Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2022-10-29, 02:35

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Added a dirty TAG to my SIS496 based motherboard and wrote a utility to enable it's usage. Now can run with an 8-bit TAG without having the SIS chipset run with "Force Dirty" which kills RAM performance.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2022-10-28, 07:03

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Working on a SOJ to DIP32 adapter to install 1MB of SRAM (l2 cache) into my 486. PCB is milled on a CNC router, two chips are double stacked and the 8 IO lines and chip-select line are wired to the pins for the 2nd socket without any interference with surrounding sockets.

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Re: Gigabyte i-RAM Power Adapter (Beta)

Posted on 2022-10-28, 03:32

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

haha, one of the examples in your original post (eevblog) is mine. I passed that card onto a friend just recently. In the end though, while it was good for my purpose at the time, the limits of SATA 1 killed it's usefulness to me. For the 3.3v the little buck converter commonly available on eBay was …

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Re: ASK ATX55C Rev B3 Socket 7 - looking for manuals and jumper settings

Posted on 2022-10-28, 03:21

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-10-28, 03:14: When the motherboard worked, I ran those chips at 75mhz without issue. Yeah, it should be good to go, the datasheet specs them at 6ns, the ones removed if the markings are to be trusted were 7ns, so your ones are actually faster.

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Re: ASK ATX55C Rev B3 Socket 7 - looking for manuals and jumper settings

Posted on 2022-10-28, 02:55

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just pulled em off. Pm me if interested :-) I can confirm these are compatible chips electrically, but I can't confirm that they are fast enough (should be though). You may also find compatible modules on PII CPUs or PPro motherboards as these were commonly paired with them being BSRAM compatible ( …

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Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison

Posted on 2022-10-18, 13:59

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Very cool, can you share your memory timings/bios settings? Maybe we can help you optimize a bit further. Sure thing, however I have iteratively tried every possible timing combination and had to settle on what I have here, anything tighter causes a hang just prior to the BIOS screen advancing to …

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Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison

Posted on 2022-10-18, 09:31

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for sharing, I’m def interested in more Benchmark results. This board supports 1024k cache? I will do this tonight now I have pulled out the machine again. Yes it supports 1MB of cache, I just upgraded mine to 512K but there are markings on the PCB to show how to jumper it for 1MB. Also I …

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Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison

Posted on 2022-10-04, 22:16

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just thought I would post my recent success with a Chaintech 486SOM paired with an AMD 5x86-133ADZ This motherboard was obtained from eBay after noting that it has all the hardware for a PS/2 header except for the socket ( Details on how to enable/use it ), and my favourite chipset of this era, the …

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Re: SIS 486SOM Socket 3 System Board

Posted on 2022-09-23, 09:51

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by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just acquired this exact motherboard and now have the PS/2 port working. All the required components already exist on it, only the header needs installation, and the pads in the lower left corner of the PCB marked JP4 (see image) must be shorted. JP4 connects IRQ12 to the keyboard controller, …

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Re: VOGONS Driver Library

Posted on 2022-01-20, 09:10

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Best practice would be also make password reset by some script not wait for manual reset :) Not that I have an account there, but if the original password was in plain text (eek if it were) there is nothing preventing them from being just salted and hashed right now without any resets, etc. The way …

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Re: VOGONS Driver Library

Posted on 2022-01-19, 06:01

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

ruthan wrote on 2022-01-19, 05:28: Best practice would be also make password reset by some script not wait for manual reset 😀 Not that I have an account there, but if the original password was in plain text (eek if it were) there is nothing preventing them from being just salted and hashed right …

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Wanted SiS 85C497 chip, or parts motherboard containing one

Posted on 2022-01-17, 05:01

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi All, I have a Socket 3 motherboard with the SIS496 chipset on it, due to an error of my own fault (dropped a screw onto it while powered) I damaged the southbridge sis497, seems I caused a short from 12V EEPROM to the chip. Anyway, that was 6 months ago and since I sourced another faulty sis496 …

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Re: VOGONS Driver Library

Posted on 2022-01-16, 01:14

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After several hours of searching I found a packet driver for the 10/100 PCI SMC Ether Power II (SMC9432TX) with the chip 83C170QF, which works flawlessly. This card came in several versions (10-BaseT, UTP, Fiber) which this driver supports.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-03-23, 17:23

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bought a used YMF719E-S from eBay for $20 with a bit of TLC needed. Looks like the card was left somewhere cold for a long time as it's started to become afflicted by tin-pest. After several hours of carefully desoldering the entire PCB, cleaning it, re-tinning it, then re-assembly I now have a …

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Re: Music Quest MPU clone cards, anyone interested in them?

Posted on 2021-03-08, 14:27

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by gnif

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Are you still looking for someone to implement this into a modern microcontroller? I am an avid FOSS supporter and the author of several widely used FOSS projects. I would be willing to spend some time doing this for free, under the condition that whatever is made is released as open-source hardware …

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Re: KM-S4-1 Memory Issue (reports 2x what's installed)

Posted on 2021-03-08, 04:47

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

SUCCESS! I gave up on this board and used it as a parts board to repair the other one, swapping the northbridge over. Using the AWARD bios as I damaged the original AMIBIOS from this MB, I was able to run the system, not only does it work correctly, it detects ALL the ram properly! This confirms …

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Re: KM-S4-1 Memory Issue (reports 2x what's installed)

Posted on 2021-03-07, 10:20

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok, a follow-up, it seems the motherboard itself has a fault. I took one of my SIMMs and insulated the RAS & A10 pins to make it appear as a 4MB SIMM which now the system can post and boot from. Now it's booting I dumped the BIOS and compared it to one I found on the internet... they are identical. …

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Re: Clock Generator Overclocking

Posted on 2021-03-07, 02:26

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by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Proof of concept. Unfortunately. I was able to achieve the as of yet unattainable 330 mhz setting by shorting f0 to f1 while jumper was set to c200 aka 450 75x6. The short creating the setting 55x6 330 This unfortunately confirms that my theories about how it’s set are correct and that the async …

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Re: 486 Motherboard POSTs then freezes

Posted on 2021-03-06, 14:29

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by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bad or misconfigured L2 SRAM? Also, lots of tantalum caps on there that may need replacing

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Re: Clock Generator Overclocking

Posted on 2021-03-06, 14:22

by

by gnif

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay. What about a software option for overclocking to 83mhz? None, machines of this era never had such ability. Datasheet clearly shows your clock is programmed by the jumper settings and not via any communication bus. Do you agree that it appears that f2 pin needs to be ungrounded to open up the …

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