Re: Motherboard cache error checking software [386]

Posted on 2019-01-29, 22:54

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well unfortunately, your best tool for testing broken vias/lines is a multimeter. AFAIK there is no reliable way to test for bad address/data lines in post-PC/XT boards through software, as chipsets tend to interleave memory data lines for performance, so the results given would certainly be …

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Re: Show us your unicorn! Let’s see the one you wish you’d kept

Posted on 2019-01-29, 05:03

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My first unicorn would be the hackarific Tandy 1000 SL we had from the early 90's with this awesome sounding Miniscribe 8425F hard drive. I managed to re-acquire a 1000 SL since though, and I came up with my own unique hacks (replacing the SL motherboard with a '286-based 1000 TL board with 80287 …

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Re: Can a new vintage mobo have bulging caps?

Posted on 2019-01-21, 03:25

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I dunno, even the 'best' brands weren't immune from cap failure, from my experience. I've pulled MANY bone-dry Sanyos out of old Asus motherboards. While better than the usual suspects, they haven't proven to hold up that well over time to me. Thanks for the replies. The motherboard was a Soyo 5EMA …

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Re: Motherboard cache error checking software [386]

Posted on 2019-01-21, 03:06

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Usually faulty cache will throw up rather predictable error patterns across large expanses of RAM under Memtest86. You can tell it's 'probably' not the RAM at fault, as it's a similar error pattern across very large expanses. Have you tried putting the original 128KB cache back in?

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Unlocked BIOS for GVC/BCM Research QS694VP Socket 370 motherboard

Posted on 2018-11-06, 06:08

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got this motherboard a while back, it seemed like a pretty reasonable VT694X-based Socket 370 motherboard. Little would I know that the the BIOS was so catastrophically locked down, you couldn't set AGP4X mode or even PIO/UDMA modes. You also couldn't manually allocate IRQs and DMAs for stuff. …

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Re: 98se IDE CF or PCI SATA controller + SSD

Posted on 2018-10-21, 21:34

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Promise S150 sounds like an attractive option. What I like to do is have an SSD be my boot drive, while an old mechanical handles swap and spooling duties. That way I don't put that much stress on my SSD.

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Re: I de-CQMed my AWE32 PnP CT3990...!

Posted on 2018-09-25, 21:02

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

For some reason, some AWE32 and SB32 cards come with a DIP packaged ZMD-made DRAM chip, while others use a smaller surface-mount chip. Yeah, I find the ZMD-made stuff to be quite interesting myself 😀

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Re: I de-CQMed my AWE32 PnP CT3990...!

Posted on 2018-09-24, 19:46

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Nice, clean job with the rework there. How does it work out for you?

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Re: My Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 Review

Posted on 2018-09-24, 18:15

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Damn, James-F, you're right about the CT1703-T being a noisy POS. I just got a CT2770 SB16 Value (CT1747 chip) and it came with a CT1703-T, and it hissed like crazy. Replaced the chip with a CT1703-A taken from a dead AWE32, and the hiss was cut by 50%. Now only the PCM volume slider hisses when I …

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Re: MV035F 486 motherboard with no L2 cache

Posted on 2018-08-23, 02:14

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry about the late post; old 486 boards do not usually support flashing EEPROMs from their sockets, so I used an old Al Needham PB-10 ISA EPROM burner to make BIOS chips. Your best and only backup would be the original BIOS chip in that case.

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Re: Looking for some help in understanding cache chips.

Posted on 2018-05-24, 04:37

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did you make sure the jumper settings for the cache were correct? Also the TAG should match the cache setting.

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Re: Will a Cyrix Cx486 DX2 run at 1x?

Posted on 2018-05-22, 21:32

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It should be very similar. You'll notice too that the L2 cache accesses are slightly faster (~10%) than usual on a Cyrix. There's a FUD-y rumor floating about that the L1 cache on a Cx486DX2 runs at only the FSB clock, but I don't know how much truth there is to that urban legend. I believe the …

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Re: Will a Cyrix Cx486 DX2 run at 1x?

Posted on 2018-05-22, 20:07

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, according to that brief, the write-back cache mechanism claims to reduce bus bottlenecks by up to 15%, which is consistent with the nominal 12% reduction in off-cache access latency I've measured under CacheChk and Speedsys. But the L1 cache is still pretty slow. On my Cx486DX2-66 system, the …

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Re: Will a Cyrix Cx486 DX2 run at 1x?

Posted on 2018-05-22, 19:52

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cyrix's cache mechanism is mysterious to me. I know Cyrix trumped its 2K write-back cache on the Cx486S, not sure if they retained that mechanism (but simply quadrupled the cache size) on the Cx486DX or not. Despite that, I've measured the Cx486 L1 caches to be among the slowest of the 486's in …

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Re: Can you play something on Classic Macintosh ?

Posted on 2018-05-19, 20:07

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The MacPlay port of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary would be one game to play.

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Re: Upgrade paths for the 386 - Yield?

Posted on 2018-05-19, 18:12

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The 90C33 is basically a 90C31 with a VLB / local-bus interface and support for up to 2 MB of memory. IIRC its acceleration engine is very similar to the 90C31's; about on par with a CL-GD5428/5429 performance wise. I'll agree with BSA Starfire about the 90C3x's generally very good DOS speed and …

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Re: My journey to a bearable Sound Blaster 16 model

Posted on 2018-05-19, 04:13

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by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I rather liked the CT2910. As I grew up with a YMF719 sound card, the YMF289 OPL3 sounds exactly like how I remember DOS games. I had to sell mine because I dropped low on cash. Now I have a de-CQMed CT3990 with a YMF289, on which I also replaced the op-amps (they were originally those horrible …

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Re: Quantum Fireball ST 3.5 Series Beeping noise when attempting to DBAN

Posted on 2018-05-07, 17:04

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The beeping sound is the voice coil complaining about something. Usually when hard drives make constant tones, it's either the spindle is stuck ('musical Maxtor syndrome'), or the drive isn't finding a sector ID or address mark upon a seek, causing the drive to short-step over the surface of the …

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Re: MY 486 won't accept my CD-rom drives :(

Posted on 2018-05-06, 15:26

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I noticed you have an 82C929 sound card with IDE interface. You might want to try disabling the sound card IDE channel - I had to cut a trace and remove chips to get my 82C924 to stop hogging the secondary IDE port! If your '929 has a jumper to enable or disable its onboard IDE channel, hopefully …

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Re: Damned CMD PCI0640B IDE controllers!

Posted on 2018-05-04, 15:27

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay, Windows 95 is up and running with 16MB of RAM, with just the hard drive on the CMD IDE interface. With 'Enhanced PIO Mode' and '32-bit Disk Access' disabled in BIOS (presumably meaning it's running as though it were just a fast ISA IDE interface), it seems to run okay without any problems yet. …

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