appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-30, 09:17:

Looks like an ES1688/1868 IC.. Awesome card.

I think you might be on the right lines. Looking at the pin markings around the chip look similar to the ess chips

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 13:08:

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 12:58:

Cache for 486, just grabbed it from Digikey

What modules (specs) did you get?

The wrong ones... 🙁

I ordered them from Digikey, I did as much research before ordering but when I put them in the board this morning, I get a message saying “Bad Cache, do not enable Cache”... this was 32kx8 x8 + 1 extra for Tag. 256kb total. So the specs are the following...

One of those brand new produced Commodore64 cases, made on the original molds that Commodore used around 1986.
I ordered my case, made with black plastic. And an orange power-led to go with the case.

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 14:43:

The wrong ones... :( […]
Show full quote

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 13:08:

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 12:58:

Cache for 486, just grabbed it from Digikey

What modules (specs) did you get?

The wrong ones... 🙁

I ordered them from Digikey, I did as much research before ordering but when I put them in the board this morning, I get a message saying “Bad Cache, do not enable Cache”... this was 32kx8 x8 + 1 extra for Tag. 256kb total. So the specs are the following...

9BA7AE8D-5628-41ED-9171-25DC416175B5.jpeg

If this is the correct configuration, I would try with half of that. You should be able to configure to 128k with the same chips. That way you can at least most likely rule out that you received a faulty chip.

2005 Mac Mini G4 and power adapter ($35 shipped).. going to use it for Morph OS. Maybe give it a custom paint job.

wiretap wrote on 2020-04-30, 18:10:

2005 Mac Mini G4 and power adapter ($35 shipped).. going to use it for Morph OS. Maybe give it a custom paint job.

I have a G4 mac mini that I was attempting to put Morph OS on as well but I didn't want to lose my OS 9 or OS X installs, and without commiting to the install I couldn't tell if it was possible. I tried to find a drive management program for the mac but nothing I tried would run, so I gave up and just boot from a CD into Morph OS...Let me know how this goes for you if you try to multi-boot.

Got some more hardware today. Got this really nice Highscreen ATX (with removable standoffs for both AT and ATX) Miditower for €10, which will likely house an Epox EP58-MVP3C-M Pentium 233MMX (OC @300MHz) system that's currently in another AT case. I'll see about having an AT I/O shield printed for it. It is missing the power button (the physical switch, not the plastic bit and spring), and the USB port behind the cover, but that should be relatively easy to fix. (Just using the seller's picture, by the way)

Then, on Facebook Marketplace, I saw a lot of "PC Parts". So far, I've only once found something on there, but it was a Macintosh Quadra 800 with a Trinitron monitor, and a bunch of peripherals (AEKII, Apple ADB Teardrop mouse, Macally ADB mouse, Logitech Serial Mouse, etc.) for just €20, so I always keep tabs on it, which paid off today! In the lot, there were two AGP cards, one of which caught my attention.

After some GPU detective work, I found out it's a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee! The seller had it up as an auction that he would hold until tomorrow evening, but I overlooked the fact that his start bid was €1. So when I asked him if he had gotten any bids, and he said that he hadn't yet, I asked if €15 was an OK starting bid. I then saw that €1 thing, and thought I just screwed up a bit by starting it off high, but it ended up being the right strategy, as he immediately accepted it and sold the lot to me! I threw away the keyboards and mice that were included, but I've kept the things in the picture. Other than the Banshee, there's an ASUS V8710D 64MB GeForce 4 MX440, a few Samsung and Philips optical drives (I really like that burner on top, looks really awesome), a Mitsumi 3.5" floppy drive, two Realtek PCI Ethernet NICs, an 8-bit ISA ASP-chipset parallel port card, and a cheap PCI soundcard. It does have a CD Audio cable, which is always useful, as are all the other things I got in the lot. There were also that fan, random cooler with a fan attached, and an SPI ATX PSU in the lot. Not sure what I'm going to do with those, that SPI is fairly dirty inside for example. But, it does have -5V, so I'll think about whether it's worth cleaning those up and adding it to my PC parts collection or not.

Tried out the Banshee, and it works just fine in Croc under Glide! Really, really happy with that card, I was thinking about getting one, so this was a very timely find 😀

Got a boxed Asus A7N8X Deluxe, rev 2.0, with an AXP 2500+, memory, and cooler. Had one of these motherboards back in the day and really loved it.

Looks like a bit of a project though - I hear that the EEPROM chips can be faulty, and I can see a couple of KZG caps are about to blow. Oh boy. 😀

Got two Socket 5 motherboards to satisfy my long term interest in early Pentium chipsets.

1st the Gigabyte with UMC8891 chipset. I am really excited about that one as I was looking for one for some time. This is to debunk/confirm the myth that it is a scaled 486 design.

2nd dual P90 430NX Neptune motherboard:

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 18:44:

Got two Socket 5 motherboards to satisfy my long term interest in early Pentium chipsets.

1st the Gigabyte with UMC8891 chipset. I am really excited about that one as I was looking for one for some time. This is to debunk/confirm the myth that it is a scaled 486 design.

If it's not, it's the worst memory controller design seen on So5. Using a P100 and RamSpeed, I measured max INTmem score of 38.41 on a Biostar MB-8500UUR and even worse, 30.1 on a Chicony CH-890A. By comparison the next lowest score I did on a 'vanilla' board was 45.6 on an Intel Premiere/PCI II 'Plato' with i430NX. The only thing that came close to the UMC8891 was 39.87 on a PC Chips M571 with SiS 5598 and EDO using integrated VGA. With a discrete VGA card that leapt to 72.59.

dionb wrote on 2020-04-30, 19:35:

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 18:44:

Got two Socket 5 motherboards to satisfy my long term interest in early Pentium chipsets.

1st the Gigabyte with UMC8891 chipset. I am really excited about that one as I was looking for one for some time. This is to debunk/confirm the myth that it is a scaled 486 design.

If it's not, it's the worst memory controller design seen on So5. Using a P100 and RamSpeed, I measured max INTmem score of 38.41 on a Biostar MB-8500UUR and even worse, 30.1 on a Chicony CH-890A. By comparison the next lowest score I did on a 'vanilla' board was 45.6 on an Intel Premiere/PCI II 'Plato' with i430NX. The only thing that came close to the UMC8891 was 39.87 on a PC Chips M571 with SiS 5598 and EDO using integrated VGA. With a discrete VGA card that leapt to 72.59.

Not sure about your boards. But this thing is definitely not a recycled 486. Much faster than 430NX on Plato. Faster than SiS501, 430LX and Opti Viper. Just lagging behind Triton.

Clearly 64bit design and 6-2-2-2 mem timing, posted writes, ...

I am happy to find this as I used a UMC pentium board back in 1995-96 and don't remember it to be that bad...

Still need to tune this and also try with async cache to see the full picture.

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 14:43:

The wrong ones... :( […]
Show full quote

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 13:08:

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 12:58:

Cache for 486, just grabbed it from Digikey

What modules (specs) did you get?

The wrong ones... 🙁

I ordered them from Digikey, I did as much research before ordering but when I put them in the board this morning, I get a message saying “Bad Cache, do not enable Cache”... this was 32kx8 x8 + 1 extra for Tag. 256kb total. So the specs are the following...

9BA7AE8D-5628-41ED-9171-25DC416175B5.jpeg

I don't think these are wrong ones. Of course there could be bad chips, but that's unlikely IMHO.

First EISA board since the early 90s - an ECS SL-486VE

Small lot of VGA cards + 1 sound card from the same seller. Worryingly, there was supposed to be separately boxed Compaq QVision 1280/E which seems to have gone walkabout in the courier system!

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-04-30, 20:56:

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 14:43:

The wrong ones... :( […]
Show full quote

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 13:08:

What modules (specs) did you get?

The wrong ones... 🙁

I ordered them from Digikey, I did as much research before ordering but when I put them in the board this morning, I get a message saying “Bad Cache, do not enable Cache”... this was 32kx8 x8 + 1 extra for Tag. 256kb total. So the specs are the following...

9BA7AE8D-5628-41ED-9171-25DC416175B5.jpeg

I don't think these are wrong ones. Of course there could be bad chips, but that's unlikely IMHO.

I’m only getting the “Bad Cache” error when I populate the last 2 banks, Bank 0+1 as in the picture. I tried multiple different cache chips in both those banks but get the same error.

I started by removing all the cache and adding it one by one until I received the Bad Cache error which was with those 2 last banks. I then tried different chips, same error. Maybe bad banks?

You should be able to configure it in single-bank config at 128k. A bank is the set of 4 chips (if this is a 486).

Also if you have multimeter it should be easy to troubleshoot sockets. The wiring is actually not that complicated. In general address and control pins are shared by all chips in a bank. Data pins (those on right side of socket) are shared across the bank. Power/GND pins are shared by all chips..

Daniël Oosterhuis wrote on 2020-04-30, 18:25:

Got some more hardware today. Got this really nice Highscreen ATX (with removable standoffs for both AT and ATX) Miditower for € […]
Show full quote

Got some more hardware today. Got this really nice Highscreen ATX (with removable standoffs for both AT and ATX) Miditower for €10,
8><CUT

That is a case produced by 'Evercase'. The company still exists.
http://www.evercase.co.uk/

mpe wrote on 2020-04-30, 18:44:

Got two Socket 5 motherboards to satisfy my long term interest in early Pentium chipsets. […]
Show full quote

Got two Socket 5 motherboards to satisfy my long term interest in early Pentium chipsets.

1st the Gigabyte with UMC8891 chipset. I am really excited about that one as I was looking for one for some time. This is to debunk/confirm the myth that it is a scaled 486 design.

DSC_6975.jpeg
2nd dual P90 430NX Neptune motherboard:

DSC_6973.jpeg

The "dual CPU pentium board", Note the extra pin on the non-ZIF socket. I think this is really a cache controller.

Cheers,

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 23:12:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-04-30, 20:56:

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 14:43:

The wrong ones... 🙁

I ordered them from Digikey, I did as much research before ordering but when I put them in the board this morning, I get a message saying “Bad Cache, do not enable Cache”... this was 32kx8 x8 + 1 extra for Tag. 256kb total. So the specs are the following...

9BA7AE8D-5628-41ED-9171-25DC416175B5.jpeg

I don't think these are wrong ones. Of course there could be bad chips, but that's unlikely IMHO.

I’m only getting the “Bad Cache” error when I populate the last 2 banks, Bank 0+1 as in the picture. I tried multiple different cache chips in both those banks but get the same error.

I started by removing all the cache and adding it one by one until I received the Bad Cache error which was with those 2 last banks. I then tried different chips, same error. Maybe bad banks?

Start like this, easier for me to type socket filled pattern: Unsocketed not plugged in, "IC" and "tag" means socketed cache chips.

tag, IC, unsocketed, IC, unsocketed.
IC, unsocketed, IC, unsocketed.

or:

tag , unsocketed, IC, unsocketed, IC
unsocketed, IC, unsocketed, IC

Or:

tag, unsocketed, unsocketed, IC, IC
unsocketed, unsocketed, IC, IC

or:

tag, IC, IC, unsocketed, unsocketed
IC, IC, unsocketed, unsocketed.

See if you can try this combinations. This is 128K for now.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-01, 01:37:

Start like this, easier for me to type socket filled pattern: Unsocketed not plugged in, "IC" and "tag" means socketed cache c […]
Show full quote

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-30, 23:12:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-04-30, 20:56:

I don't think these are wrong ones. Of course there could be bad chips, but that's unlikely IMHO.

I’m only getting the “Bad Cache” error when I populate the last 2 banks, Bank 0+1 as in the picture. I tried multiple different cache chips in both those banks but get the same error.

I started by removing all the cache and adding it one by one until I received the Bad Cache error which was with those 2 last banks. I then tried different chips, same error. Maybe bad banks?

Start like this, easier for me to type socket filled pattern: Unsocketed not plugged in, "IC" and "tag" means socketed cache chips.

tag, IC, unsocketed, IC, unsocketed.
IC, unsocketed, IC, unsocketed.

or:

tag , unsocketed, IC, unsocketed, IC
unsocketed, IC, unsocketed, IC

Or:

tag, unsocketed, unsocketed, IC, IC
unsocketed, unsocketed, IC, IC

or:

tag, IC, IC, unsocketed, unsocketed
IC, IC, unsocketed, unsocketed.

See if you can try this combinations. This is 128K for now.

Cheers,

Hey thanks for the reply. So the issue with 128k, is that all information I’m getting says 128k I have to use 32kx8 chips, which is fine, but the TAG should be 8kx8... which I don’t have. Unless I can just use a 32kx8 for TAG.

dave343 wrote on 2020-05-01, 03:22:

Hey thanks for the reply. So the issue with 128k, is that all information I’m getting says 128k I have to use 32kx8 chips, which is fine, but the TAG should be 8kx8... which I don’t have. Unless I can just use a 32kx8 for TAG.

Using a larger capacity chip for the tag should work just fine.