.LOG
17:44 17.04.2023

hi all,
long time lurker here, absolutely amazed by this forum, which helped me tremendously in selecting suitable hardware for my retro build. so i thought, why not contribute something ...

many moons ago, german c't magazine author Andreas Stiller published a series of articles about the then commonly used 486 chipsets. he published a DOS program that would enable the user to tweak a particular chipset, using info from a bunch of register definition files for the various chipsets that contained the description of register addresses and register bits.
find attached in CHIP.ZIP the zipped *.CONF files for the various chipsets and the configuration program "ctchipz.exe". afaik, there's only a german description available, so here is the english translation of CTCHIPZ.DOC .
bear in mind though that i'm not a native english speaker, so your level of confusion may vary.

cheers and thank you for this fantastic forum!

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reading and configuring chipsets

Chipset gives you the internal configuration of the most common chipsets (as per 1993). This requires a Configuration file (.CFG) for each chipset that you specify when starting the program. Configuration files for various chipsets have been published in c't magazines (c't 3, 4, 6, 7, 8/93). The following chipset files have been lastly added:

Shasta by Headland
Opti Pentium
IBM Blue Lightning

Opposed to the original publication in c't 3/93, the program has been expanded with two items:

- the ports can be 16 or 32 bits (needed for example for SiS-EISA)
- You can now not only read but also write chipsets (input: H + value in hex).

!!! WARNING !!!

Various types of changes are either not allowed at all (e.g. DRAM constellation) or not allowed in normal operation (e.g. changes to the {cache strategy:cache}). Failure to observe this will result in a CRASH. Other changes (like DRAM timing, waits etc.) depend on whether the board design can cope with the altered settings, otherwise, again: CRASH or MEMORY PARITY ERROR!

(Extended version from c't 3/93)
Name : ctCHIPZ.EXE
DOS : From DOS 3.3
Proc : From 8088
Modes : Real / Virtual on Windows, but not OS/2 or NT

Parameter: ctCHIPZ [config] [/index [value]]

Config: Name of the configuration file with the extension .CFG
(Alternatively you can also use Set Chipset=Config to specify
the name of the *.CFG file)

/index: index of the configuration register to be displayed.
for 16- or 32-bit indices you have to specify additional bytes:
index:0 (default) bits 0..7
index:1 bit 8..15
index:2 bits 16..23
index:3 bits 24..31

value: optional, writes the value into the indexed register.

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