First post, by Dusko
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Hello All!
After several headaches, long hours and days, I'm coming here to see if someone has run into this issue before and can help me with it:
I recently got a FIC 486-vip-io with the purpose of having a 486 dx2 66MHz with a 2 or 4 megs PCI video card. I already have a nice SOYO vlb setup with 1mb video card, very happy with that but wanted to have a second one with better video performance, this is the set up:
Motherboard: FIC 486-vip-io
CPU: Intel 486 DX2 66MHz
Ram: 16MB
Cache: 256 Kb
HDD: Compact Flash (IDE adapter) with 512 mb
PCI video options (I have):
- 2mb Diamond Stealth64 2001 series S3 Trio64V+ (from 1995)
-4mb Diamond Stealth 3d 2000 series S3 Virge (from 1996)
The system works great with a ISA video card (Diamond Speedstar pro), the only thing that is not working is the HDD led jumper (j4) . The tower HDD led is good, It works with my vlb controller card from the other set up and the same Compact Flash adapter. This is another thing that really annoys me!.
Now, the real problem is when I switch the video card for a PCI card, I get no image, it doesn't even give me an error, I can tell the computer turns on and boots to DOS, I know this because of the floppies boot sequence and the HDD led activity of the CF IDE adapter.
I hope the mobo is good but not sure what to do with this BIOS settings:
Slot (1) using IRQ: ?? I tried 10 but nothing
PCI clock: ? goes from 0 to 255 I think
INT A Using IRQ: ??? also tried 10
IRQ MODE: ?? Transparent ? there was also Converse and something else, no idea.
CPU to PCI WRITE BUFFER: ?
PCI Master WRITE BUFFER: ?
PCI Master PRE-FETCH BUFFER: ?
There is no auto config for any of that. Is any particular IRQ these video cards use? and then, which IRQ for INT a,b, etc. I guess these also represent the PCI slots 1 -4 ? So I'm supposed to set two IRQs?, one for the slot and one for this ABC bulls@#$? Another thing is that the mobo's manual (pdf download) says it's a PCI 2.0 specification, I wonder if the video cards I'm testing are 2.1? I couldn't find any info on them, PCI 2.1 specification was released in 1995, so maybe one of the cards is no good for this set up (if not both), anyway, I still need help to figure out this BIOS settings if anyone knows.
I also set the "pull down if PCI is inserted" jumpers as the manual specifies, the only IRQ I didn't do that was the 5 which will be used for the Sound Blaster.
The copy of the manual gets cut short at the beginning of the BIOS section!, so no more help there. It really is a pain in the a$$ to switch video cards back an forth to try all the combinations!
If anyone bothers to read this is greatly appreciated!
Thank You,
Dusko
