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My P3 Retro DOS PC

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Reply 41 of 103, by kalohimal

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Sure no problem. Here's the entire modded drivers pack.

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 42 of 103, by enaiel

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Thanks!

BTW, I tried your CpuSpd but it doesn't work with my motherboard:

'cpuspd t' gives "No ACPI, please check BIOS settings", 'cpuspd m' gives "Multiplier control is not supported" and 'cpuspd f' gives "Fid/Vid control is not supported".

I looked in my BIOS but didn't find any additional ACPI settings I could turn on. I found a new version of the BIOS online, but the utility tries to create a floppy image, and I don't have any floppy disks.

#1 VIA C3 Ezra-T 1.0GHz / MSI MS-6368 / Voodoo2+ViRGE GX / SBPro2+YMF744+AWE64+SC-7
#2 Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.40GHz / QDI A10T / Voodoo3 3000+GF4 Ti4200 / Audigy+AU8830+SC-50

Reply 43 of 103, by kalohimal

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CPUSPD M and CPUSPD T won't work for your PC because Pentium 3 is multiplier locked. Intel locked the multiplier starting from Pentium 2 all the way to Pentium 4. Then they introduced "SpeedStep" starting from P4 630 cedar mill, which is essentially unlocking the multiplier if it is lowered, but still locking to prevent it from going over an upper limit. It is used to let the CPU lowers the frequency and runs cooler when idle. So multiplier control will work for Pentium and early Pentium 2, and late Pentium 4, most Dual Cores, and Core 2 CPUs.

CPUSPD T should work for your system, I checked your PC's technical reference manual, there is an option under "Advanced->Device Options". Please enable ACPI S3 suppot and try again.

Here is a picture from my Compaq Evo D530. It's a Pentium 4 but the BIOS is similar.

IMG_20200609_003004.jpg

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 44 of 103, by enaiel

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Unfortunately, 'ACPI S3 Suport' is already enabled in my BIOS.

I found an old floppy disk in storage that still worked (considering that neither the disk nor the drive has been used in 20 years, it's quite a feat!). I upgraded the BIOS, but still no difference.

#1 VIA C3 Ezra-T 1.0GHz / MSI MS-6368 / Voodoo2+ViRGE GX / SBPro2+YMF744+AWE64+SC-7
#2 Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.40GHz / QDI A10T / Voodoo3 3000+GF4 Ti4200 / Audigy+AU8830+SC-50

Reply 45 of 103, by kalohimal

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Hmm that's strange. Are you using cpuspd version 1.1? The old version has a bug in acpi detection.

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 47 of 103, by kalohimal

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Ok, could you issue this command and let me know the results please: cpuspd d t

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 49 of 103, by kalohimal

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Thanks enaiel. RSDT with a value of 1 means that:
1. It had searched the BIOS area for the pointer to ACPI tables but couldn't find it. Possibly because ACPI is not enabled?
2. It found the ACPI table pointer, but could not map the memory. Perhaps because other protected mode programs/TSRs are running and interfering.
Will probably need some of your time to troubleshoot this. Could you help me to try these please:
1. When DOS is booting, press shift-F5 to bypass the config.sys and autoexec.bat. Then run this again: cpuspd d t
2. Find out whether ACPI is enabled. In DOS prompt, run debug as follow:
C:\DOS\debug
-s f000:0 ffff "RSD PTR"
-s e000:0 ffff "RSD PTR"
Please note the space between RSD and PTR. If ACPI is available, it should give you a hex address, like this:
e.g. E000:9E10
Dump the content of that address using the d command:
-d e000:9e10
Please take a screenshot, then you can exit back to DOS by typing q and enter. Thanks for your help.

IMG_20200609_090050.jpg

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 51 of 103, by kalohimal

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Thanks for the help! I think we found the problem. Usually when the PC boots up it's BIOS will construct the ACPI tables near to the top of RAM. This is usually beyond the conventional 1MB DOS memory (e.g. if you have 512MB of RAM, the ACPI tables should be constructed near the end of 512MB). For your PC, the ACPI root system table indicates it is constructed at 000E0080 which is within the 1MB DOS memory (debug memory dump, 2nd line E000:0020 08 00 0E 00). In fact if we check the last line of debug output, we can see the RSDT table at E000:0080. It is a condition which my program does not anticipate. My Compaq Evo has this option to enable "ACPI buffers at top of memory". Anyway I think I should fix this and not rely on the BIOS setting. Please allow me some time to do some tinkering to the program and get back to you.

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 52 of 103, by kalohimal

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Please try this version, problem should be fixed now.

CPUSPD1.2 beta.zip

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 53 of 103, by enaiel

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Yay, it works now! Unfortunately for me, it gives me exactly the same limited options as throttle.exe:

CpuSpd.exe |Throttle.exe | Speedsys | Equivalent 
--------------------------------------------------------
t8 |-c 0 | 1001 | P3-866
t7 |-c 1 | 850 | P3-700
t6 |-c 2 | 727 | P3-600
t5 |-c 3 | 604 | Cel-500
t4 |-c 4 | 481 | P2-400
t3 |-c 5 | 358 | P2-300
t2 |-c 6 | 235 | P-200
t1 |-c 7 | 112 | P-133

#1 VIA C3 Ezra-T 1.0GHz / MSI MS-6368 / Voodoo2+ViRGE GX / SBPro2+YMF744+AWE64+SC-7
#2 Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.40GHz / QDI A10T / Voodoo3 3000+GF4 Ti4200 / Audigy+AU8830+SC-50

Reply 54 of 103, by kalohimal

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Yes, that's because similar to Throttle, Cpuspd controls the south bridge to throttle the CPU frequency. The differences are Cpuspd looks up the throttle control port via ACPI which is available on all modern motherboards, and can run in VCPI/protected mode (EMM386/Win9x). Since throttling is done by hardware, they will be the same. Intel and other chipsets usually have 8 throttle steps. VIA chipsets are special in that they provide 16 steps, hence providing finer control. So motherboards with VIA chipsets are the best. For CPU it would be AMD, as AMD started implementing PowerNow! (now called Cool'n'Quiet) on K6-2+ and newer CPUs, which enable multiplier control. AMD CPU based motherboards also have extra info stored inside the BIOS (part of AMD firmware development specs), which tells you the max and min multiplier and their associated voltages, so you can lower the CPU voltage when using lower multiplier. My retro PC of choice would be an AMD motherboard with VIA chipset.

Example of AMD CPU which tells you the max & min multiplier (which is lacking on Intel motherboards):

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 55 of 103, by enaiel

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Yeah, understood. The P3 is not the best machine for DOS.

I had previously mentioned that my GF2, which would be more compatible than my 9600XT, had broken a screw and separated from it's bracket. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to fix it?

#1 VIA C3 Ezra-T 1.0GHz / MSI MS-6368 / Voodoo2+ViRGE GX / SBPro2+YMF744+AWE64+SC-7
#2 Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.40GHz / QDI A10T / Voodoo3 3000+GF4 Ti4200 / Audigy+AU8830+SC-50

Reply 56 of 103, by chrismeyer6

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Did the screw break off in the vga port or just missing? If their just missing you can get replacements easy their pretty standard.

Reply 58 of 103, by chrismeyer6

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If any is sticking out you can use a pair of needle-nose vise grips to back out the rest. If your feeling adventurous you can try drilling it out and retapping the hole. The simplest way would be to just replace the missing one and just leave the broken one as is and you should be fine

Reply 59 of 103, by enaiel

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It's too small for my needle-nose pliers to get a grip, and I'm afraid to drill so close to so many components. I tried to take a VGA screw from another port but they are damn hard to remove.

#1 VIA C3 Ezra-T 1.0GHz / MSI MS-6368 / Voodoo2+ViRGE GX / SBPro2+YMF744+AWE64+SC-7
#2 Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.40GHz / QDI A10T / Voodoo3 3000+GF4 Ti4200 / Audigy+AU8830+SC-50