Looking for good 486 motherboard

[freedomfighter87]

Hello guys.

I've recently gotten back into toying with my old machines since I can't afford to build the new quad phenom II rig I want Anyways, I've got this old 486 machine, which is actually the first machine I ever built. Its got a 133Mhz AMD Am5x86 CPU (AMD-X5-133ADW) and its on a PCChips M919 p.o.s. motherboard. I will admit that when I built this machine I was very amateur, and I still really don't know much about 486's, but I do know that this motherboard has absolutely NO external cache (the cache chips onboard are fake... literally. They have no die inside the IC... see this link CPU-World.com forums :: View topic - Pcchips m919 faked external cache


but anyway, I want to find a very good, very stable replacement board with external cache, PCI and ISA, 72-pin simm slots, VESA or VLB or whatever its called is not necessary (the brown slot at the end of the ISA for those wierd video cards)

It just needs to support my AMD 5x86.

Thanks for the advice!

[usslindstrom]

Hmmmmmm.

That's a really good question. Asside from Ebay - I'm really not sure what all the options of buying an older PC part like you're askin' for.

None of the major retellers are going to have anything like that in stock.

ah - 486 - those were the days. Amazing that you still have one working (minus Motherboard aparently).

[freedomfighter87]

yeah I've looked on ebay. There are many different boards but for some reason the sellers want INSANE prices for them, ranging from $40 to $300 for obsolete hardware!!! I don't get that.. but it seems to be a popular trend on ebay for sellers to ask for several times more than the part even costed when it was new. It drives me nuts! Are these people RETARDED?! hehe anyway. I'm trying to figure out more of which board I should look for, not where I can get it. I'm sure I can just watch ebay and eventually one will pop up, but I want to know what to get. The M919 board I have was actually probably the most popular board for 486's, evidenced by the fact that I've seen them in about 80% of all newer 486's I've ever disassembled. But the M919 was popular because of its price, not its quality. It has a thin (4-Layer) PCB and the components are cheap. Honestly the performance isn't bad per se, but the external cache (which almost every 486 had from what I can tell) was fake, and some variants of the M919 had not even the fake cache, just a blank spot on the pcb with traces than ran to nowhere, and in fact just looped in on themselves... its kind of humorous I guess... I never knew that any motherboard manufacturer would go so low. Needless to say I've never bought another PCChips board. They are total crap.

[no1_vern]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freedomfighter87

yeah I've looked on ebay. There are many different boards but for some reason the sellers want INSANE prices for them, ranging from $40 to $300 for obsolete hardware!!! I don't get that.. but it seems to be a popular trend on ebay for sellers to ask for several times more than the part even costed when it was new. It drives me nuts! Are these people RETARDED?!
SNIP.

The reason is that all of the older tech is now in industrial controls or applications. What we consider obsolete is now required hardware for our robotics/machinery.

[ShyguyXPC]

Demand for the older components that aren't even made anymore, can drive the price up, if there's a market for it, and high demand, and limited sources to buy from, sellers can charge/ask almost whatever they want for it, assuming anyone can afford it.

Just look at recent tech for example, DDR memory is a great example, was only a year or two back, it was dirt cheap for 2GB of DDR, now, 1GB of DDR costs more than 2 to 4GB of DDR2...

in another couple years I suspect the same will happen with DDR2, as DDR3 is the standard and DDR4 or something comparable comes on to the scene.

[Steve R Jones]

For fifty bucks you can get a refurb P4 machine with Windows XP....If you're going to play around with a machine - might as well get a real one