forget what performance was, with the word slipping into obscurity, only known by a secluded cabal of people with askew tendencies. The benchmarks in this video suggest the L1 cache was active after all, though.

[@8bitbubsy]

@@maikmerten Yeh, I thought it might've been enabled in the benchmark since it was so close to another DX2 system (which most likely had its internal cache enabled).

[@powerspec88]

I saw that too, but at 11:30 it shows enabled in the BIOS.

[@8bitbubsy]

@@powerspec88 That's his other 486 PC, not the IBM one.

[@WildDiamond07]

What's next on the list?

[@heilong108]

Hey are you sure the original caviar PCB was bad? I noticed it had the jumper set, whereas the one you swapped over did not. Iirc those old WD drives would work when jumpered as "master" if and only if there was a slave present. When run alone on a channel it needed to have no jumper installed

[@mushroomsamba82]

15:35 They did a _damn_ nice job recreating Mario Kart on PC

[@CarlosdeGalvagni]

4:50 thumbs up if you checked your slack too

[@eformance]

That pinball game looks like they were using the VGA hardware scrolling registers to make the playfield move around.

[@32KOFDATA]

Wonder what will happen if QEMM is run with Phi's MS-DOS startup pack autoexec and config files.

[@Avatar_EU]

Whacky Wheels takes me back to my teenage years, oh wow.

[@FirstLast-we8cb]

Wacky Wheels!!! I totally forgot about that. Played that as a kid. :-)

[@dintyshideaway9505]

Quarterdeck GameRunner, and QEMM Game Edition were specifically aimed at DOS gamers, and between the two applications could play almost anything under DOS 3.0 or higher. QEMM in English is just Q-E-M-M. SInce all English words with the letter Q, are followed by a U, saying that as a word sounds a bit strange to my ear.

[@leakyzinc]

"quemm" is indeed how it's pronounced in English. Quarterdeck, makers of QEMM, used to say this in their adverts. They also sold QRAM for 286 PCs, not surprisingly that would be pronounced as "cram", a somewhat better play on words for a memory optimisation utility

[@enilenis]

Those COAST modules (Cache On A Stick) are a pain. I have a few in my collection, and they're all slightly different. I have one that came with a Pentium motherboard. To me that is strange, because I assumed that only 486 boards had use for external cache. P1's had their own L2, and Celerons didn't yet exist.

[@peachgrush]

No, Pentium-class CPUs had no L2. Only late K6-2+ and K6-III+ have on-chip L2 cache, making the on-board L2 effectively L3. And then it was Pentium Pro which first introduced on-chip L2 to Intel chips (and then Pentium II with its Slot 1 scheme).

[@enilenis]

@@peachgrush Guess I'm starting to forget how things were 20 years ago. COAST I didn't know existed. I had some weird ram in a bag that didn't fit anything, until one day I found a P1 motherboard with a cache socket and a module already installed. Then it made sense what all those short memory sticks were. I never even fired that board up. It's currently serving as a wall decoration.

[@muttBunch]

I’m dying to find an 8088, 286, 386 and/or 486. I can’t find any good recyclers where I’m at outside of Philadelphia :/

[@Christopher-N]

In the 90s, our home had three different PCs: 8088, 486, and P5. With the exception of the P5, our computers were more advanced than our school's, which meant formatting our HD 1.44 MB floppies as DS DD 720 KB, so I could use the same disks at home and school. I love all three, but the 8088 is my favorite. Sadly, they've all been scrapped except for the P5, which presently has a blown sound card and a dead monitor.

[@dykodesigns]

Yeah Falcon 3 eats a lot of conventional memory. I Have been messing with Windows 95 OSR2 (dutch version) under PC-em. Seems like I can’t get enough conventional memory unless I use HIMEMX. I tried all the usual things such as highloading DOS and all the drivers. But the default HIMEM that comes with Windows seems to use more memory then HIMEMX. The goal is to have a configuration that is suitable for memory hungry games that also require a mouse and cd-rom but also run things like AutoCAD release 12. I did manage to do it, but I only got the desired result with HIMEMX. I’ve heard that some versions of OSR2 have some sort of weird bug regarding memory.

[@princemegahit]

Its seems the translated OSR2 versions of Windows 95, have the same problems with the conventional memory. A made a patch for this back in the day for my Spanish version based on another version (I think based on the English/Original version ) that I found on a pirated CD. I don't remember exactly the solution or where I have this patch, but It had something wrong in the IO.SYS file.

[@amdintelxsniperx]

i think the apple ones are extended ROM

[@RETROMachines]

Super video, thanks..

[@derek8564]

Ahh....the COAST module...Cache On A STick :)

[@zaxchannel2834]

I never saw a cache module for a 486, just 'COAST' (cache on a stick) for socket 7

[@mrbrad4637]

I had no idea micromachines also came out on PC! Wished I had of known back in the day...

[@VK2FVAX]

Mystery apple boards. "Apple ROM SIMM". Essentially patches to the toolbox rom's from early systems.

[@flecom5309]

I have a valuepoint with the same planar as you do that has the cache card, if it's of any help I can take some pictures of it so you can at least know what you are looking for? I don't have a spare sadly

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

I always wonder what was the limit on this computers, but I had the same problem with ram.

[@mattgrant2646]

Would be an awesome machine to put an early Debian on. With a bit of editing, you should be able to get XWindows going. I used to run a 486DX2 with a SCSI controller and 600MB of HDs Multi-tasking heaven and SMOOTH interaction because of the SCSI.

[@andheeid]

back in the day, for a kid like me who wants to play some ms-dos game, i have to learn how to set config.sys and autoexec.bat with devicehigh stuff, by asking relatives and friends.... if my parent goes to particular uncle house, i always want to come, because his sons good with computers

[@movax20h]

3:46 Why do you have internal CPU cache disabled in BIOS?

[@Phil-D83]

Such a painful era. No cache ram for it on ebay?

[@djpirtu2]

You really need to try out Gravis Ultrasound, you'll hear the difference in Pinball Fantasies immediately :) Of course Sound Blaster is still good to have beside for games that don't support GUS.

[@Jerkwad152]

The L2 cache module looks similar to a COAST module, but it isn't. COAST modules use pipeline burst cache, same as the ones later soldered to the board. The rare ones you'd find on a weird 486 board are regular async cache, just like the old rows of DIP chips. EDIT: www.amoretro.de/ebay/2014/06/m919cache.jpg This is basically what you're looking for.

[@mikecawood]

I used to like DR DOS 6 which managed memory far better than MS-DOS.

[@stephenkennedy6358]

the whining in the monitor could be a faulty flyback transformer

[@Alex4SiliconValley]

Why did IBM 486 computers only come with 25 and 50mhz CPU’s ?

[@Zeem4]

My guess is that the monitor's line output transformer has failed.

[@ΓιώργοςΠαρασκευάκης-ν7ε]

at 2:48 how many rams do u have?

[@mattyllingworth]

What sound board do you use

[@stephenkennedy6358]

normally the pcb needs to be calibrated to the drive even if its the same model

[@Borgan_Black]

Chaos engine on a pc? I didn't know

[@intel386DX]

21:21 how the heck you runnig Micro Machines that smooth on 486DX2 66MHz? Back in a day on my 486DX2 66MHz it was slite show unplayable! My CPU was Cyrix tho.

[@jessehill9993]

It did not take special memory, IBM had high standards. I have boxes that require parity, others EDO, others FPM. All depends on the chipset. SIMMs varied a LOT

[@princemegahit]

I never used smartdrive because of this kind of use (waste for me) of the conventional memory. A good configuration of commands like FCBS , FILES, STACKS and BUFFERS on the CONFIG.SYS have near the same effect in terms of speed than the memory hungry SMARTDRIVE. At least with DOS+WIN3.1 without CD-ROM. And when you use a CD for installing or copying games or other software to the hard drive , you can always load smartdrive temporarily.

[@johnhunt1725]

What kind of tech would leave the internal cache disabled on a 486? That makes NO SENSE!

[@RetroSpector78]

Not really sure why it showed up disabled in the cmos cause it was definitely enabled as I was benchmarking it and playing games. Think I would have noticed the performance hit :)

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

What about using Bat2exe to turn the Autoexec.bat into Autoexec.exe and there must be a way to convert Config.sys into Config.com

[@eformance]

Why is your internal cache disabled?

[@andrewmurray1550]

because he disabled it. he says so in the video.

[@Geomanb]

You might check "ps-2.kev009.com/" for the caches: this site contains all the IBM PC technical documentation and part numbers. For example I searched 20 years for an 42H0393 synchronous cache module for an aptiva, now I have 3 of them, one as an backup.

[@MasterControl90original]

Those apple modules should be machintosh rom upgrades but take it with a grain of salt i don't know much about mac hw

[@Geomanb]

here we go: ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/326_7.htm ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/5cba.htm L2 Cache 256 KB 92G7431 www.memory4less.com/ibm-processor-board-92g7431 but I would cross check, if it is the right one. As I said I searched for years and got the modules for much cheaper by chance: The first one was a donation from a fellow Nekochan user, the second one I got from the USA, where somebody offloaded a heap of old memory modules, and in the preview image I spotted it, the third one was a retro PC retailer (now defunct) that sold the part for $ 30.

[@UKSCIENCEORG]

Install the After Dark flying toasters screensaver !

[@Christopher-N]

Classic. We also had Screen Antics _Johnny Castaway._ With a mostly static blue background, I wouldn't exactly call it a screen saver, but it was fun to watch. Occasionally suffered graphical errors and crashes, though.

[@SimonThomasen]

device=himem.sys /testmem:off device=emm386.exe noems highscan dos=high,umb buffershigh=10 Then loadhigh/devicehigh your biggest devices and TSR's first if possible.

[@mikesilva3868]

😊

[@onkelebert787]

Such a beautiful old PC and then you use MS DOS instead of PC-DOS...

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

Ah. Western Digital toilets. Because they're always taking a dump.

[@phillipstearns7258]

I get the point of the video, but u have a 3rd stick, and 2 more slots. Seems kinda wierd u didn't just use it.

[@RetroSpector78]

Have other ibm machines that might need memory upgrades and for this machine 8mb is sufficient.

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

But all anyone ever needs is 640k ;-)

[@lharris428]

@RetroSpector78 I've been commenting to you in the past videos. You want FRU 7MP6150 for the cache See here: ardent-tool.com/misc/Cache_Modules.html If you are US based or willing to see if they can get them to ship, I bought mine from an eBay seller based out of NJ directly for ~$50, he goes by the eBay name of ctsales and runs computertradeexchange.com/ where he has a warehouse full of this stuff, more than he could ever list at once. If you go to his web page and click the contact us, there's an email for the owner/sales and that is who you want to contact. See my comment in your Part 2 video. I have a PS Valuepoint 433sx/x with a Pentium Overdirive and this chip.

[@DxDeksor]

Retro engineering these and making new sticks would be awesome ! I have a ps/value with the same issue

[@johnlucky2344]

just put more ram in it isnt that easy

[@DanielOliveiraMenelkir]

The cache you show looks like the ones used in Apple Macintosh. Take a look: www.oldcomputr.com/apple-macintosh-iifx-1990/

[@thenetworklab7276]

Hi - big fan here and your videos are great. At kzbin.info/www/bejne/g2rKiqqfoa5_kK8 your L1 (internal, 8KB) cache is disabled. This can cause significant performance impacts. In some BIOSes, this gets disabled (I have no idea why) when the BIOS is defaulted. You may want to enable it (if you didn't already) and re-run some of those benchmarks to see if it makes a difference :)

[@stvpls]

imagine calling themselves a retro pc enthusiast but not even connecting it via internet dial up (if you dont have a pots line you can emulate one), just the usual games, show us some productivity and online action instead of just games, it was an office pc not gaming pc