so the tekram card.. intelligently reads data from your drive + keeps it "at the ready" in case u may need it? so it loads everything instantly? that sounds pretty close to the idea behind the "fusion" drive unleashed by apple in the last few years

chrisNova777 wrote:

so the tekram card.. intelligently reads data from your drive + keeps it "at the ready" in case u may need it? so it loads everything instantly? that sounds pretty close to the idea behind the "fusion" drive unleashed by apple in the last few years

Hmm....Apple's fusion drive was an SSD (flash storage) attached to a hard disk. So similar idea, though the Tekram controller has memory onboard for caching recently used data and its only maximum of 16MB (though back then, 16MB of cache was almost unheard of) versus 128GB of apple's Fusion drive.

A lot of RAID cards nowadays have onboard cache, or at least a slot to add memory.

It does make a huge difference. I tested my semi-working Tekram card out with 16mb when loading Doom II. First time, it took my 486DX2-66 about 4-5 seconds load. Second time (reading from cache) the time was about 2 seconds.

I really want to get my Tekram card up and running and see how well it works with Ultima 7 when running without DOS's Smartdrv (disk caching software) and a few other games that constantly load data from the hard disk.

The difference between memory cache and SSD cache (Appel Fusion, SSHDs, using Intel's caching with a discrete SSD, etc.) is that SSDs are persistent (and, between RAM and flash memory from the same time, RAM is faster to read and write). For the memory cache you need to load whatever you want at least once since booting and then it will be cached until it is pushed out by more relevant data. With SSHDs your frequently used data is on flash memory already, so even bootings is accelerated.

Nice machine. I like it. It might have some quirks at first, and I am shure you will sort them out. 😀

For a sidenote. I used to play Monkey Island on a 286 with 640k of Ram back when it was released, so you'r machine should be fast enough.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Are you using a voltage regulator with your board? WB enhanced chips are all 3.3V, and your board looks like the 5V type.

not true, acording to wiki, intel dx2wb is 5v, I have one and running @ 80mhz on 5v on vlb board without regulator

on my 486/66 tekram : 71MB/s 😀

mb asus sg2gx4, 256c-15 wt (wb mode is slower on all my vlb boards, dont know why....), 3x16mb fpm -60, bios at max speed settings, stable
cpu 486dx2-66s wt, vga vlb s3 trio32 2mb diamond stealth se, vlb cached ide propably tekram DC-680T (look exact like 680t) with 4mb, 16mb also tested...