Re: IBM Acer V75M board

Posted on 2018-05-04, 15:23

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If memory serves there was a DOS utility called CTU that could also enable the L2 cache on a K6-II+/III/etc. Perhaps you could leave the L2 disabled in BIOS and try that utility out? https://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/ … 7231621/ctu.zip

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Re: IBM Acer V75M board

Posted on 2018-05-03, 18:21

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On some Socket 7 systems, you have to disable the motherboard L2 cache in BIOS, to get the on-chip cache to cover the whole range of installed memory. I had to do that with a 430TX motherboard that had a K6-2+. Try again with your K6-III+, this time disabling L2 cache in BIOS. The loss of slow, …

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Re: Retro PCs are like loot boxes

Posted on 2018-05-03, 17:28

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm hopelessly addicted to picking up retro PCs. 😜

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Re: Old IBM 0665 MFM harddrive will not low level format (see video)

Posted on 2018-05-02, 16:31

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

^ Sounds like one of the heads in the drive is bad, that's why you get that repeated 'pinging' sound. The drive's processor is trying to get a track ID from that head and failing, and in so doing it rezeros the headstack against the crash stop before retrying, which is what makes that repeating ping …

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Re: Damned CMD PCI0640B IDE controllers!

Posted on 2018-05-02, 02:01

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well a bit of an update, disabling 32-bit disk access and 'Enhanced PIO Mode' from BIOS seems to allow Windows 95 to set up from the hard drive using the CMD IDE. Fortunately I'm not looking for anything fancy or high performing, just something that will allow me to play Civilization II at a …

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Re: Damned CMD PCI0640B IDE controllers!

Posted on 2018-05-02, 01:02

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would definitely go SCSI, but then I'd have to buy a controller, drives, etc. Normally yes I would definitely do that with this system, but alas due to limited finances I am forced to go with what I have on hand. 😒

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Damned CMD PCI0640B IDE controllers!

Posted on 2018-05-01, 22:04

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As the title of this post may indicate, I had the misfortune of buying an ALR Optima SL which had one of these vile abominations built into it. The motherboard appears to be an Acer V12LC, so I flashed it with the latest Acer BIOS and set the BIOS type jumper to non-OEM, and I also lifted pin 85 of …

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Re: sound popping with old FSP psus?

Posted on 2018-04-23, 16:35

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

For example you said "YXG has lower ESR than YXF, ZLH" - Well, ZLH's ESR is a full 2 tiers better (lower ESR) than YXG. You also put HE and PW together. Those are close only in 8mm sizes. The 10mm and 12.5mm specs are quite different. Thus the PW are bottom tier and HE are one better. Ah, okay. I …

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Re: sound popping with old FSP psus?

Posted on 2018-04-22, 20:09

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

There are some errors in that assessment of replacement caps equivalents but I think I'll wait and see if the OP plans to recap anything before I write all that (again....) I suppose I should explain why I recommended what I did. My bias regarding cap recommendations is toward long life (> 3000 Hr) …

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Re: sound popping with old FSP psus?

Posted on 2018-04-22, 15:55

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

PSUs should *never* make popping sounds. I've seen several FSPs that burned their dummy load resistors back in the day. I've also seen many with blown Fuhjyyu and YEC caps. I wouldn't call FSP a 'quality' brand by any stretch, but that's just me. Recapped they might be better, but I'd just as soon …

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Re: Bought my first Macintosh, SE/30

Posted on 2018-04-22, 15:40

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh nooooo! That's a sad death for a quite grand old Mac. I used an SE/30 in grade school, and it was actually pretty slick and responsive for a 16MHz system.

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Re: MV035F 486 motherboard with no L2 cache

Posted on 2018-04-22, 06:12

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

DRAM read states are 3-2-2-2. 1 write wait state. L2 cache read burst is 2-1-1-1, 0 write wait state. L2 cache configured as Burst W/B (odd considering there's only an 8KB TAG for 128KB), hidden refresh ON. L2 timings seem really fast for 20ns chips on 33MHz FSB. :^) I have noticed that Cyrix 486s …

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Re: MV035F 486 motherboard with no L2 cache

Posted on 2018-04-21, 21:14

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sorry to bump this, but I just added some cache sockets and installed 128KB of L2 cache into them (20ns chips, 12ns TAG chip). I could have added all nine sockets to get 256KB, but I had an 8KB chip and four 'odd' brand 32K chips I wanted to use up, so I just installed five for now. The tangible …

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Re: CL 54XXXX ???

Posted on 2018-04-13, 16:59

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to own one of this very card back in the late 90's. It's about as generic a GD5429 card as they come, but it works perfectly with the GD5426 drivers. (I found the WIndows 3.1 GD5429 drivers rather problematic with the card. GD5426 drivers never gave any trouble though.) Yeah it takes 256Kx16 …

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Re: MV035F 486 motherboard with no L2 cache

Posted on 2018-03-10, 18:27

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, here's the modified BIOS, which might be helpful for anyone else with an MV035F that doesn't let them change any CMOS Setup options.

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Re: TrinityWorks PowerStacker AMD 5x86-133 Broken Pin

Posted on 2018-03-10, 16:16

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ooh, I used to have a TrinityWorks Powerstacker just like this. It was nice because it worked in almost every 486 socket I put it in, without any grief. I hope you find a replacement pin for that thing, it's totally worth fixing.

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MV035F 486 motherboard with no L2 cache

Posted on 2018-03-10, 02:33

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello, Today I received a L2 cache-free 486 motherboard, an Edom MV035F, based on OPTi's 802 chipset. I wanted something to use up my Cyrix 486DX2 on. When I opened it up and looked it over, I noticed that a lot of components were omitted by the factory, including the jumpers I needed to get the …

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Re: Pentium III Tualatin Adventures

Posted on 2018-02-23, 02:03

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Taicon are okay generally (just Nichicon's Taiwanese subsidiary), they don't seem to be terribly different to their Nichicon-branded counterparts, though their HD series caps tend to be pretty bad on cap-plague era equipment. HM and HN caps are almost always terrible, even Nichicon-branded ones, and …

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Re: Pentium III Tualatin Adventures

Posted on 2018-02-17, 01:54

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Chemi-con KY (long life) and KZE (lower ESR) can be used to replace those horrible G-Luxons. Use KZE for the 'low esr' caps, and KY everywhere else. Rubycon YXF is roughly equivalent to KY but might be cheaper in quantity through digi-key. YXG has slightly better ESR figures, but is a little more …

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Re: Most frustrating part of working on old computers?

Posted on 2018-02-13, 17:32

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For me, it's the damn front panel header cables. I *always* plug them in backwards, or on the wrong pins. Swapping hard drives in cramped cases is also a huge PITA.

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