VOGONS


First post, by WJG6260

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Hello all,

I'm looking for a copy of the Alaris Leopard's AMIBIOS for the OPTi 295 chipset.

Out of curiosity-to any of you who have this board-what your BIOS's date? My board has a BIOS dated 11/11/92, and I'm not quite sure if this is a newer or older BIOS than I should have on the board. I happen to have an Alaris Cougar, and I found that I had some issues with the MR-BIOS, but, upon burning a new ROM, the board's performance seemed in line with what it should have been all along.

In this case, I only ask because I noticed that my results on Speedsys are lower than those from my Alaris Leopard LX, which is ISA-only. I'm wondering if burning a new ROM would be a solution to this.

Anyway, thanks again for all of your help. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I've attached the pertinent results, and a picture of each board.

P.S. Has anyone managed to find the MR-BIOS for this board? I saw some older threads that it does seem to exist, but all indicate that nobody can quite find it.

-Live Long and Prosper-

Feel free to check out my YouTube and Twitter!

Reply 1 of 9, by rmay635703

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Odd I’ve never seen a 50mhz SLC in a desktop board,

I wonder if you could overclock to 66mhz?

The 66mhz SLC2 seemed to be the sweet spot

No cache provision seems even stranger.

Reply 2 of 9, by pshipkov

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It even works well at 2x40MHz.

Will check the one here and report.

retro bits and bytes

Reply 3 of 9, by Eep386

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I do have an Alaris Leopard Rev.C system, but I'll have to dig it out to dump its AMIBIOS. I don't have any MR BIOS for it unfortunately, I'd love to give it a try!
Edit: I just dug it out and dumped my AMIBIOS, it's also dated 11/11/92. Seems to be the most common vintage.

The attachment Alaris Leopard Rev.C AMIBIOS - 11-11-92.bin.zip is no longer available

@WJG6260 You burned a new AMIBIOS or MR BIOS for your Cougar?

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁

Reply 4 of 9, by WJG6260

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Eep386 wrote on 2021-03-18, 05:57:
I do have an Alaris Leopard Rev.C system, but I'll have to dig it out to dump its AMIBIOS. I don't have any MR BIOS for it unfor […]
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I do have an Alaris Leopard Rev.C system, but I'll have to dig it out to dump its AMIBIOS. I don't have any MR BIOS for it unfortunately, I'd love to give it a try!
Edit: I just dug it out and dumped my AMIBIOS, it's also dated 11/11/92. Seems to be the most common vintage.
Alaris Leopard Rev.C AMIBIOS - 11-11-92.bin.zip

@WJG6260 You burned a new AMIBIOS or MR BIOS for your Cougar?

Hey, wow, thanks a million! I’m going to give this a go tomorrow and see how it turns out! I’ve been hunting for the MR-BIOS for the Leopard, and just can’t seem to find the thing. It exists, that I’m sure of. The MR-BIOS website makes reference to the OPTi 295 explicitly having been one of the chipsets for which an MR-BIOS existed. Apparently, a few Leopards have sold on eBay with the MR-BIOS, but no members of the forum here have managed to grab one and dump the BIOS, as far as I am aware.

As for my Cougar, I burned a new copy of the MR-BIOS, version 1.65. It actually happened to be the same exact BIOS revision that the board came with, but the one that came with the board had issues with VLB reads/writes for some reason. I’ve never seen anything quite so weird, but the new ROM worked just fine—go figure! I only even noticed the issue when I ran some benchmarks using the ARK1000VL that I have in my main 486 system. I roughly know where that card’s benchmarks fall, and the results on the original ROM were heavily stunted, almost ISA-level. In fact, an ISA Cirrus card I had near-matched the ARK1000VL, before burning the new BIOS; afterward, things were as they should have been!

@rmay635703, what @pshipkov said seems to be the case. I haven’t tested my board at 80MHz, but various people seem to have luck with their boards at 80MHz, without issue. I really need to find a heatsink for mine anyway, so I’ll probably grab one soon and see how it handles 80MHz, perhaps with a small 12mm fan attached.

-Live Long and Prosper-

Feel free to check out my YouTube and Twitter!

Reply 5 of 9, by Anonymous Coward

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So I guess that's not a picture of your actual board, eh? It seems to have a BIOS with a 1995 date.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 6 of 9, by WJG6260

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-03-18, 08:03:

So I guess that's not a picture of your actual board, eh? It seems to have a BIOS with a 1995 date.

That is indeed my board! I don't know why the BIOS ROM has a date of 1995, but the AMIBIOS date is definitely 11/11/92.

Truthfully, I'm not quite sure, but I believe that the board was in some sort of industrial setting before I purchased it. That being said, I'm not certain as to what that sticker on the ROM indicates, as the BIOS date is definitely not the date on the chip itself, and the board appears to be a revision C, while the BIOS's sticker suggests it's a revision B.

-Live Long and Prosper-

Feel free to check out my YouTube and Twitter!

Reply 7 of 9, by dataino.it

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from leopard board

Reply 8 of 9, by Eep386

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Interesting, that BIOS is dated 06/06/92.

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁