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CH-890C Mobo and Cache

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First post, by Flakchak

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Hi all,

It seems cache is still the bane of my existence. I have a CH-890C motherboard and despite being over 20 years old, the Dallas Clock Chip is still ticking.

But after running a number of dos benchmarking programs, I can't get any read on how much cache I have on board. I'm hoping that someone has a little knowledge they can lend me. I don't have a manual, nor can I find one online. The motherboard appears capable of 256k, 512, and 1mb of cache.

I'm just wondering, what types of chips would I need with 8 sockets, plus a tag socket to have 256, or 512, or 1mb. I've tried a number of jumper settings, which leads me to believe the cache I have may not be legit. But if anyone can help me out, I'd greatly appreciate it.

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Reply 1 of 4, by derSammler

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Jumpers are set to 1 MB, but the cache chips are 256 x 1 each, so 256 kb in total.

Isn't there a hardware summary screen when the system boots? What does it say?

Reply 2 of 4, by dionb

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That cache looks bona-fide, but even though the chips all have 32kx8 structure, your problem might well be the way they are mismatched. Generally you want 8 the same chips, with a ninth chip for tag.

Here you have 8x 256kb = 256kB cache, plus an extra 32kx8 tag. For 512kB you'd want 8x 512kb, but the 256kb tag should still be enough. I wouldn't expect any performance boost from more cache though. In fact what you have here is - clock for clock - the slowest So5 (or So7) motherboard out there. It is the slug of slugs, mainly because the chipset is literally a 486 chipset kludged onto a Pentium, with the 32b (not 64b) memory controller to go with that. Correspondingly, it's even slower than earlier UMA attempts like SiS 5511+6202 boards. If anything is interesting on this board it's to see how slow it will actually go. As you can see on your pic, there are settings for FSB down to 33MHz. Watch it crawl 😜

But back to cache: why don't you think you have any? What does CACHECHK.EXE tell you?

Reply 3 of 4, by Warlord

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dionb wrote:

It is the slug of slugs, it's even slower than earlier UMA attempts like SiS 5511+6202 boards. If anything is interesting on this board it's to see how slow it will actually go. As you can see on your pic, there are settings for FSB down to 33MHz. Watch it crawl 😜

maybe thats good for retro gaming. Probably sucks that its a pentium, but eh seems like people like things that go slow.

Reply 4 of 4, by Flakchak

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derSammler wrote:

Jumpers are set to 1 MB, but the cache chips are 256 x 1 each, so 256 kb in total.

Isn't there a hardware summary screen when the system boots? What does it say?

I changed the jumpers to reflect 256 cache. The hardware summary screen at boot mentions nothing of the cache.

dionb wrote:

That cache looks bona-fide, but even though the chips all have 32kx8 structure, your problem might well be the way they are mismatched. Generally you want 8 the same chips, with a ninth chip for tag.

Here you have 8x 256kb = 256kB cache, plus an extra 32kx8 tag. For 512kB you'd want 8x 512kb, but the 256kb tag should still be enough. I wouldn't expect any performance boost from more cache though. In fact what you have here is - clock for clock - the slowest So5 (or So7) motherboard out there. It is the slug of slugs, mainly because the chipset is literally a 486 chipset kludged onto a Pentium, with the 32b (not 64b) memory controller to go with that. Correspondingly, it's even slower than earlier UMA attempts like SiS 5511+6202 boards. If anything is interesting on this board it's to see how slow it will actually go. As you can see on your pic, there are settings for FSB down to 33MHz. Watch it crawl 😜

But back to cache: why don't you think you have any? What does CACHECHK.EXE tell you?

I ran cache check for the mismatched cache pictured above. This is my result:

The attachment previous.jpg is no longer available

I then put in a set of matched chips. The tag chip I left, as using the same chip as the other 8 would cause a hang at boot:

The attachment updatechips.jpg is no longer available

And this is my result in Cachechk:

The attachment new.jpg is no longer available

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