SL586VT-II SDRAM Support \ VOGONS

SL586VT-II SDRAM Support

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First post, by quicknick

Posted on 2017-11-10, 00:11

quicknick Offline

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I'm in the middle of building myself a retro rig, decided on a K5 cpu paired with a motherboard about which I can't find much info, the SL-586VT-II, bios string 05/29/97-VT82C580VP-PRIM-2A5LASMAC-00.
Actual northbridge is VT82C585VP, dunno why it differs in the bios string.
The board has four 72-pin SIMM sockets and one 168-pin DIMM socket, and since my biggest SIMMs are 8MB and I want more than 32MB RAM I decided to populate the DIMM socket. Tried all my DIMM sticks but none seems to work there. Endless beeps at power on, one stick booted (just once!) but was recognised at 4MB instead of 64MB. Tried with and without the SIMM sockets populated, no change. There is a jumper near the socket which I believe changes between 5V and 3.3V to the DIMM, currently the socket is supplied with 3.3V (measured with a multimeter). Is there something escaping me? Do I need a different kind of DIMM, like EDO instead of SDRAM? The board works ok with EDO or FPM in the 72-pin sockets.
Thanks in advance!

Reply 1 of 6, by elod

Posted on 2017-11-10, 00:36

elod Offline

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It's not impossible to hunt down EDO DIMMs, and you could combine it with the ones in the 72pin slots.
It should take some very early low density SDRAM: 32 or 64MB double sided but it's still not easy to guess which.

Reply 2 of 6, by idspispopd

Posted on 2017-11-14, 09:42

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According to http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/chipsets_pentium.htm the VT82C585VP (apparently the earlies Socket 7 chipset from VIA) supports at most RAM modules with 16MBit chips and should also support SDRAM (still possible that the BIOS or board don't support SDRAM).
IIRC 3.3V is correct for SDRAM and 5V for EDO. You definitely can't combine a 3.3V DIMM with (5V) EDO SIMMs. I'm not totally sure, but I think you can't combine SDRAM and EDO at all at the same time.
A 64MB DIMM would have to use 32 chips to be compatible with the chipset.

Reply 3 of 6, by lazibayer

Posted on 2017-11-14, 16:32

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idspispopd wrote:
According to http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/chipsets_pentium.htm the VT82C585VP (apparently the earlies Socket 7 chipset from VIA) supports at most RAM modules with 16MBit chips and should also support SDRAM (still possible that the BIOS or board don't support SDRAM).
IIRC 3.3V is correct for SDRAM and 5V for EDO. You definitely can't combine a 3.3V DIMM with (5V) EDO SIMMs. I'm not totally sure, but I think you can't combine SDRAM and EDO at all at the same time.
A 64MB DIMM would have to use 32 chips to be compatible with the chipset.

I bet OP's stick doesn't have 32 chips on it 😁

To OP:
More realistically you can find 32MB SDRAM sticks with 16 chips and that's probably the largest the board can support. And you are quite stuck with 32MB because as idspispopd said, it's a bad idea to mix SDRAM with EDO DRAM.

I have a 3.3V 32MB EDO DIMM lying around. I tried it with a 430VX board and the board refuse to boot with the stick alone; beeps after beeps. But it works fine if I mix it with 5V EDO SIMMs and set DIMM voltage to 3.3V. If you are in the US and willing to pay me 3 bucks for shipping I can send you the stick.

Reply 4 of 6, by Kamerat

Posted on 2017-11-14, 18:44

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Someone's selling a couple of 64MB DIMMs with 32 chips each, but maybe it's cheaper to get some higher capacity SIMMs.

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Reply 5 of 6, by quicknick

Posted on 2017-11-16, 23:45

quicknick Offline

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Thanks for your replies, I've settled for 4*8MB EDO simms for now.
I now have some working SuperSocket 7 motherboards so I might decide to use one of them with the K5, although not historically accurate but I could install more ram this way.
Thanks for your offer lazibayer but I'm all the way in Eastern Europe 😀

Edited: MB instead of GB. 🤣

Last edited by quicknick on 2017-11-17, 06:39. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 6 of 6, by lazibayer

Posted on 2017-11-17, 00:27

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8GB SIMMs??? Wow that must be magnificent.

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