First post, by RetrOli
Hi Ladies and Gents,
I set-up the following system:
UM486/486SX Mainboard (UMC UM82C480 chipset)
upgraded the 256k of cache from 20NS to 15NS; Tags are original and also 15NS; no Dirty Bit as the socket for it was omitted
Intel 486DX-50
Targa Tseng ET4000AX
16MB of FPM RAM SIMM 30 (currently 70NS, 60NS on the way)
Soundcard based on Opti 924 (w/t AD1845JD and OPL3 Clone LS262)
I/O-Controller based on Winbond W83787F and W83758F
generic CF to IDE adapter and a noname 2GB CF Card rated at 120x
It is up and running, playing Wing Commander 2 was a joy, now I am trying to optimize.
RAM is currently running at 2 W/S with FPM Mode on - according to Speedsys 4.78 the throughput ist @ 66,68MB/s and slightly higher than 1 W/S with FP Mode off = 64,14MB/s. This is with BUS Clock Selection: CLKIN/6 = 50 / 6 = 8,33MHz.
1 W/S @ FPM on and 0 W/S @ FPM off produced system hangs.
Before the DX-50 I was running a DX2-50 and with BUS Clock Selection: CLKIN/4 = 25 / 4 = 6,25MHz BUS I was able to set 0 W/S @ FPM on which yielded >80MB/s according to Speedsys. However, 3DBench scores dropped from >32 tp 30.2.
Besides upgrading the RAM to 60NS modules in the hope of achieving lesser/lower W/S I'd love to achieve BUS Clock Selection: CLKIN/5 = 50 / 5 = 10MHz (or more...).
Until now, both the former, but also BUS Clock Selection: CLKIN/3 = 25 / 3 = 8,33MHz with the DX2 resulted in stalls after the initial POST when the mashine was looking for the HD. Therefore I suspect that the controller is somewhat touchy and thus the culprit.
Are there any recommended ISA Controllers that are known to be tollerable to BUS clock increases? Should I switch to a branded CF card (e.g. Sandisk)?
I guess an additional network adapter as a means to use XTIDE to make full use of the 2GB drive is not helping either!?
All tests above were done with the controller and VGA card only - but sound works with the "stable" settings from above.
CPU-Speed according to Speedsys is @18,89 (with both the DX2 and DX-50) which should be spot-on for a DX2-50. NSI 8.0 gives a score of 108 and PC Player Benchmark reports 8,6FPS
And I thought VLB is hard to push to 40MHz System BUS and above...
