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roboticmehdi2

help identify 90's pc and laptop

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Recently I got a 486 laptop.

Can people who really know these old tech helmp me indentify components/parts of these two computers? I could only go as far to identify cpu for both.

Laptop seems to have an intel 486sx 25mhz (from wikipedia I learned it is same as 486dx 25mhz but with no floating point unit, well doom doesn't need fpu anyway!), and the other computer (actually it is partially a computer) seems to have an intel cpu (I think it is one of the fastest, more than enough for quake!!). card2 seems to be a sound card. That leaves only one option for card1 = graphics card? which type? is it any good. and what are the other components on both computers?

Please, only guys who really know these stuff help me. other question is, it seems my laptop's screen in grayscale only? I ran wolfenstein3D and it was grayscale. Can it be configured to display color somehow? I have not yet run doom or quake on any of them yet. (laptop's floppy drive works very bad, I could barely copy wolfenstein3d shareware 1 floppy to it, after trying 10 floppies or so. and dont want to try doom on grayscale anyway. as for othr, it is not a computer yet)

Edited by roboticmehdi2

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why ISA video card is slower than PCI video card? Because ISA is 16bit and PCI is 32bit? in that case by much slower you mean 32/16=2 times slower? cand I add pci video card to it in future?

 

I looked up my laptop from that website, and it seems to support 64 shades of gray, no no color here. I wonder if I connect if to vga monitor will it dosplay in color? also does this laptop has a bottleneck in video card as well? Doom minimum requirement is said to be 386 and 4mb ram (recommende 486+8mb). this laptop has 486(good for doom) but still 4mb ram (although according to website expandable to 20mb). So I think looking at cpu and ram it will be fine for Doom, although I might add extra 4mb in future if I find some, not sure if I can transfer ram from pentium pc to this laptop. Only I wonder and hope if this laptop will display color to vga monitor and has no bottlenecks in anything else (video card for example)

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I don't know if the math works out exactly like that, but the ISA bus only runs at 8MHz, while the PCI bus will run at 33MHz generally. Since you have 3 PCI slots, you can easily add another PCI card if the case has room.

I don't have any experience running Doom on the minimum RAM requirements, but I suspect it will be a bit choppy even if you have a 486. Don't know if it will output color. It is very unlikely that RAM from a desktop machine will fit a laptop.
 

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What are some things I have on board? 3 ISA slots, 3 PCI slots? any PCI express slots? any other slots? 4 memory slots but 2 memory sticks look different than other two? whats that chip at the end of ISA slots? of the bridge chips which one is north and which one is south? Can you label everything you know on one of my board pictures and post it please?

 

(by the way, I have no case or hard drive or monitor or power unit of the ??? computer, thats why I call it ??? computer. owner gave me only those, I took screen pictures before I dismantled the components). He said he needs monitor and power unit for other purposes. And case was too dirty and I just took whats inside. also he said hard drive was in very bad condition, so I thought I will use compact flash card in future instead. Now I only need to find power unit and monitor to test both computers (laptop if it outputs color))

Edited by roboticmehdi2

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https://imgur.com/a/3FQKhDk

Your board is way too old to have PCI Express slots. RAM is SIMMs which need to be installed in matching pairs in order to work. You have two pairs, most likely of different capacities, which is why they look different. The battery says "replace this" because it has gone dead according to the startup screen you showed.
 

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I strongly recommend getting a PCI video card, my personal recommendations being either the Matrox Millennium (2D only, excellent image quality, dirt cheap) or the 3Dfx Voodoo Rush (2D+3D, 3D works in DOS, mediocre image quality, but less expensive than other Voodoo options). Doom will be playable on an ISA video card, but you'll probably have issues, especially with large maps that use a lot of textures.

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A job of a video card is (*) to copy information from video memory (memory allocated in ram) and based on that info feed out signals for a monitor (ex: vga monitor or composite), right? How can having lot of textures or a complex scene have anything to do with video card? wouldn't a "bad" video card be just slow at copying info from ram and feeding output?

 

(* except later cards that are supposed to provide various hardware accelerations too, which dos-doom or dos-quake do not rely on)

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UPDATE:

 

OMG

 

I have connected 486 laptop to a vga monitor to test (at friends house) and it worked! wolfenstein3D in color worked very good!

 

Now back home I have installed doom shareware 1.9 on it and it did not run at first, says something like "doom need at least 3.7mb free ram to run, edit config.sys to load less stuff so there is more free ram".

I was so excited I did not do it, instead I started laptop from ms-dos 5.0 floppy and then launched doom: it works!

 

Cant believe I finally have a true retro doom laptop (486sx 25mhz + 4mb ram), and believe me it runs "normal" at full screen and high detail, I was expecting it to run slower.

I am now planning to buy a 5$ CRT monitor I found nearby (maybe a 25$ LCD but 5$ CRT is cheaper -__-), and it will be done.

 

Maybe I'll post a video of doom gameplay/benchmark on it.

Edited by roboticmehdi2

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Bloodshedder, I have two 256kb UMC caches on board which you tagged.

 

Also, I found out that there is a 32kb ISSI cache chip on board as well (it can be easily seen if you look at board photo). Any idea what that is supposed to be? Does it contribute to L2 cache making total L2=512kb+32kb OR there is another purpose for it? why only one little 32kb chip of it?

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"32Kx8 High-speed CMOS Static RAM" - this is probably the CMOS memory chip where BIOS settings are stored. It is not cache memory.

Also, it is only 256 bytes large.
 

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Bloodshedder, does my laptop has L2 cache? please check out the uploaded zip for my laptop's photos.

I have re-uploaded it with the photos of front side and back side.

 

front1.jpg: two separate close-up photos of front side brought side-by-side (in the middle some components are repeated)

front2.jpg: photo of front side.

zback.jpg:  photo of back side.

 

I tried navratil software information tool, it doesn't show L2 cache present, but I want to be sure by physical inspection as well.

Also, if there is no L2 cache, can it be added?

 

question two: how can I add more ram? where can I get two 2mb ram chips suitable for my laptop? (also shown in picture in attaced zip, I found this pic on internet)

on tulip assoc. site it says my laptop upgradable to 8mb (by adding two 2mb ram chips), or 20mb (by adding two 8mb chips)

486.zip

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I don't see any L2 cache or a socket to install any. There is a set of 4 plugs on the front side, but I have no idea what they might be used for.

The two chips labeled TC514256AJL are fast page DRAM chips, but I'm not sure what they would be used for.

I have no idea where you can buy the memory expansion module.

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Beware, your 486 SX is most likely too slow to play DoomII.

Also an upgrade-path is not really given due to proprietary ram format. Furthermore the board seems to be cache-less which drives down speed even more.  Still looking forward to the video of it running Doom though.

 

The ISSI chip on your S7 board is the "tag" ram which is needed to know which data is in the cache(+how to find it) and may need to have a certain size to be able to cache a certain range of memory(given it's direct mapped). Some chipsets have this functionality embedded in their chipset. Older ones sport such an IC in SOJ format - 15ns should be sufficient for around 66mhz(@fastest settings) but you never know unless you test for it.

 

As already mentioned a Matrox is an excellent choice for playing all sorts of games without acceleration.

 

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the 4 plugs on front side is for the ram upgrade, two ram chips shown on photo I found on internet would fit there.

I think the two TC514256AJL on front side could be video ram (256kb), similar ones present on back side which make 4mb system ram.

 

I was going to release a video, but I did demo3 benchmark test (screensize 9, high detail, pc speaker sound) and the result was 8fps, I thought it was somehow slower than what I have seen on internet  12fps (for 486sx-25mhz). At first I thought it was the video chip bottleneck, but now I think the absence of L2 cache might be the primary reason. (after all it's a laptop, normal to have slower video chip and no L2 cache).

 

I still might release a video, it is 8fps but still kinda playable (screensize 9 - highest, and high detail, pc speaker).

 

Would be great to have L2 cache though, 12 fps might not seem a big difference at first, but compared to 8fps it is a 50% increase !!!

 

It would also be very good for someone who has a 25mhz 486 (or 50mhz 486 with x2 multiplier disabled from bios), to disable L2 cache, do the demo3 benchmark and post result here. I really want to compare my result with someone elses.

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I did not know, maybe overread it, that you were able to source some more ram.

The video ram should be more than enough. For most games you only need a max of 256KB frame buffer(and only if the games use extended X-Modes).

 

Many people overestimate a 486s performance because their machine was doing its job a good 10 to 20 years ago... where no serious comparisons in possible performance existed and most users were young and naive.

Even a DX2-66 is slow and in DoomII a DX4-100 bites on granite in levels like MAP22(observe with parameter '-devparm') due to its slow front side bus of 33mhz. Upping former yields a good boost and may even somewhat alleviate missing secondary cache once the frequency gets really high(impractical on most hardware though).

 

I have a slow 486 board(VESA + PCI) which I can downclock from 33 to 25mhz fsb so a comparison score can be made but don't hold your breath. I also do not own any ISA-VGA cards.

 

 

Edited by _bruce_

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At first I thought the CON12 connector on the back of the laptop was for the RAM upgrade, but didn't notice that the upgrade board had two connectors on it.

My label of the keyboard connector on the motherboard is wrong; it should say "AT keyboard".

Thank you for the info on tag RAM, I had never heard of the need of it. I have some experience with older systems, but apparently not as much as you.
 

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Maybe use a CF card to avoid "caching hiccups" when playing Doom.

I'll post my findings at 25mhz fsb tomorrow.

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Ok,

on an MB-4D50AG(oldest board I have) with an Intel DX2 "50" at 25mhz fsb and no 2nd level cache I get 19.0 fps.

 

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27 minutes ago, _bruce_ said:

Ok,

on an MB-4D50AG(oldest board I have) with an Intel DX2 "50" at 25mhz fsb and no 2nd level cache I get 19.0 fps.

 

is the cpu itself also 25mhz? because for 50mhz dx2 the fsb is already known to be 25mhz. have you disabled x2 multiplier if possible?

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Oops, I was so busy with the jumpering that I forgot you wanted a score at 25mhz core clock too.

Tomorrow then.

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So hot off the press...

12.7fps at 25mhz core/25mhz fsb using an intel DX and a Rage Pro PCI.

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2 minutes ago, _bruce_ said:

So hot off the press...

12.7fps at 25mhz core/25mhz fsb using an intel DX and a Rage Pro PCI.

and L2 cache disabled? it makes sense now.

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@roboticmehdi2 I figured I'd join you on the quest of Identifying and fixing older 90's laptops since I also have a Doom era laptop from what I assume is the early to mid 90's (a Toshiba t2130 ct) but I have no clue what it's actually capable of, I completely took it apart for cleaning and discovered the processor is a 468 dx4.
I can't find anything on it on the google machine and I need parts, including two different internal batteries.

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4 hours ago, wolfmcbeard said:

@roboticmehdi2 I figured I'd join you on the quest of Identifying and fixing older 90's laptops since I also have a Doom era laptop from what I assume is the early to mid 90's (a Toshiba t2130 ct) but I have no clue what it's actually capable of, I completely took it apart for cleaning and discovered the processor is a 468 dx4.
I can't find anything on it on the google machine and I need parts, including two different internal batteries.

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshiba/Other/Toshiba T2110 T2110CS T2115CS T2130 T2130CS T2130CT T2135 - Maintenance Manual.pdf

very good 486 computer there, lucky you have the one with TFT screen (STN screens suck). Looks like 486dx4-75mhz(16kb L1 cache) + 8mb ram(minimum). Probably will keep doom at 35fps, might be enough for quake (though 25mhz fsb might be a problem).

Edited by roboticmehdi2

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Holy crap, to  be honest, I figured 15-20fps would be the top end on a screen size of 3 or 4 when I originally bought it two years ago, didn't even consider Quake since I never played it.
And it was the backup battery I need to get the thing in full working order, doubt I'll find a main but I could probably make new one and the RTC battery might be replaceable with a modern cr2032.

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