Skyscraper wrote:

I tried to bench a K6-2 with my FIC VA-502 board. […]
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I tried to bench a K6-2 with my FIC VA-502 board.

I found some German forum post with supposed jumper settings for 2.5V, the board officially only supporets 2.8-3.5V and it turned out that the 2.5V setting wasnt 2.5V but some voltage that made the CPU overheat in 20 seconds or so. Well I dont really need to know how a K6-2 would perform in the FIC VA-502 and if i really wanted to I have one of those nice socket adapters.

The next thing I did was to test a Dataexpert EXP 8551 i430FX Socket-7 board from the lot of 11 "untested" boards I bought some time ago. This motherboard looked like new but it diddnt want to post, it turned out it's one of those boards that wants memory sticks in slot1 and slot3, it came with sticks in slot1 and slot2. The board seems to work just fine but the socketed ODIN RTC has run out of juice.

Now Im going to see if I can get the not all all pristine looking PC Chips "TXpro-II" board from the same lot going.

The original FIC ftp is still active.

Manual for your motherboard here: ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/manual/socket7/va-502/

Latest bios's buried somewhere in here: ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/bios/socket7/va-502/

kithylin wrote:

The original FIC ftp is still active. […]
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Skyscraper wrote:

I tried to bench a K6-2 with my FIC VA-502 board. […]
Show full quote

I tried to bench a K6-2 with my FIC VA-502 board.

I found some German forum post with supposed jumper settings for 2.5V, the board officially only supporets 2.8-3.5V and it turned out that the 2.5V setting wasnt 2.5V but some voltage that made the CPU overheat in 20 seconds or so. Well I dont really need to know how a K6-2 would perform in the FIC VA-502 and if i really wanted to I have one of those nice socket adapters.

The next thing I did was to test a Dataexpert EXP 8551 i430FX Socket-7 board from the lot of 11 "untested" boards I bought some time ago. This motherboard looked like new but it diddnt want to post, it turned out it's one of those boards that wants memory sticks in slot1 and slot3, it came with sticks in slot1 and slot2. The board seems to work just fine but the socketed ODIN RTC has run out of juice.

Now Im going to see if I can get the not all all pristine looking PC Chips "TXpro-II" board from the same lot going.

The original FIC ftp is still active.

Manual for your motherboard here: ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/manual/socket7/va-502/

Latest bios's buried somewhere in here: ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/bios/socket7/va-502/

I kind of know 😉

You wont find the undocumented settings in the documentation.

Skyscraper wrote:

I kind of know 😉

Well if your board supports 2.5v it would be in the manual.. wasn't sure if you had it or not. Sorry then.

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

I kind of know 😉

Well if your board supports 2.5v it would be in the manual.. wasn't sure if you had it or not. Sorry then.

Thats is not how it works, many boards support voltages not mentioned in the manual.

upgraded my Dimension 8100 a bit . went from a 1.4ghz to 1.7ghz P4 , managed to find a bunch of RDRAM sticks for next to nothing, bringing the total to 2GB , replaced the GF2Ti with a Geforce3 (standard version , not Ti). Also added in a Voodoo2 12MB SLI setup , although Ive got to use unofficial drivers as the cards are mismatched.

only annoyance is that the Audigy2 ZS I tried to install will not work , it will get recognised and the drivers install just fine. but games simply freeze randomly, usually with the sound freezing too (like a continuous beeping or screeching sound). Tried different drivers, PCI slots, but nothing, The SBLive 5.1 works fine (although XP isnt always a fan of it).

I had similar issues installing an Audigy in my Precision220 though I eventually got it work there somehow.

Darkman wrote:

upgraded my Dimension 8100 a bit . went from a 1.4ghz to 1.7ghz P4 , managed to find a bunch of RDRAM sticks for next to nothing, bringing the total to 2GB , replaced the GF2Ti with a Geforce3 (standard version , not Ti). Also added in a Voodoo2 12MB SLI setup , although Ive got to use unofficial drivers as the cards are mismatched.

only annoyance is that the Audigy2 ZS I tried to install will not work , it will get recognised and the drivers install just fine. but games simply freeze randomly, usually with the sound freezing too (like a continuous beeping or screeching sound). Tried different drivers, PCI slots, but nothing, The SBLive 5.1 works fine (although XP isnt always a fan of it).

I had similar issues installing an Audigy in my Precision220 though I eventually got it work there somehow.

If you're using XP, have you tried these? http://www.kxproject.com/

kithylin wrote:

Darkman wrote:

upgraded my Dimension 8100 a bit . went from a 1.4ghz to 1.7ghz P4 , managed to find a bunch of RDRAM sticks for next to nothing, bringing the total to 2GB , replaced the GF2Ti with a Geforce3 (standard version , not Ti). Also added in a Voodoo2 12MB SLI setup , although Ive got to use unofficial drivers as the cards are mismatched.

only annoyance is that the Audigy2 ZS I tried to install will not work , it will get recognised and the drivers install just fine. but games simply freeze randomly, usually with the sound freezing too (like a continuous beeping or screeching sound). Tried different drivers, PCI slots, but nothing, The SBLive 5.1 works fine (although XP isnt always a fan of it).

I had similar issues installing an Audigy in my Precision220 though I eventually got it work there somehow.

If you're using XP, have you tried these? http://www.kxproject.com/

hmm , maybe Im wrong, but I thought these drivers lack EAX support (which is the main reason to go from an SBLive to an Audigy2 ZS , at least for me)

The PC Chips M571 board was dead as a doornail, it has some very interesting damage on some traces on the backside of the board going to the CPU-socket. I first tried with an ATX CPU but it would not start at all, I should have checked for shorts at this stage but noooo I powerd up the system with an AT PSU. Lucky enough there was no drama, fire or smoke and the CPU survied without issues, my diagnostic post card lit up like a Christmas tree but it diddnt get damaged either.

The board did manage to confuse the S3 Trio64V+ I use for testing enough so it wouldnt post in two other known to be working boards, it got stuck at the boards DMA test for some reason. After I booted the system with another PCI card with the S3 Trio64V+ also in the system it somehow started working again, some hardware just like playing dead for a while.

The next board up for testing is a Jetway 542C Ali Alladin 5 SS7 board and after reseating the memory and resetting the BIOS this board came to life. 😀

Installed and tested a PCI Cirrus Logic 5464 Laguna 3D 4 MB card it my P166 DFI 586ITXD system, surprised how well it works, was expecting a total 3D disaster along the lines of ViRGE or Mystique or G100. It actually runs 3Dmark99 MAX just fine at reasonable(ish) frame rates. final reality runs on it far better also than on ViRGE DX or Mystique 220.
Quite an interesting little card.

Testing MS-DOS VESA performance with my new radeon 9100 PCI card.

First test was Descent2 & Duke3D, on my 1.8 ghz AthlonXP system in DOS 6.22. Duke @ 800x600 went smoothly and rather fast. Descent2 even played up to 30-35 FPS @ 1280x1024 with this card.

So I set a 'base' and know the card is indeed capable of high VESA speeds.

Then the real test, tried it in my Pentium-S system @ 166 Mhz in a Via Mvp3 motherboard.

Duke @ 800x600 in this system in DOS ran decent but slow. 20's FPS sometimes (felt like, no way to tell) and sometimes stuttered and chugged in spots.

Descent2 with same card on P166 via system is unbearable (has built in FPS counter). 5-6 FPS @ 1280x1024, 8-10 FPS @ 1024x768, and couldn't handle sustained 30 FPS until 640x400.

So testing is concluding well. CPU speed does factor in to DOS VESA performance.. just adding a fast VESA-DOS card to a slower system doesn't magically make it able to do miracles.

But next is real test, trying generic S3 PCI card and see just how slow doom and duke are @ 320x400, to see if PCI 9100 is actually doing any benefit at all in this P166 system.

managed to get the Audigy2 ZS to work on this Dimension 8100.

apparently several Dell models had issues with the Audigy/Audigy2 (seems to be early P4 models) , mostly this freezing issue. The fix is an Audigy BIOS fix from the Dell website. As expected, the card seems to work fine after this BIOS update.

weird thing is that it warns not to use this BIOS with a non Audigy card, which begs the question of what happens if one decides to switch to a different card, maybe reflash to the non Audigy BIOS.

kithylin wrote:

Testing MS-DOS VESA performance with my new radeon 9100 PCI card.

First test was Descent2 & Duke3D, on my 1.8 ghz AthlonXP system in DOS 6.22. Duke @ 800x600 went smoothly and rather fast. Descent2 even played up to 30-35 FPS @ 1280x1024 with this card.

So I set a 'base' and know the card is indeed capable of high VESA speeds.

That's a pretty high base. 😀 The most demanding DOS games I have will smooth out nicely on a Celeron 333Mhz. On Duke3D, 1280x1024 gets around 13-20 fps; 1024x768 gets 20-35 fps; 800x600 gets 35-45 fps. This is with a GeForce2 MX AGP. Be aware you will need an LCD display to read the framerate because the text is too tiny to make out on a CRT.

Duke @ 800x600 in this system in DOS ran decent but slow. 20's FPS sometimes (felt like, no way to tell) and sometimes stuttered and chugged in spots.

You can type 'dnrate' in-game and the current framerate will appear in the upper left.

added a Industrial TFT Monitor to my Industrial 486 PC, and got Elo Touch Drivers for MS-Dos and Windows 95 running 😀
Now i can play Dune with Touchscreen 😁

matze79 wrote:

added a Industrial TFT Monitor to my Industrial 486 PC, and got Elo Touch Drivers for MS-Dos and Windows 95 running 😀
Now i can play Dune with Touchscreen 😁

Awesomme.... Try it with Command and Conqourer or Lemmings.

Today Im going to start benchmarking the Jetway 542C Ali Aladdin 5 Super Socket-7 motherboard. This board is not ideal for overclocking as it dosnt support any FSB over 100MHz, it does support 91, 95, 96, and 97 MHz though. One upside is that the motherboard use a voltage selection block based on the "every jumper adds a specific value scheme" which is by far the best one.

One thing that irritates me a bit is my USB floppy drive I use with my main computer. If I take a new floppy and only use it with the USB floppy drive everything works fine but if I use a disk that has been formatted in another floppy drive that disk will be get more damaged sectors every time its used. The same thing happens if I take a disk formatted in the USB floppy drive and use it another floppy drive, I guess the USB floppy drive has less than perfefct aligned heads...

I've found that to be a problem on newer OSes in general even using the same drives. In XP and up I see more Read/Write errors in WinImage than I ever did in Win9X which is why I used an Athlon XP (And will again) on Windows 98SE to do things with floppy disks as it was easy to share the drive to the newer computer if I just wanted to move files while an old WinImage version allowed me to manipulate images.

HighTreason wrote:

I've found that to be a problem on newer OSes in general even using the same drives. In XP and up I see more Read/Write errors in WinImage than I ever did in Win9X which is why I used an Athlon XP (And will again) on Windows 98SE to do things with floppy disks as it was easy to share the drive to the newer computer if I just wanted to move files while an old WinImage version allowed me to manipulate images.

Its a real pain in any case, backing up floppy disks and transferring files would be easier... if it worked.

Most Socket-7 boards have USB support but its such a hassle to wire up a connector for every board as the manufacturers couldnt be bothered to follow any standard for the headers. This board seems to be the exception to the rule as the header looks to be a standard 10(9) pin header.

Edit

Forget what I wrote about the boards USB header following some standard. I just checked my collection of old USB-bracktes for 10 pin headers and hardly any is wired the same if the wire-colours are even remotly logical, I have one that seems to match the header though.

/Edit

Edit 2

A nice surprise! This board seems to have the non bugged version of the Aladdin 5 chipset, it can cache all the 256MB with only 512KB cache, I was thinking I needed to use a 128MB module.

/Edit 2

Today, I managed to build a homemade ATX to AT power supply adapter, from an old ATX extension cable. In my opinion it's one of these things you 'have to have' when you are into old hardware 🤣 🤣, you don't know when you would need it!

Points for crafting your own but, I believe you can buy those for cheap.

Bought and played Virtua Fighter 1 today 😀