Photos helps us and if you know the board model, please post them.

Cheers,

If you are able to jumper the board for a reduced cache size, then you have some spare chips you can swap for testing. A small L2 cache is much better than no L2. It would help if you posted a picture or the name of your motherboard

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-29, 16:18:

PC with cache does not boot, disabling it works normally. I proceeded to uninstall the chips on the motherboard. Will the computer suffer as much in speed without L2? Or should I try to find a new one? Is there a way to test which chip is bad??

tnks

Faulty cache chip, I had it many times.
Unless it is not... :p

Without L2 a P133 isn’t much faster than an amd 5x86-133 with full cache, especially if it is one of the early slow old Socket 4/5 Chipsets.

A very good hard drive controller and video card could make up some of the performance, especially if you can run fsb75 or 83 stable
but you will still get a lot of chugging.

rmay635703 wrote on 2023-01-30, 01:48:

Without L2 a P133 isn’t much faster than an amd 5x86-133 with full cache, especially if it is one of the early slow old Socket 4/5 Chipsets.

A very good hard drive controller and video card could make up some of the performance, especially if you can run fsb75 or 83 stable
but you will still get a lot of chugging.

Really soooo slow??? When i can i post some pics of the board/chip

Nope. It mainly depends on the chipset. Look for Intel 430FX benchmarks. A system without L2 cache has comparable performance to a system with Async Sram cache (those with Pipeline Burst are noticeably better).
I also remember that I had Gigabyte GA-586SG motherboard (with SIS5591 chipset) with corrupted cache memory (PB), so I used it with L2 cache disabled.
A little later I replaced both chips (cache and ram tag) and the difference was less than I expected (with L2 enabled).

L1 cache however is a whole different story....

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-30, 10:00:

When i can i post some pics of the board/chip

If you can’t add the image as an attachment, you could post a link to your mobo’s info page on this site:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/search/

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-30, 10:00:

rmay635703 wrote on 2023-01-30, 01:48:

Without L2 a P133 isn’t much faster than an amd 5x86-133 with full cache, especially if it is one of the early slow old Socket 4/5 Chipsets.

A very good hard drive controller and video card could make up some of the performance, especially if you can run fsb75 or 83 stable
but you will still get a lot of chugging.

Really soooo slow??? When i can i post some pics of the board/chip

Sorry to ask, but ....
What is the problem in uploading pictures at Vogons? Works like a charm.
Do not use external hosting sites, please. It is annoying, there are tons of old posts, where the pictures are missing.

The performance hit should be less than 10% with L2 off. See this other post for more details and some examples: Pentium with no L2.

depending on chipset and cache type it might run faster now 😀

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 20:40:

Sorry to ask, but .... What is the problem in uploading pictures at Vogons? Works like a charm. Do not use external hosting site […]
Show full quote

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-30, 10:00:

rmay635703 wrote on 2023-01-30, 01:48:

Without L2 a P133 isn’t much faster than an amd 5x86-133 with full cache, especially if it is one of the early slow old Socket 4/5 Chipsets.

A very good hard drive controller and video card could make up some of the performance, especially if you can run fsb75 or 83 stable
but you will still get a lot of chugging.

Really soooo slow??? When i can i post some pics of the board/chip

Sorry to ask, but ....
What is the problem in uploading pictures at Vogons? Works like a charm.
Do not use external hosting sites, please. It is annoying, there are tons of old posts, where the pictures are missing.

The only problem is that the computer is not near me 😀 … until now. here the pics

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-31, 07:20:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 20:40:

Sorry to ask, but .... What is the problem in uploading pictures at Vogons? Works like a charm. Do not use external hosting site […]
Show full quote

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-30, 10:00:

Really soooo slow??? When i can i post some pics of the board/chip

Sorry to ask, but ....
What is the problem in uploading pictures at Vogons? Works like a charm.
Do not use external hosting sites, please. It is annoying, there are tons of old posts, where the pictures are missing.

The only problem is that the computer is not near me 😀 … until now. here the pics

Are those 20ns cache chips? They won't run much past 50MHz FSB, I guess?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-01-31, 08:43:

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-31, 07:20:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-01-30, 20:40:

Sorry to ask, but ....
What is the problem in uploading pictures at Vogons? Works like a charm.
Do not use external hosting sites, please. It is annoying, there are tons of old posts, where the pictures are missing.

The only problem is that the computer is not near me 😀 … until now. here the pics

Are those 20ns cache chips? They won't run much past 50MHz FSB, I guess?

I tried running the computer with a 233MMX and it works fine, bus 66, so I think the chips are working fine.

another question I wanted to ask you, in the photo you see a series of connectors on the left edge and if you read on the serigraphy you see the word "Turbo". I tried to close it with a jumper but I didn't see any effects… what do you think?

I do have a Gigabyte Socket 7 motherboard that has the Turbo pins which is for a toggle button that sets the FSB to 50 MHz, it is more effective when disabling the L1 cache. Yours is only for the Turbo LED according to the manual.

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-31, 12:12:

I tried running the computer with a 233MMX and it works fine, bus 66, so I think the chips are working fine.

Then why did you say it doesn't boot with cache on?

Did you have the switches set for the correct cache size? looks like you have chips for a 256k cache.

Nexxen wrote on 2023-01-29, 22:48:

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-29, 16:18:

PC with cache does not boot, disabling it works normally. I proceeded to uninstall the chips on the motherboard. Will the computer suffer as much in speed without L2? Or should I try to find a new one? Is there a way to test which chip is bad??

tnks

Faulty cache chip, I had it many times.
Unless it is not... :p

unstable or faulty cache could cause lockups, program crashes, etc. or make your PC refuse to boot, was experiencing this on one of my 486 boards, i eventually got it to work with some known good ICs i have in my random ICs box, it's only 128k but it is all fine.

devius wrote on 2023-01-31, 15:14:

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-01-31, 12:12:

I tried running the computer with a 233MMX and it works fine, bus 66, so I think the chips are working fine.

Then why did you say it doesn't boot with cache on?

the test was made before the computer refuse to boot.