OK, so the German MSI site has scans of parts of the manual and a BIOS.
With any luck it's all I need. I just wish I could have had a complete manual as a PDF.

Which manual revision do you have and how do you know its not for your hardware?

feipoa wrote:

Which manual revision do you have and how do you know its not for your hardware?

Well it seems that the manual I finally found is for my hardware although I can't tell what revision the manual is.
So far, I can't seem to get the board to boot with more than 256K cache though.

... More testing to come...

The manual revision is printed on the very first page and on a page by itself. I can see why someone would not scan it. The manual I have claims it is from 1994, which seems old for a revision 2.1 MS-4144 board. The manual revision printed on my manual says version 2.2.

How much cache are you installing? 1024K worked for me.

feipoa wrote:

The manual revision is printed on the very first page and on a page by itself. I can see why someone would not scan it. The manual I have claims it is from 1994, which seems old for a revision 2.1 MS-4144 board. The manual revision printed on my manual says version 2.2.
How much cache are you installing? 1024K worked for me.

Seems MSI Germany only scanned those pages with information relating to motherboard layout and jumper settings, so don't know what rev manual this is, but it seems from the filename to imply it is for a v1.5 board (see attached).
That said, the motherboard layout is nearly identical to mine except near the CPU socket, I only have two positions for the resistor ladder, whereas the manual shows 4.

For cache, I tried 512KB (single banked) and 1024KB (double banked) but it never got past the BIOS summary screen, not even the part listing IRQs for PCI assignments. This was tested with the slowest settings for CACHE and RAM.
Going back to 256KB (also tried 128KB) and it worked fine, even with the most aggressive settings in the BIOS for RAM and CACHE speeds, and even with the BUS speed set to 40MHz. Long-term stability NOT tested however.

What BIOS date do you have?
I updated mine from AF53S 121595 to AF54S 052396

Does it matter for the TAG ram if use a 128K module?
What settings did you use for the CACHE jumpers for 1MB?

I use WF54S, which is an AWARD BIOS. Looks like you are using an AMI BIOS. I prefer AWARD BIOSes because I can modify them to support PS/2 mice. Did you try an AWARD BIOS with 1024K?

On some motherboards, I noticed that a 64kx8 TAG was required for 1024K cache, whereas some (most) also work with 128Kx8 TAGs.

I can take a photo of my motherboard late this evening so you can compare the jumpers.

Hmm. I haven't seen that bios before. Have you already modded it to support a PS/2 mouse?

Yes, I have a modded version for using a PS/2 mouse.

feipoa wrote:

Yes, I have a modded version for using a PS/2 mouse.

😘

Any chance you could share this custom bios?
I'm not a fan of the AMI WinBIOS anyhow.

Hello guys, sorry to resurrect the topic but I happened to have the same board, same rev. etc. AND I do have the original manual (this one is the 1.6) & box that came with it so I'm happy to share you what - I think - are the most important pages of the manual 😁

https://ibb.co/album/dCuwRF?sort=title_asc&pa … bumid%5D=dCuwRF

I hope these photos will help you guys (I hope the quality is good enough) 😀

Don't hesitate to tell me if you want photos of the entire manual, I don't have a scanner atm.

___
Nearly on the same topic: my board doesn't seem to cooperate very well, I think it works but it stucks on the step code 17 or 18 I can't remember, any idea ? (I don't have any ISA graphics card for the moment so I tested to power the board on with a PCI Matrox Millenium 1 and a NumberNine Revolution IV)

PS: This is the first time I use ibb.co I hope the photos will stick for a long time. If it isn't the case, don't hesitate to PM me, I can reupload them 😉

tpowell.ca wrote:

:kiss: […]
Show full quote

feipoa wrote:

Yes, I have a modded version for using a PS/2 mouse.

:kiss:

Any chance you could share this custom bios?
I'm not a fan of the AMI WinBIOS anyhow.

I didn’t see your comment com last year. Do you still need the award ps/2 bios?
I also have the printed manual. I will check which revision.

The MS-4144 manual I have is version 2.2

@feipoa

I also have an MS4144 ver. 2.1 and would like to use the ps / 2 port. It's possible to get the bios for it? Do you have this manual scanned?

Thanks in advance!

Aerion

I don't have the manual scanned, but there are jumper settings online. I only have a little bit of the manual scanned by someone else. It was a pretty poor scan job. Attached.

Attaches is also the BIOS with PS/2 support enabled.

@feipoa

Thanks for your support !

Aerion

The BIOS comparison with Speedsys gives the following results:

MS-4144 Rev 2.1
Intel DX4-100 WB (16K L1)
1024 KB L2 on board
128 MB FPM

AMI AF54S
L1 - 83.62 MB/s
L2 - 39.36 MB/s
Memory troughput - 24.98

AWARD (modified)
L1 - 94.41 MB/s
L2 - 50.11 MB/s
Memory troughput - 30.80

The only flaw is the year 2000 bug in the AWARD BIOS (reported Speedsys).

Has anyone tried the AMD 5x86-133 BGC (P75)? What are the jumper settings?

Yes. It works even at 150/50 or 160/40.

The AMD 5x86 uses DX4 pinout so:

Thanks @mpe!
In addition, pins 2 & 3 on jumper JC8 must be closed for 133 MHz CPU clock.

This thread shows how to upgrade a PS/ 2 mouse: Adding PS/2 mouse components to a Chaintech 486SPM
I downloaded feipoa's worksheet and I still have some questions:

What is the value of R147? He brings the IRQ12 to AMIKEY-2 (KBC) pin 36. This is missing on my board (2.1).
This parts list is complete?

L4, L5 - 2 x 1uH (Bead coil)
2 x 47p (Designator not readable)
R147?
PS/2 mouse jack

I've already soldered it in so far...