VOGONS


First post, by gerwin

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.
NEW VERSION 10-2018 - There is a new version kindly provided by vogons user Blzut3. It is available on its GitHub page here.

  • ALi Aladdin V ACPI Throttle Utility
    Version 0.10

    USAGE
    ALi5THT is a computer slowdown utility. It uses the Motherboard southbridge ACPI functions to introduce wait states, and being hardware based does not run in The background. This package allows one to use ACPI throttling on ALi Aladdin V motherboards.
    Run ALi5THT and select the desired amount of slowdown or pass it as a parameter without a prompt.

    BACKGROUND
    The original Throttle does not work with tested ALi Aladdin V based motherboards, such as the Asus P5A, Gigabyte GA-5AX, Biostar M5ALA, Chaintech 5RSA, BCM VP1543. There are four parts that needed to be tweaked to make things work:
    - ALi m7101 PMU* needs to be enabled, if the BIOS has not done this already, by setting a bit in the ALi m1533 Bridge Device.
    - Unset ALi m7101 PMU registers write protection bits.
    - At every run of throttle, BIT9 of the ACPI I/O space is now set. This is just outside of the range of the normal Throttle routines.
    - The ALi 5 Throttle I/O space address register was changed to 0x10h.

    This was originally modification of the Throttle utility with an additional program to unlock the PMU. However, at least some boards have been observed to re-lock the PMU in the background. Thus under high degrees of throttling it would sometimes take too long for throttle to load to be able to change or remove throttling. The task of setting the throttle register has thus been integrated into the single utility.

    Compared to throttle this program does not disable the CPU L1 cache. The focus of this utility is only the motherboard. If this behavior is desired the SetMul or similar utility may be used to tweak the CPU.
    *PMU= Power Management Unit

    CREDITS
    ALi 5 throttle by G. Broers, March 2014.
    Based on PCI.C by Chris Giese.
    Inspired by original Throttle by Jeff Leyda, Dec 15, 2007.
    Throttling ported to C and tool unified by Braden "Blzut3" Obrzut, Oct 13, 2018

    WARNING
    I noticed a nasty lockup when using 'SetMul' or other K6+ clock utilities to toggle the multiplier while throttle was enabled. Using SetMul prior to, and after closing Throttle is fine.

    The Biostar M5ALA seems to be extra quirky in that throttling may hard lock the system when used under DOS. This may lock hard enough to require a power supply power cycle! The program works fine under Windows though.

    The M5ALA is also known to have a lock up issue relating to the external cache, so it's possible that this board just poorly initializes at the BIOS. As of this writing it is suspected that some additional registers just need to be set properly.

    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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OLD VERSION:

For the select few who would like to use Throttle on an Asus P5A, Gigabyte GA-5AX or similar Super Socket 7 board: I slapped together this tweaked version of the Throttle slowdown utility. For now I only tested it with a Chaintech CT-5RSA0 board, with a South Bridge labeled M1543 revision B1. With throttling, Speedsys scores as low as 2 points are reachable.

The attachment ALI5THT.ZIP is no longer available
  • Throttle with ALi Aladdin V patch.
    Version 0.9

    USAGE
    Throttle is a computer slowdown utility, It uses the Motherboard southbridge ACPI functions to introduce wait states. This package allows one to use Throttle on ALi Aladdin V motherboards. It comes with the normal Throttle as well, for usage on non-ALi motherboards. Just start T.BAT and select the desired amount of slowdown. Or pass a parameter to directly select the matching slowdown, without prompt. This package is for MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/ME.

    BACKGROUND
    The original Throttle does not work with tested ALi Aladdin V based motherboards, such as the Asus P5A, Gigabyte GA-5AX, Biostar M5ALA, Chaintech 5RSA, BCM VP1543. There are four parts that needed to be tweaked to make things work:
    - ALi m7101 PMU* needs to be enabled, if the BIOS has not done this already, by setting a bit in the ALi m1533 Bridge Device.
    - Unset ALi m7101 PMU registers write protection bits.
    - At every run of throttle, BIT9 of the ACPI I/O space is now set. This is just outside of the range of the normal Throttle routines.
    - The ALi 5 Throttle I/O space address register was changed to 0x10h.
    *PMU= Power Management Unit

    FILE DESCRIPTIONS
    ALI5ACPI.EXE - Enables ALi Aladdin V Southbridge Power Management Unit (ACPI).
    ALI5THT.EXE - Modified Throttle specific for ALi Aladdin V Southbridge.
    ALI5.TXT - This text file.
    THROTTLE.EXE - Original Throttle, for completeness.
    THROTTLE.TXT - Original Throttle Text File.
    CWSDPMI.EXE - Required for ALI5ACPI.EXE.
    T.BAT - Run this to automatically select either of the 2 Throttle versions,
    T.Bat is set not to disable L1 cache by default.

    CREDITS
    Original Throttle by Jeff Leyda, Dec 15, 2007.
    ALi 5 Specific files by G. Broers, March 2014:
    -ALI5ACPI.EXE Based on PCI.C by Chris Giese.
    -ALI5THT.EXE Based on Throttle assembler source.

    WARNING
    I noticed a nasty lockup when using 'SetMul' to toggle the AMD K6+ multiplier while Trottle was enabled. Using SetMul prior to, and after closing Throttle is fine.
Last edited by gerwin on 2018-10-15, 22:00. Edited 1 time in total.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 1 of 4, by Jolaes76

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Great work, truly appreciated!

The lack of support for the Aladdin V drove me to buy Bremze (for a GA-5AX) pretty long ago. If only I could spare some time to properly compare Bremze vs your build of Throttle... maybe dropping Mo'Slo Deluxe in the pit as well...

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 2 of 4, by gerwin

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Bump to announce that there is a new version kindly provided by vogons user Blzut3. See topmost post.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 3 of 4, by Namrok

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So, I have a weird issue using this on my ASUS P5A running a Pentium 233 MMX @ 2.5 x 100. Also running bios version 1006. Can provide more specs if they matter or anyone is just curious.

I guess good news first, the program works great. Used it with SETMUL to get an appropriate speed for Powermonger and Populous II. The bad news is if I hit the power button afterwards to turn off the machine, it just hard locks and the PC Speaker just blares at full blast. The only way to get the system to shut down at that point is turn off the power on the PSU or surge protector.

I tried it again, without running SETMUL at all, and the same thing happens. In fact, running ALI5THT and telling the system to go back to full speed still causes it to happen.

Using CTRL-ALT-DEL to reset the system, and then powering it down avoids the problem.

I'm not sure how much attention, or how much of a knowledge base, this utility has. But I figure I'd toss this out there and see if anyone has any ideas.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 4 of 4, by BitWrangler

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Try a full thumb plant 8 second count on the power button. I think just tapping it causes an ACPI request to go "Okay am I powering off or just sleeping right now?" which depends on how OS has ACPI states set. (There might be a CMOS setup option to meddle with too) .. so since ACPI is meddled with, it needs the standard "I am telling you to shut down, so SHUT DOWN" 8 second button command, rather than "I'm tapping the power button, decide what you're gonna do about that"

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.