Hey all, I wanted to let folks know about a possible solution to cache troubles - try some different RAM!

Over the weekend I was putting together a system for recording audio from various sound cards I have. It consists of:

Biostar MB-8433UUD-A v3.1
Intel 486 DX4 100MHz
16MB FPM RAM
Matrox Millennium 4MB

I wanted to update the BIOS and install some cache. I decided to install the cache first. I have quite a few chips from the various motherboards over the years I've used. I pulled out 9 15ns chips, installed them, and set the jumpers. The system posted fine, but then would hang on boot. I thought that perhaps one of the cache chips I was using was bad so I installed a different set - same result. A third set went in - no dice. When I would turn the external cache off in the BIOS, the system would boot just fine. Hmm..I decided to update the BIOS with Feipoa's 2014 version. I burned a new chip and installed it in the board - same result - no boot with cache turned on.../headscratch...bedtime.

Sunday morning I got up and had the idea to try adding 16MB RAM. No difference, but the amount of RAM went from 16MB to 24MB instead of 32MB..hmm. I took out the original 16MB I had in there and replaced it with the second 16MB RAM. System booted up perfectly - success!

Hopefully this helps someone in the future that may be trying to troubleshoot cache 😀

Btw, here's a video of my setup playing some chiptunes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocKptFe62oI