[♪ Music Intro ♪ and Keyboard Typing Noises]
Greetings, and welcome to another update to the woodgrain 486!
And this computer, augh, it's still just my favorite thing recently.
I love this computer, and I built this, actually,
here on LGR a little while back for the 7th anniversary celebration of this show.
You can click the annotation there to see it, or...
just go in the video description- and link- click there, and, you know, you can watch it there, and catch up.
In that video, I had a couple issues.
I have, uh, one since I have resolved, which is a SoundBlaster being kinda strange.
I added a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 to this,
in another subsequent video, which is also linked in the description.
Um, and aside from adding more woodgrain, which I did right here,
I also wanted to add cache to the computer.
And, in case you're not aware, L2 cache is what I'm talking about.
And a lot of computers back then just didn't even have it built on board.
Or it wouldn't- you know, it wasn't in the CPU or anything,
you had L1 on the CPU, but it was something like, you know, 8 kilobytes.
And so, if you wanted more: 128k, 256, 512, whatever,
then you would actually need to physically install it onto the board.
So that's what we're going to do today.
I had some free slots, I was able to source some cache chips that are compatible, so uh, let's just go ahead and-
I want to look first at what the computer performed like before I've installed any cache,
then we're going to install it and see what it does.
Okay, so let's try out "TOPBENCH" here before any cache is installed.
And this is a very handy little benchmarking program to...
maybe not do exactly what I want it to do here.
I- I'm not really sure how well this is gonna show the difference between the cache being installed and not,
but I just wanted to use it because it's very easy to use and I like the way it looks and I like this real time benchmarking thing.
Gives it a score of about 152-151,
putting it in the range of like an IBM EduQuest Fifty-Five or a Toshiba Satellite 105CS,
which maybe means nothing to you, but I find that kind of fascinating.
Yeah, anyway, this is to get an idea of uh, kind of how the system is running without the cache.
Alright, so, of course, Duke Nukem 3D was the game that uh...
really kind of surprised me how badly it ran before,
and uh... well, you know, it's kind of a tough to run game anyway for certain 486 CPUs,
but this one should be running it... a little better than it was.
So let me just uh, show you again, what we were looking at without the cache.
[Music and sound effects from Duke Nukem 3D]
Okay, so yeah, as you can see there, it is uh...
I mean, single digit framerates quite often, and it just- just pretty much unplayable.
This is running in 320x200 and... you know,
it's got some sound card stuff going on there, which of course,
that's going to make it run a little slower I believe,
but... you know, whatever, it... it shouldn't be running this abysmally slow.
Alright, so here's what we're going to be working with.
I got some chips sent to me from a Ukranian eBay seller, [chuckles] and uh, yeah...
Ukraine seems to be the best source for these,
at least as far as getting them cheaply and reliably, believe it or not.
Um, got a quite of few things from some of these sellers over the past couple of years
and I've seen some others on like Alibaba and whatnot, coming from China,
but I seem to have better luck with these.
And uh, this one actually came in this uh, delightful lotion package [Laughter].
"Multi-Balance" something or other.
Uh, we're not taking a look at lotion, not today anyway.
But yeah, it's a handy little uh thing to keep these protected during shipment,
so let's just open these up.
[Music]
So, each of these sets, there's supposed to be uh, 256 kilobytes total.
These are just sort of attached together like that, but we're going to split them apart.
And there are going to be 2 rows of 4, as well as one tagged chip off to the side, which I think my board has that, and if not, then it's just an extra.
But, uh, yeah, you'll see that um...
the model numbers for these two sets are actually slightly different:
One is "AH" on the end and one is just "A".
They're supposed to be the same specifications, but you know,
I don't know how well like these things hold up,
I don't know which set's like working or... I- I don't know,
I just got a couple of them because they're like $7 for each one of these sets,
and like, very little as far as shipping, so uh...
There's not a whole lot of risk on my end for like getting a couple of them and seeing what you got.
These are just like knit together like a zipper!
I have to get something to pry these apart.
So here are a couple of them uh, one of each type.
Uh... I guess I'm going to try the "AH"s.
Alright, so we've got the woodgrain 486 cover off,
and uh each one of these little guys is going to go...
Right in here.
And yes, you obviously should be doing this before you install the rest of the stuff
when you're putting one of these computers together,
but I didn't have the chips at that time and uh,
the other chips that were on some of those other boards that maybe I could have used...
I just determined that I didn't want to. [Chuckles] I wanted a complete set of chips that were all the same.
And uh, so yeah, they're all going to go in these two columns of uh, four rows.
And then, there's the... ugh, final one right underneath here.
You can see right in the middle here.
These are going to be the uh... that's, telling you what jumper settings need to be set
in order to tell the computer how much it has, so there's a setting for 256k.
So there's a bit of give in the motherboard here.
That's because there's uh nothing really attaching it to the back of the case at this point.
It's not a problem though, as far as I can tell, it's not bending enough to do any damage.
Uh, the other thing to keep in mind of course, is the direction you're putting these in.
And uh, if this thing'll focus.
You have that little circular part there.
There's actually a little circular uh, area on where it goes in, as well,
so you just sort of line both circular areas up, so that is going to be on the left-hand side on these here.
[Music]
Heh heh heh. Well that's interesting.
This has two, or well, four more pins on these, so...
You know, I did not even notice the size difference until I got them in here.
WELL, live and learn!
So, from what I'm reading, the difference between a 32-pin and 28-pin of these cache chips is...
certainly not any kind of real big deal-breaker.
So you can actually take the 28 pins and just drop them into the 32-pin slot. And just... [Chuckles]
Leave a- a little bit of space on the left there, and [Chuckles] you know, it seems a little weird to me,
but everyone online is saying it's going to work! So, I don't know.
Let's try it out! Let's see what we got, and uh at this point,
the only thing left is to do is to get the jumper settings correct
and that's going to be a huge pain because they're underneath a bunch of crap.
[Sounds of jumper being inserted onto pins]
Oh my goodness, this is the most tedious thing in the world!
[Anguish] Ohhhh...
[Anguish] Please... Oh!
[Jumper insertion sound] Oh man, ugh... Ugh!
Okay, that was the most annoying thing I've done in years.
Those jumpers were just not even- holy crap. I thought it was these other jumpers that were near the CPU, but nope!
They were underneath this metal thing. I would have had to take the whole computer apart to get to them. So I just did it, tiny bit by tiny bit,
with a camera and flashlight and tweezers.
[Anguished grunting]
I got that out of my system, let's try this out!
Okay, so we've got it booted up here, that's a good sign, I guess.
I'm going to check the uh, BIOS settings for... cache stuff, which should be in here.
[Clicking noises]
Alright, here's some external cache. That's good.
We're going to enable that and I'm going to say write-back is on.
Okay, so I have this program called "CACHECHK" here.
This is version 7, and uh... It's checking things now to see if everything is okay,
and let's hope it is, because after all that garbage with the jumper settings,
I don't want to mess with anything else anymore.
Okay, so it says this machine has L1 and L2 cache, which is nice.
Uh, 8k of L1, good grief, and L2, 256K, which is what we want, and uh...
You know, I don't know what else to look for here, but that seems good to me.
Let's try uh, the other... benchmarking thing again, TOPBENCH, and see what we get.
Just if anything's different, I'm just curious.
Holy crap! Quite a bit! Holy crap! So...
The score is- it gives us now is 200, hanging at around 190 with this real-time thing.
More closely matches the Dell Inspiron 8000 or the Canon Notejet III.
Uh... dang, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I'm actually pretty impressed with that, I gotta say.
That was not- I was expecting maybe uh a 5% boost from what I'd read, but...
That- that's closer to... I don't know- I may not- I don't know- I don't know how to math, man, math.
So that means we've got to try out uh, Duke Nukem 3- he- 3D, here for sure!
[Duke Nukem 3D music and sound effects]
You know, to be honest... It's kinda hard to say. I- I think it is better.
I'm gonna have to do a side by side here. Uh, take a look at this. I'm going to be seeing this in post, of course.
You know what? I do think it is a little better. I think it is improved... some.
I- I still wouldn't say it's as fast as I would uh... maybe expect for 66 megahertz AMD CPU, but then again,
maybe it is and- and my- my nostalgia is just getting in the way- nah, I don't know!
That- that's definitely is more playable. That is DEFINITELY more playable in this section.
And let- let's just give it the actual test here. I'm gonna go into new game, and uh, just try and play a little bit.
[Nukem:] Damn, those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my- Oomph!
[LGR:] Okay, let's see, do I have- I have all this stuff on low, yeah.
Yeah, that's- that's just... I will say, that is better.
[Gunshots]
Is it like, between 10 and 20% better? I don't know. Maybe? Uh...
Either way, it's interesting to mess around with L2 cache and adding to a 486 like this.
I- It wasn't as groundbreaking as some as the commentors were saying it was gonna be, like
"OMGZ, it's gonna make your go!"
But like uh, obviously, I'm gonna play it.
I mean, I'm happier with it this way and happier to play things this way, as opposed to it was previously,
but again, this computer really wasn't- I mean, I didn't build it for Duke 3D.
Well that's pretty much it for installing cache on this thing.
I'm curious what a difference would make if I installed 512k because...
even though the board itself says it supports 256,
it looks like from the documentation I'm seeing on AOpen's website and from some other places,
that it might actually support 512. That would be interesting.
I don't have any of those chips though, but that's something that I'm- I'm-
I'm just curious about as opposed to like really wanting to do to make my experience that much better.
I'm really quite impressed with what 256k being added did. I mean, that was- that was a pretty significant boost.
It still doesn't make certain games ultimately like, playable.
Running Quake on this computer is still not going to be like [Chuckles] the best experience, although you could do it better than you could before.
Running games from 1996 is not in the realm of what I want this to do.
I just want this thing to look really cool, with its turbo display and woodgrain and whatnot.
And also just, sound and run a lot like the computers that I first played as a kid,
which is a 486-DX2-66, SoundBlaster Pro 2.0, a little bit of cache, I guess, and, you know, a VLB VESA-compatible video card, just-
I'm happy with this thing and even happier with it now!
And if you enjoyed this video on installing some nerdy stuff into some other nerdy stuff,
then perhaps you'd like to see some other nerdy and geeky stuff here on LGR!
That's a lot of what I do! So...
Click these if you'd like to or feel free to come back here every Monday and Friday to see other videos that I come up with.
And uh, yeah, that's pretty much it! I hope you enjoyed, and thank you very much for watching LGR.
[♪ Music Outro ♪]