Re: No cache on SiS471 VLB board
Posted on 2021-04-22, 15:52
Oh, forgot to post a picture of the board as requested.
Re: No cache on SiS471 VLB board
Posted on 2021-04-22, 15:47
Just a guess, maybe it's one of those original fake cache 486 boards with a modified bios ? Do you have another bios for it ? Can we have a photo of the board? Right. To rule out possibilities, I decided to test another CPU in the board. I'd tested with two i486 DX2/66 CPU's. It's my go to "safe" …
Re: No cache on SiS471 VLB board
Posted on 2021-04-22, 14:57
I have noticed that several SiS 471 boards have a messed up BIOS when it comes to L2 cache: in many of them the dirty tag is not set properly so WB L2 doesn't work as it should, and in others the cache timing register values set in the chipset are incorrect, resulting in low L2 speeds. This last …
Re: No cache on SiS471 VLB board
Posted on 2021-04-22, 14:15
appiah4 wrote on 2021-04-22, 14:12: There is probably a jumper block that configures amount of cache on your board and yours is configured for 0KB. The jumpers for cache amount was set correctly. Seems there was an additional jumper to bypass cache for some reason.
Re: No cache on SiS471 VLB board
Posted on 2021-04-22, 14:13
Just a guess, maybe it's one of those original fake cache 486 boards with a modified bios ? Do you have another bios for it ? Can we have a photo of the board? Right. To rule out possibilities, I decided to test another CPU in the board. I'd tested with two i486 DX2/66 CPU's. It's my go to "safe" …
No cache on SiS471 VLB board
Posted on 2021-04-22, 12:41
Okay, so I'm doing a bit of diagnostics on my Iston Computer Corp. S486G motherboard. I'm pretty sure this is some sort of OEM type board, but who knows. Hard to find any info about it other than the basic jumper info etc. I've tried a couple of different cache configurations, 256KB and 512KB, …
Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?
Posted on 2021-04-09, 18:45
Well, that attitude of being different, and feeling superior and so on goes on today, even in the PC community. Just look at forums dealing in modern systems, and see how extreme some of the brand fans can be. "Team Green", "Team Red" and "Team Blue". I have absolutely no idea what those teams are. …
Re: Upgrade SIMM RAM modules
Posted on 2021-03-27, 13:48
Why would these timing issues occur? Are the memory chips that sensitive to the physical length of the traces, or is there some other reason? Not trying to argue or anything, I'm just really curious. I'm by no means an expert on PCB design, so it's always interesting to hear what more experienced …
Re: Upgrade SIMM RAM modules
Posted on 2021-03-27, 13:14
if the pinout is the same it is possible, though there's the chance that timing issues might appear due to the original pcb design. Why would these timing issues occur? Are the memory chips that sensitive to the physical length of the traces, or is there some other reason? Not trying to argue or …
Upgrade SIMM RAM modules
Posted on 2021-03-27, 12:34
I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to replace the memory chips on SIMM modules with faster ones. I have a fair few 70ns SIMM modules sitting around, and I was wondering if it would be possible to simply desolder the chips and replace them with same size (memory wise as well as physical, …
Re: Which PCI Graphics Card For Socket 7 430tx/hx Builds?
Posted on 2021-03-23, 20:55
My current AOpen AP53 HX-based motherboard works just fine with Matrox Millennium, Matrox Millennium II, Number Nine GXE64 Pro (S3 Vision 964) and Trident TGUI9440. These are the only cards I've tried on it. Back in the day, I used to have an Asus TX97-x which I first ran with an ExpertColor S3 …
Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?
Posted on 2021-03-23, 14:49
The reason the Amiga went away is because when they introduced the successor model (A1200), it supported only 4 sounds simultaneously (so many games still had no music since there's no room for sound effects), only 2 buttons for gamepads, only 720kB floppies as the storage medium (lol), and only …
Re: Matrox card questions
Posted on 2021-03-23, 14:26
Matrox started out as a company delivering niche products for professional use, rather than as a consumer brand. It was simply due to the fact that with the release of the Millennium, they suddenly had a card that was great for all-round use (their older cards had a very slow VGA core) and so a lot …
Re: Which PCI Graphics Card For Socket 7 430tx/hx Builds?
Posted on 2021-03-23, 11:37
My current AOpen AP53 HX-based motherboard works just fine with Matrox Millennium, Matrox Millennium II, Number Nine GXE64 Pro (S3 Vision 964) and Trident TGUI9440. These are the only cards I've tried on it. Back in the day, I used to have an Asus TX97-x which I first ran with an ExpertColor S3 …
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2021-03-14, 13:07
I've been spending the last few days rebuilding one of my systems. I've had a Pentium 233MMX running, with Windows 95 on it, but seeing as I feel it overlaps a bit too much with my K6-3 500 with Windows 98se, I've taken the whole thing apart. The current configuration is K5 100MHz, a CPU I never …
Re: Understanding what usefulness of PII 400 or 450 vs PIII 800?
Posted on 2021-03-11, 16:04
Hope this isn't going to offend anyone, but if the one and only purpose of a retro system is as a tool to run old software, then it truly is pointless, as you can do it just fine with PCEm, DosBox or other virtualization software. So if the only goal you are aiming for is to be able to run the …
Re: Advice about retro speakers
Posted on 2020-12-08, 13:04
Just thought I'd add that I've acquired a set of the original Cambridge SoundWorks PC Works 2.1 speakers, that was released shortly after Creative's takeover of Cambridge SoundWorks. These sound fantastic even today. I remember hearing them in a store back in the late 90's, and being blown away by …
Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?
Posted on 2020-09-03, 17:37
Well, that attitude of being different, and feeling superior and so on goes on today, even in the PC community. Just look at forums dealing in modern systems, and see how extreme some of the brand fans can be. "Team Green", "Team Red" and "Team Blue". Trying to stay in an objective middle group that …
Re: Supersocket 7 (MVP3) and AGP video
Posted on 2020-08-23, 07:58
For whatever it's worth, I remember installing a Matrox driver for the G200 that added support for multiple desktops (as often seen on Unix GUIs). That was on Windows 2000 though, no idea if they did that under Win9x. That was a very long time ago. Much more recently I installed a driver for a G400 …
Re: Aopen AX59 pro with general instability
Posted on 2020-08-20, 16:23
This may be a dumb question, but do you have the Via 4-in-1 driver package installed? I know this should be obvious, but I remember back in the day, when this board was brand new. I was not aware of this, and these drivers did not come with the board. I had SO many issues until I figured that out. …
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