133MHz wrote:

I did, it goes like this: […]
Show full quote

feipoa wrote:

Were you able to determine the pin-outs of the serial headers? This is on my list of things to (eventually) do.

I did, it goes like this:

Copy code to clipboard

1IDC   DE9
2 1     1
3 2     6
4 3     2
5 4     7
6 5     3
7 6     8
8 7     4
9 8     9
10 9     5
11 10    x

Could you label the pin headers on the motherboard in terms of: RTC, DTR, etc? Does the serial mouse work? Thanks.

133 mhz wrote:

[Next I decided to try the 4.00 BIOS. Burned it to a 27C1001 using a standalone programmer, swapped the chip and cleared the CMOS by setting J6 to 3-4 for ~30 seconds as FGB recommended. It came up fine but I didn't get a CMOS Checksum Error or similar - in fact the CMOS settings were intact. When it gets to the boot stage it stops for a few seconds, then displays a white rectangle on the center of the screen and locks up hard. It doesn't even try to boot from a floppy or hard disk.

I had the exact same issue on a v2.11 board with the 4.00a BIOS.

I found some hints on some unoffical BIOS versions which since disappeared from the internet. One of these was exactly aimed to cure the "hang after PnP device detection" bug that affects v2.1 and v2.11 boards. We need to find this file, originally hosted at

levi.cz/pub/support/driver/mb/zidabios/4dps/4dps400e.zip

the very last unofficial BIOS version was 4.01, mostly aimed at v3.1 boards.

Nice clean build over therem really like it very much.. How you build this system with limited components, i put my hat off for this build!

Hi,

I am having the same Tomato 4DPS board in my 486 machine.

The specifications are as follows: Intel 80486DX4/100MHz CPU with Write-Through L1 cache, 64Mb RAM, 256K cache RAM, Matrox Millenium 2 with 4Mb RAM, 4.3Gb Quantum Fireball disc drive.
I have ran the System Speed Test program, and it came out with this information. It is not as fast as a 586/133 CPU but it does well. The BIOS settings are identical to what I saw in the posting of FGB on Page 2, except for the DRAM Write Cycle which is set to 1WS on my machine.

However, my problem is that I cannot get this board to start-up with an AMD 486DX4/120MHz CPU. I did all the jumper settings as per User Manual, I inserted the CPU correctly in the socket but it won't do anything. No video outpus, no PC-Speaker beeps. The board refuses to start-up. The CPU is good, I tested it with another board.

Do you have any ideas on this issue?

PS: Don't mind the date, the BIOS has the Y2K bug so it thinks we're in 1998. I'll flash in a BIOS upgrade at some point.

Thank you,
ALEKS

133MHz wrote:

[*]24 MB (16+8MB) FPM RAM (largest FPM sticks I had in my RAM stash - unfortunately this board doesn't support EDO)

Actually it does support EDO - at least my V 1.3 does. It also gets a nice memory read boost running EDO, but it's extremely picky about what you put in it, and it doesn't like it when you mix modules from different brands. The "pickyness" can be sorted by fashing the latest bios (witch also supports HDDs up to 40GB) but my board came with a non-reflashable eprom. I do have some eeprom chips laying around from dead motherboards, I'll probably flash it at one point - if I find it's as fast or faster then the LS486e from lucky tech.

I also found that it will do 60 and 66MHz FSB, and it has a setting for 3.6v CPUs (great for running cyrix chips and overclocking AMD or POD chips).

Hello all, i also have a zida 4dps board with lots of problems,
- it has like four 512k chips of cache installed and one 256k chip in the tag socket.
- i checked bios and cache is both configured as active. i also did a reset of the bios.
- Booted the pc and it detects the 256K cache on the boot quare screen. ....but when i run cachechk.exe the L2 cache is not detected! and it only detects 8k cache!

I even changed all the cache to 256k chips to have 128 cache (One 256k chip as tag and four 256k chips for cache). booted the machine, the cache is found as 128k on boot.

On boot screen i get in the box Am486DX4 (even tho the cpu is actually an intel dx4 100mhz)

This is the picture of cachechk, the cache is not even found:

i also configured the jumpers correctly so i don´t know whats going on

Perhaps there is something wrong with your actual cache chips. You should probably start a new thread topic for this issue.