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Best 386 Motherboard?

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Reply 220 of 287, by Skyscraper

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timb.us wrote:

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Whoops, you’re right! It’s the 493, not 423. I guess I can’t see either!

By the way, do you mind if I mirror your MR BIOS dumps on my site? I credited you in the text files that accompany the ROMs, but I just wanted to make sure it was OK with you first.

It's fine. 😀

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 221 of 287, by timb.us

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Skyscraper wrote:
timb.us wrote:

"

Whoops, you’re right! It’s the 493, not 423. I guess I can’t see either!

By the way, do you mind if I mirror your MR BIOS dumps on my site? I credited you in the text files that accompany the ROMs, but I just wanted to make sure it was OK with you first.

It's fine. 😀

Awesome, they’re up on my site! http://retro.timb.us/ROMs/BIOS/
(I’m currently in the process of uploading about 5GB worth of additional retro stuff I’ve collected over the years, including a large number of ROMs, various driver packages, hundreds of datasheets and most importantly the entire Simtel MS-DOS collection.)

In other news, hopefully I can finally get those Speedsys benchmarks done tonight. I’ve spent the past two nights trying to get the floppy drive working. It was an ordeal, to say the least. Apparently, the original floppy that came with this machine has developed an intermittent issue where it’s not quite stepping to the correct tracks some of the time.

At first I thought it was the floppy cable, so I spent some time rigging up a new one (I make custom round floppy cables by peeling the ribbon cable up into 17 groups of two wires then put them in silicone tubing, to make them easily routable in the tight spaces of this lunchbox machine; unfortunately I can’t just buy off the shelf round floppy cables since I needed one with a 5.25” connector in the drive B position).

That didn’t fix the issue, so I tried a drive I pulled from an old PIII Celeron machine that’s been sitting in storage for years. After pulling it apart to clean all the dust out and reassembling it, I found it didn’t work at all. Not only did it not work, it ruined several floppy disks (which led to more time wasted when I tried booting from those disks in a drive that turned out to work).

So I tried yet *another* drive that’s been in storage for years and it too turned out to be bad. Finally I found a brand new NEC drive (I’d purchased about two years ago and never used) that actually worked! Unfortunately it has a black faceplate, so I’m still going to need to buy a beige/white drive off eBay, but this’ll do for now. (What I really want is one of those Teac FD-505 5.25”/3.5” combo drives, which would free up a drive bay, I just need to find one at a reasonable price.)

Once I got the floppy working I set about installing MS-DOS and DR-DOS, only to run into an issue where they wouldn’t boot after installation (it just hung with a white screen; no “Starting MS-DOS”, nothing). I finally got it working by doing a format /u /s on each partition from the respective install disks. Letting the installers SYS the partitions didn’t work (for any OS, including FreeDOS). There were also some strange MBR issues going on.

Edit: I ended up low level formatting the drive and starting from scratch. Everything appears to be working now!

Old hardware is so much fun! 🤣

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 222 of 287, by timb.us

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Okay, so as promised I’ve run some SpeedSys tests comparing the AMI 386 BIOS to MR BIOS on my OPTi 386WB board.

I’ve done 9 SpeedSys runs on the MR BIOS (which took a few pots of Mr. Coffee) with various permutations of Chipset and DMA settings to find optimal ones for my system, but I’ll start off simple.

First off, let’s compare the “BIOS Defaults” of the AMI and MR BIOSes, with only memory timing options changed (to 0WS for DRAM read and write, 0WS 8x8KB for Cache and Hidden Refresh Enabled; the default refresh timing of 15uS {Slow Refresh Disabled} was kept for this run).

Here’s a PDF with a side by side comparison: http://retro.timb.us/Benchmarks/OPTi_386WB/OP … s_MR%20BIOS.pdf

MR BIOS
MR_BIOS_Run1.png

 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
System Speed Test Ver 4.78 Report file - created on 10-03-2018 23:16:32
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

CPU is in V86 mode: No
Processor : 80386DX 40 MHz
CPU speed index : 9.25

Total memory size : 16 MB
Memory Bandwidth : 54.22 MB/s
VESA video memory : Unknown

Hard drive 0 : 553C 255H 63S 4.24 GB
Tested in FULL mode
Random access time : 13.66 ms
Linear verify speed : 3639 KB/s
Min/Max verify speed : 3338 KB/s / 3780 KB/s
Linear read speed : 3185 KB/s
Min/Max read speed : 3169 KB/s / 3204 KB/s
Buffered read speed : 2901 KB/s
Hard Drive speed index : 92.66

BIOS vendor : Microid Research PO Box 33211 (02/21/92)
Year2000 Bug : 31-12-1999 01-01-1900
OS version : MS-DOS 6.22
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Cache/Memory Benchmark
┌──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
│ Read │ Write │ Move │ Average │
┌───────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Cache Level 1 │ 25.53 MB/s│ 30.06 MB/s│ 38.26 MB/s│ 31.29 MB/s│
│ Memory │ 16.90 MB/s│ 30.08 MB/s│ 13.21 MB/s│ 20.06 MB/s│
└───────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Memory Modules Information

SMBus/i2c Host Controller : Not Present
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

ISA PnP Device Information

Card Vendor ID Serial No ANSI ID String

1 TCM5090 97DAE539 3Com 3C509B EtherLink III
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

End of report.

AMI 386 BIOS
AMI_BIOS_Run1.png

 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
System Speed Test Ver 4.78 Report file - created on 16-03-2018 02:33:33
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

CPU is in V86 mode: No
Processor : 80386DX 40 MHz
CPU speed index : 9.25

Total memory size : 16 MB
Memory Bandwidth : 54.22 MB/s
VESA video memory : Unknown

Hard drive 0 : 553C 255H 63S 4.24 GB
Tested in FULL mode
Random access time : 13.85 ms
Linear verify speed : 3638 KB/s
Min/Max verify speed : 3332 KB/s / 3782 KB/s
Linear read speed : 3075 KB/s
Min/Max read speed : 3063 KB/s / 3080 KB/s
Buffered read speed : 2792 KB/s
Hard Drive speed index : 91.06

BIOS vendor : American Megatrends, Inc. (05/05/91)
Year2000 Bug : 31-12-1999 01-01-1900
OS version : MS-DOS 6.22
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Cache/Memory Benchmark
┌──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
│ Read │ Write │ Move │ Average │
┌───────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Cache Level 1 │ 25.53 MB/s│ 30.06 MB/s│ 38.26 MB/s│ 31.28 MB/s│
│ Memory │ 16.88 MB/s│ 30.08 MB/s│ 13.21 MB/s│ 20.06 MB/s│
└───────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Memory Modules Information

SMBus/i2c Host Controller : Not Present
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

ISA PnP Device Information

Card Vendor ID Serial No ANSI ID String

1 TCM5090 97DAE539 3Com 3C509B EtherLink III
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

End of report.

As you can see, memory speed is virtually identical, however, DMA transfers are a bit faster on the MR BIOS compared to the AMI (and this is with the default MR BIOS AT-Bus Clock=8MHz and DMA Clock=ATCLK/2 settings; DMA transfers get even faster with a setting of 10MHz and /1). You’ll also notice the transfer rate is dipping up and down a small amount for 3/4 of the HDD test on the AMI BIOS, compared to the MR BIOS which provides a relatively constant transfer rate. I did try this same run with a 60uS DRAM Refresh Period option (Slow Refresh Enabled) on both BIOSes and memory speeds did increase slightly, however DMA transfer speeds *decreased* and floppy drive access was noticeably slower during boot (perhaps I need to add an 8-Bit wait state?).

The best balance of DMA vs Memory Speed vs Stability I’ve found so for my setup is through the MR BIOS with AT-Bus Clock=10MHz, DMA Clock=ATCLK/1! DRAM and Cache Timings=0WS, Hidden Refresh=On and Refresh Period=15uS.

I’ll post results of the fully optimized MR BIOS run this evening. There aren’t any more results to post for the AMI BIOS as tweaking options are fairly limited; what you see here is the best I could get out of it!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 223 of 287, by feipoa

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For the most part, I've stopped using Speedsys when looking at 386 results because having no FPU, or different FPU's greatly alters the Speedsys score. It would be nice if everyone, for example, used a black-top Cyrix FasMath FPU to normalise the results. I also prefer to see the read and write speeds separate, rather than averaged (along with the move speed).

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 224 of 287, by timb.us

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feipoa wrote:

For the most part, I've stopped using Speedsys when looking at 386 results because having no FPU, or different FPU's greatly alters the Speedsys score. It would be nice if everyone, for example, used a black-top Cyrix FasMath FPU to normalise the results. I also prefer to see the read and write speeds separate, rather than averaged (along with the move speed).

Can you recommend any alternatives? Hell, it doesn’t even have to output any pretty graphs, so long as it can export the raw data I can do that myself with a Python script! I’ve had good luck with HDDSPEED for drive benchmarks (it can even generate nice graphs). For memory throughput I haven’t found anything better than SpeedSys yet.

Though, I don’t really see how not having an NPU would affect SpeedSys’s results? Obviously it takes that into account when doing the CPU benchmark, but that’s not really why I use SpeedSys. It’s the memory speed and HDD speed that are important; the latter can tell you if your DMA settings are optimal or not, especially if you use a good SCSI controller and drive, the former helps tweak memory timing and refresh parameters. I never use the “Index Score” it provides for the tests, but instead look at the individual numbers of of each test in the text report. I do wish it provided more detailed CPU speed results in the report, but again, CPU benchmarking is not really why I use it. (An Am386DX-40 will perform roughly the same no matter what board it’s on. If the board uses a really horrible, slow chipset you’ll see that in the memory throughput portion of the test.)

The Index Score can be very misleading, for example, during one of my runs the MR BIOS was several hundred KB/s faster across the board on the HDD tests, however the AMI BIOS was 0.25ms faster on seek times (directly due to the fact the system had cooled to room temperature between tests as I had to swap the BIOS) and SpeedSys gave the slower throughput AMI BIOS an Index Score that was a full point higher than the faster MR BIOS. Index Scores are arbitrary, misleading and mostly useless IMHO. Often times tweaking a PC for maximum performance requires trade offs (you might have to sacrifice a bit of DMA performance by adding a wait state, in order to get maximum system memory throughput, stuff like that).

I’ve often wanted to write a comprehensive system benchmark program for retro machines. Ideally it would use absolutely no DOS calls or hooks and fit inside a single COM file (so it could be embedded in a ROM or booted directly from a floppy without a DOS kernel), sort of like Micro 2000’s venerable Micro-Scope 6/7 diagnostic software. I just don’t have the time. 🙁

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 225 of 287, by keropi

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@timb.us

can you upload the MR-BIOS image for the OPTi chipset? 😀

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 226 of 287, by timb.us

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keropi wrote:

@timb.us

can you upload the MR-BIOS image for the OPTi chipset? 😀

Of course!

The AMI and MR BIOS for the OPTi 82C391 is available here: http://retro.timb.us/ROMs/BIOS/
(The MR BIOS dump is courtesy of Vogons member Skyscraper, I just tested it, added an info text and repackaged it.)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 227 of 287, by keropi

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excellent thanks!
there will be a thread soon about MR-BIOS images, an attempt to gather as many as possible 😁

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 228 of 287, by timb.us

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keropi wrote:

excellent thanks!
there will be a thread soon about MR-BIOS images, an attempt to gather as many as possible 😁

If you need a place to host them, let me know. I’d also like to mirror whatever collection you come up with on my site. I’m putting together a huge mirror of retro stuff, including manuals, ROMs and non-commercial software. Each time I find a site with any of the above content, I point a “Download Spider” at it and grab it all. It currently sits at 20GB and growing (though the DOS Simtel archive is 8GB of that). I want to preserve as much of this history as I can. 😀

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 229 of 287, by keropi

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^ you are welcome to mirror whatever the thread produces - infact you are encouraged to!
I have an unsorted archive of MR-BIOS images for newer systems like socket7/8 if you want a link PM me - the main effort will be for systems up to 486 or so

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 230 of 287, by feipoa

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A MR BIOS repository is a great idea. That was one awesome series of BIOSes which is at risk of being lost to future's infinity. What we really need is to source and deposit 386 and 486 MR BIOSes as they greatly improved upon otherwise ordinary BIOSes of the era.

timb.us: A fairly defacto benchmark for L1/L2/RAM throughput is Cachechk v7. It can do read/write, but not sure about move speed.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 231 of 287, by timb.us

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feipoa wrote:

A MR BIOS repository is a great idea. That was one awesome series of BIOSes which is at risk of being lost to future's infinity. What we really need is to source and deposit 386 and 486 MR BIOSes as they greatly improved upon otherwise ordinary BIOSes of the era.

timb.us: A fairly defacto benchmark for L1/L2/RAM throughput is Cachechk v7. It can do read/write, but not sure about move speed.

Yeah, I use CacheChk as well, but forgot to add it to the disk I was using for these benchmarks. One thing that annoys me about SpeedSys is I can’t seem to get it to automatically start the HDD benchmark. I use the command line option to select a Full HDD run, and it does choose it as the default, but I still have to press enter to start it. It even automatically saves the reports and image when done. I just need it to be able to automatically start the HDD tests!

(I’m trying to put together a boot floppy that will run a series of benchmarks without user intervention.)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 232 of 287, by alvaro84

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feipoa wrote:

A MR BIOS repository is a great idea. That was one awesome series of BIOSes which is at risk of being lost to future's infinity. What we really need is to source and deposit 386 and 486 MR BIOSes as they greatly improved upon otherwise ordinary BIOSes of the era.

Should it happen I'm in with an ETEQ 82C390SX MR BIOS. I mean if I can get my cached 486SLC-33 work again. It started to act up yesterday. I don't know if it has anything to do with installing an SB32 but it starts up with strange beep codes and a blank screen. The codes are various memory errors but replacing or even completely removing the memory won't help. Sometimes it starts up though (usually after removing every ISA card and turning it on) and does even boot into DOS - but it crashes in a minute or two and won't start again.

Last time giving power to an "orphaned" CF adapter helped with these beeps but now its hard drive is alone and powered. I've tried replacing the I/O card and even the PSU but for no avail this time 🙁 Ideas would be appreciated btw, I like this strange little board very much. It served as my main retro hard drive testbed and Turrican II config during the last week. It could partition hard drives >0.5G so they are compatible both with 486s and most later boards, I created my main DOS boot drive and its backups on this system. And now it stopped working.

I can't rule out damage from former battery leakage, even though I washed it with vinegar and water last summer.

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 233 of 287, by Anonymous Coward

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The more MR BIOSes, the better. The results for the OPTI 391 are not nearly as crappy as I expected. It's actually decent. Maybe unlike the 495SX it actually works with SCSI controllers.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 234 of 287, by timb.us

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

The more MR BIOSes, the better. The results for the OPTI 391 are not nearly as crappy as I expected. It's actually decent. Maybe unlike the 495SX it actually works with SCSI controllers.

I’m using an Adaptec AHA-1542CF in my system (the one I took the benchmarks on) with a 10kRPM Cheetah and it seems to work perfectly.

Honestly, the system is really snappy and I’ve been very pleased with it!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)

Reply 235 of 287, by Jupiter-18

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Alright, I'm finally collecting parts for the system! The motherboard is here and fine as mentioned a while ago, and now comes the next step: everything else.
CPU: AM386DX-40 (Are they all in that BQFP-to-PGA adapter form?)
Video card: undecided
Sound card: AWE32 or similar
I/O card: generic (unless you have a specific model you recommend)
HDD/FDD card: same as above
HDD: undecided IDE (unlikely i'd use SCSI here and MFM/RLL/ESDI/SASI are all too old)
FPU: yes (I've heard the Cyrix Fasmath are the best, does that make a difference?)
Networking: I want a card with coax, AUI, and 10BASE-T, just for playing around with.
Case: generic 8-slot AT case
PSU: Going to try to use a real AT PSU. I wanna go for all-original if I can, and I've seen plenty of restored and recapped AT supplies for sale online.

Reply 236 of 287, by Anonymous Coward

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Are they all in that BQFP-to-PGA adapter form?

No, just many of the ones used in the last generation 386 boards. Just be grateful it's not soldered directly to the board. At least you have the option of swapping in a ceramic 386 or a DLC.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 238 of 287, by Anonymous Coward

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Rare-AMD-Am3 … BcAAOSwLopasgm2

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 239 of 287, by timb.us

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Yes, the ceramic ones are Am386DX/DXL, the PQFP ones are just DX. The DX/DXL uses about 1W less power and being a larger ceramic package will run cooler. I got mine from a US seller a month ago for about $10. Works perfectly!

Aside from that there’s no difference. Performance is the same.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (E.g., Cheez Whiz, RF, Hot Dogs)