myne wrote on 2025-01-07, 13:17:Couldn't hurt.
I feel like I don't know enough to design one that works.
Impedence is still somewhat of a mystery to me,but appa […]
Show full quote
Couldn't hurt.
I feel like I don't know enough to design one that works.
Impedence is still somewhat of a mystery to me,but apparently critical to design.
BTW what is br1/br3? Afik br1-3 are bits requests and br1 is the only bidirectional one. No?
BR is Bus Request. It's kind of a small pseudo-bus for arbitration between the CPUs and the chipset in multiprocessing mode. From what I've seen on a scope, there's definitely more going on than just being a bit. I.e. there's signaling there, not just steady High or Low levels.
For native PPro systems:
CPU0 | CPU1 | CPU2 | CPU3 | Chipset
BR0 -- BR1 -- BR2 -- BR3 -- BR
BR1 ---BR2--BR3---BR0 -- n/c
BR2---BR3--BR0---BR1 -- n/c
BR3---BR0--BR1---BR2 -- n/c
For 440LX (PPro orP2) and 440BX (P2 only):
CPU0 | CPU1 | Chipset
BR0 -- BR1 -- BR
BR1 ---BR0 -- n/c
For 440BX PPro only:
CPU0 | CPU1 | Chipset
BR0 -- BR3 -- BR
BR3 ---BR0 -- n/c
The problem with Slot systems is that the slot themselves carry only BR0 and BR1 contacts, as BR2 and BR3 (and the whole quad CPU system) was deprecated by this point.
So the signals needed for quad CPU system are not included neither on mobos, nor on the CPUs. Early chipsets work fine by only using BR0 + BR1 combo on PPro CPUs. 440BX doesn't. Apparently, VIA also works just fine with BR0 + BR1.
First time I started 2x PPro on 440BX, I actually manually interconnected all four BR contacts in a rotary fashion, like it would be on a native PPro board. And it suddenly worked.
The fact that it works wired as BR0 to BR3 and BR3 to BR0 is just luck. It makes possible for things to work without extra wires between the CPUs/adapters.