"LYCA - Esesix.com" Thinclient (Cyrix MediaGX(MMX-S) + Supertek ST-3WT) \ VOGONS

"LYCA - Esesix.com" Thinclient (Cyrix MediaGX(MMX-S) + Supertek ST-3WT)

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First post, by kin

Posted on 2014-11-30, 17:00

kin Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 20
Joined: 2014-11-30, 15:41

Processor: Cyrix Media GXM 266mhz GX5530
Mainboard: Supertek ST-3WT
AC97 2.0 (sb pro support)
Onboard 4MB VGA (disabled)
Ram: kingston kvr133x64c2-256 (64mb in DOS)
Video adapter: S3 Virge DX 4mb PCI (connected to the PCI/ISA bridge)
Storage: Emtec 512mb 88x CFcard connected to IDE adapter.
Floppy: 3.25 HD floppydrive

It took me many hours of google and testing the unit and solving issues in DOS. I hope this helps.
Just in case, remove the cmos battery and put it back in order to reset all bios settings.

In bios, everything is set default with the exeption of:
Chipset features:
- 16-bit I/O recovery (CLCK) = 2
8-bit I/O recovery (CLCK) = 3
These settings are crucial in order for the AC97 to work correctly. Some games are prone to hanging on startup.

PnP/PCI configuration:
- PCI IRQ activated by: edge (dunno if this helps anything)

Integrated peripherals:
- I've enabled the onboard(AC97) sound in BIOS (220H, 330H, IRQ5, Low DMA 1, High DMA 7).
There is no seperate option to enable the Soundblaster Pro legacy, but I think it already is.
(tried to flash the bios with 3wt0522t.bin, nopes)

AC97
I already added this in autoexec.bat:
SETBLASTER = A220 I5 D1 H7 P330 P6

Note:
The AC97 could fail (no sound) when a game causes the system to crash and you are forced to reset/power off the system.
Even if you reset or repower the system shortly, the AC97 would still be faulty. Just turn off the system, let it rest for about 5-10 minutes
then power it up again. Then the AC97 is functional again. 😀
The gamecrashes that leaded to this hangup was caused by the improper 16-bit and 8-bit I/O recovery clck settings (default 5 and 5). The stable setting is 3 and 2.(see settings above). I also don' t know why this can cause DMA and IRQ conflicts and I can imagine that this is a huge frustrates for other owners of this board 😵

Games + sound 100%working: 😀
- Hocus Pocus (when L1 cache is disabled, it hangs on apogee intro)
- One Must Fall (setup: Sound blaster clone works. when set to sb pro or 16 the samplerate of the sound will be played by half. Ingame: set speed to 2 bars)
- Doom2
- The Incredible Machine 2
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Pinball Fantasies
- many many more....

Quirky: 😐
- Transport Tycoon Deluxe (Only works with UVCONFIG, but it's running 4x slow... not sure if it is CPU or memory related. Linear framebuffer?)
- The Incredible Machine (Only works with UVCONFIG, also very slow. Soundblaster does not show up in setup)

Reply 1 of 2, by Rawit

Posted on 2015-08-31, 13:02

Rawit Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 576
Joined: 2015-04-17, 07:01

A while ago I picked up one of these Esesix thin clients with the sole purpose to convert it into a DOS machine. Your post on Vogons is one of the few good sources of info on this machine 😎 . I've been trying out some stuff and noticed some things are different:

- 8/16 bit IO recovery defaults to 6 on my machine;
- Setting them both to 1 causes glitches (DOTT noisy speech, DUKE3D failure to initialize sound);
- I've yet to encounter a failing AC97;

I've been running it with the intergrated VGA @ 4 MB and noticed the following:

- Transport Tycoon Deluxe won't run (black screen);
- Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge won't run;
- With Lost Vikings I hear music but no image (could be the computer->cheap scaler->TV setup);
- Doom & Doom 2 are slowish (Mode X/Y seems slow with certain area's, Heretic is running great);

I haven't tried UVCONFIG yet, but I will try to do so soon.

About the memory, which divider is optimal with the 266/C2 combo? Div = 3 gives me 2 frames extra in Quake, but I'm afraid I'm running it out of spec. I'm not sure what is divided on this platform. FSB seems 66 Mhz, multiplied by 4 to get 264 = 266 Mhz. Dividing 264 by 3 gives me 88 Mhz, but the memory is 133 Mhz. SDRAM isn't double data rate is it? (264 / 4) * 2 = 132, which seems more logical.

YouTube

Reply 2 of 2, by feipoa

Posted on 2015-09-04, 03:44

feipoa Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 9656
Joined: 2011-03-07, 13:54
Location: Canada

The FSB of all Cyrix Media GX or GXm systems is either 30 or 33 MHz. I have a P5GX-M that I use with a 266 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM. I have disabled the onboard graphics and video and use add-in cards instead. The system has about the performance of a P166.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

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