IBM
Repairing a Very Slow FIC 486-VC-HD Motherboard
Repairing a Very Slow FIC 486-VC-HD Motherboard
#Repairing #Slow #FIC #486VCHD #Motherboard
“vswitchzero”
Today I repair and test a budget model FIC 486-VC-HD motherboard. This board refused to boot due to a dead RTC module, but …
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Very nice! This topic is something, what I have on my todo list fort the Packard Bell PC, which I restored on my channel last year. That one gets also incredibly slow as soon as L2 cache is installed and I assumed the same problem as what you've mentioned. Unfortunately that PC runs on an absolutely unknown ACC chipset, with no documentation whatsoever. Will be hard to mod it properly I guess, but would be a funny project. Thank you for sharing 😉
Awesome!
I don’t understand 80% of what you’re saying, but I like your videos.
Works good. Stuck a Cyrix Cx486 in it. We have one around here as part of a test and burn-in station for our legacy products.
Thank you for the information! ^_^
I have now found these topics on Vogons forum and read them. How lucky I was at the time that my first Am386DX-40 computer was on the ALi M1429/1431 chipset and I overclocked through the BIOS of all timings on the Fastest and ISA bus up to 16 MHz, with an AVGA2 video card, even watched MS Video 1.1 videos normally. ISA overclocked to 20 MHz (yes, there were such dividers are in the bios), but the sound card on the ESS688 chip was already starting to wheeze.
Although Doom still started to slow down towards the end of the game, and Doom 2 severely slowed down, starting from the 5th level. But maybe they lacked 8Mb of RAM..
486 SX 25 was the very first CPU on the very first PC I ever used so very nostalgic!
I think that board had no cache to start with, we added some later but don't really recall seeing much difference in games. It was an IBM 486 SX 25 system.
Most folks would never have never found that missing performance.. Well done.
6:54 0KNAB and 1KNAB.
Looking forward to more videos!
Nice find with the cache!
Spoiler: This probably goes for ISA doom records?
Great to see more FIC boards of that era getting attention! I have a similar board, the FIC 4386-VC-HD (and you do, too 😉 were I did not have these cache issues. When I found the board in my attic, it had the same amount of cache as yours (128K without the Alter RAM, maybe it was some kind of factory default configuration). First thing I did was upgrade it to 256K without Alter RAM as my manual also says that it's "optional" and I didn't really pay it more attention. After reading about Alter / Dirty RAM I realized that it has a performance impact and so I added an Alter TAG chip as well. While the performance did increase, it wasn't nearly as impactful as yours: Memory throughput increased by about 2 MB/s from 16.22MB/s to 18.21 MB/s on my 386DX40 according to speedsys. Sadly I don't have cachechk values from before I added the Alter TAG anymore. Maybe you can test with your 4386-VC-HD as well and see if it was just a peculiarity (or BIOS bug?) on the 486-VC-HD
Thank you for sharing this! I think I might have this issue on a Forex 386/486 board suffering also from low performance. I might just pop in one extra cache chip and see if it makes a difference! Great video and thanks for sharing this information!
You can install pentium overdrive on this board ( even with a lack of contacts in the socket! )
running the isa bus at the "proper" speed feels very tame now.
Nice to see this. I have a couple of 486 motherboards from the same manufacturer also with VIA chipset and both behave the same way you're describing here… I'll see if they support AlterRAM.. thanks for sharing!!
I used to sell those boards when I was a PC repair tech back in the early to mid 90's. Even owned one for a short time. I turned 47 on the 15th, and seeing this is what makes me feel old!
Vogons is always good
Yeah, back in the day always make sure write through is enabled.
Never knew about alter ram..
Necroware also did a video about how to properly de-pot the integrated modules so you can properly desolder the old battery, instead of Dremeling through the epoxy and soldering a career battery to the old battery, which i can't imagine is good since it'll charge a non rechargeable battery.
First thought when seeing a surface mount 486SX 25 – I wonder how much it can overclock? Excited to see what it can do!
Sure sometimes not much, but other times… they can surprise you. Bonus if you can hedge the voltage up a touch if needed.
Always fun to see what some of these "unloved" later budget "fill in parts" like this can do if you can get the shackles off, since technically they were also made on the "latest" process at the time. Pentium 75 is another one that's fun to see – a "back fill" part sure but the core is the same 😉
Awesome vid. Far too long between dinks. But thankful for the content. Can’t wait for the next one. Keep it up. 😊
To fix devices, you must have an activated win version with uts wn dvd, code, and the amount of win istalled that us allowed.
A satellite does the fix offline. Maye your hair dryer comes first on the list, later the 486.
My amd x2 cache took 6 monts to become fixed. It's like an ssd, and when clicking on icons, the hdd desn't move, the cache opens the windows, the cpu is at 0%. When the cache runs out, the hdd opens the files.
About I can get used to 2x 512 kb cache.
Very cool! Looking forward to seeing what your "true purpose" of this board is =D