fix_metal wrote on 2026-02-24, 18:05:

Hello all, […]
Show full quote

Hello all,

I've been purchasing a VLB Goldstar Prime2C, based on the GM82C711 Chipset for my 486 PC [0] . It worked out of the box at first try, no issues with any ports of some sort.

Then, I found out there are some MS-DOS drivers, which I suppose apply some kind of acceleration (32bit). These are available both in the retroweb page, or vogons driver collection site [1].

The thing is when they get loaded, and the string is printed just fine on the screen, then the I/O gets all sorts of reading problems, so anything won't be ready at all. A DIR command will show random ASCII characters instead of any readable string.

I noticed the board has jumpers to set the "speed" from "slow to fast" in 7 possible ways. Right now the VLB (Mobo side) is set with 0WZ and >=33MHz clock, and the CPU is an Intel Overdrive DX4 ODPR 100MHz. The previous board worked perfectly with this setting (infamous UMC device with just working IDE/Floppy, see the dead end saga at [2]). The PC also has a Trident TGUI9400CXI VLB graphic card installed.

My only take is this is all about those jumpers. As I didn't have the time to fix&try so far, does anyone ever had similar experiences?

Thanks

[0] https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/6784
[1] https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … 051&menustate=0
[2] Serial mouse woes

How big is your HDD? normally this 32bit drivers are limited to 512mb

theelf wrote on 2026-02-24, 18:18:

fix_metal wrote on 2026-02-24, 18:05:

Hello all, […]
Show full quote

Hello all,

I've been purchasing a VLB Goldstar Prime2C, based on the GM82C711 Chipset for my 486 PC [0] . It worked out of the box at first try, no issues with any ports of some sort.

Then, I found out there are some MS-DOS drivers, which I suppose apply some kind of acceleration (32bit). These are available both in the retroweb page, or vogons driver collection site [1].

The thing is when they get loaded, and the string is printed just fine on the screen, then the I/O gets all sorts of reading problems, so anything won't be ready at all. A DIR command will show random ASCII characters instead of any readable string.

I noticed the board has jumpers to set the "speed" from "slow to fast" in 7 possible ways. Right now the VLB (Mobo side) is set with 0WZ and >=33MHz clock, and the CPU is an Intel Overdrive DX4 ODPR 100MHz. The previous board worked perfectly with this setting (infamous UMC device with just working IDE/Floppy, see the dead end saga at [2]). The PC also has a Trident TGUI9400CXI VLB graphic card installed.

My only take is this is all about those jumpers. As I didn't have the time to fix&try so far, does anyone ever had similar experiences?

Thanks

[0] https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/6784
[1] https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … 051&menustate=0
[2] Serial mouse woes

How big is your HDD? normally this 32bit drivers are limited to 512mb

Ouch. 1 GB

So long as the card doesn't have any i/o ports that need touched at runtime to go into fast mode, your BIOS' existing 32-bit IDE support (and multi-sector/block mode) might be enough already, or you could configuring XT-IDE Universal BIOS to do 32-bit transfers.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2026-02-24, 22:52:

So long as the card doesn't have any i/o ports that need touched at runtime to go into fast mode, your BIOS' existing 32-bit IDE support (and multi-sector/block mode) might be enough already, or you could configuring XT-IDE Universal BIOS to do 32-bit transfers.

I'll give a run of Winbench 94 to assess the status.
Thanks

Well, I've gave it a try with Winbench 94 in WfW 3.11, and here are the results, before and after installing LBA28 Driver for Windows 3.1 Storage 528MB to 132GB [0].

Results are attached. There is a nice improvement in all the benchmarks.

Now, I expect these to be only loaded at WfW startup, and not running in MS-DOS. Any idea on a generic working driver for DOS?

[0] https://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2070