feipoa wrote:

Wasn't the performance benefit of AGP 4x marginal compared to 2x? Or is your intention to run AGP 8x cards, in which case you need at least an AGP 4x connector?

Why do you want the ISA connector? Can a Tualatin 1.4 GHz be slowed down to early 386 levels?

Not really, The Geforce 4 was slower on AGP2x slots than AGP4x, so in 2002 we started using the bandwidth of AGP4x.

feipoa wrote:

Wasn't the performance benefit of AGP 4x marginal compared to 2x? Or is your intention to run AGP 8x cards, in which case you need at least an AGP 4x connector?

Why do you want the ISA connector? Can a Tualatin 1.4 GHz be slowed down to early 386 levels?

Yes I'm use using a x850xt. And why would I need to slow the cpus down? I just get why people feal the need to do that to play any dos game. I know there a some early games that have problems with faster cpus. But it not like most games have problems with a piii.

Anyway found out that two more of the hdds I bought were bad. So I bought 4 newer scsi drives.

I am curious, what do you need the ISA slot for on something so fast?

Once more, it's going to be a all in one retro pc and a daily use system.
The isa card is for games like doom, duke3d, descent, skullkeep and lemmings.

That is what I thought and is why I asked previously if you can slow the machine down to slower, e.g. 386, speeds. And if you cannot slow it down, then you'd still need a second system which can be slowed; and if that is the case, it seems this other system might be more suited for these faster DOS games. Or perhaps you do not have interest in DOS games which require being slowed down?

I'm only asking, not trying to pick on your choice. It doesn't matter to me if you merely want a dual Tualatin board with an ISA slot just because it seems neat, which I think it is. The ability to test a wide range of expansion cards on a single motherboard is just neat. Even neater would be a system with AGP, PCI-E, PCI-X, PCI, and ISA.

The only game I played that have problems on faster systems is wing comander and I believe there is a fix for that.
I don't think there really is a lot of games that have problems with faster CPUs, and the ones that do will likely not play well with an awe64. The isa slot isn't completely needed, the system is fast enough to emu an isa sound card. But an isa card will make things simpler.

Also I may have not said this, but I hate having more then one pc cluttering up space, this will be my only system and I'm going to make the most of it. And I don't like new computers.

Anyway that all aside, I bought the last of parts for the system. It will be complete this time next week! TechnicallyI could have it up and running now, but I'm not getting ahead of the house with this system.

Waiting for the last of the Hdds so I'm playing around with dos.

My secret? Nothing special, just a older bios version on one of the two bios chips. The old bios don't play well with the 1.4ghz p3-s

Just about done the on the hardware side. a bit of wireing work and I'll take HQ photos of it.

I'll still need to get the vga ram sinks properly installed and add 2 more screws on the cpu fans.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Just about done the n the hardware side.a bit of wireing work and I'll yake HQ photos of it.

I'll still need to get the vga ram sinks properly installed and add 2 more screws on the cpu fans.

Like how clean it is,man that fkn awesome 😁

Thanks, still have a little work to do on it still. I thought this system would be done in a week, boy was I wrong.
But so far I can say that it's a keeper for good.

One thing I learned about the scsi hdds. Their like a constantly running typewriter or dot matrix printer.
I went with raid5 so it's pretty clunky sounding. And slow. Like 15mbs slow. I'll update the firmware and ram on the raid card for sure.

Stripe size matters on raid. Id shoot for a 64k or higher.

Interesting looking SCSI RAID card. I have one which looks similar to this, although it lacks the SCSI ports. I believe it is strictly for a 64-bit PCI slot in a 440BX board. There appears to be a slight offset difference between conventional PCI-X and 440BX PCI-64bit. Its for a dual slot1 workstation.

luckybob wrote:

Stripe size matters on raid. Id shoot for a 64k or higher.

I left it at default, witch was 64k.
Anyway with the newist bios on the card now I can't get into the raid menu on the card. But it did help a lot with speeds. About 5mbs faster. After overclocking the fsb to 142mhz I now have a max read of 22mbs. Not good at all, but a lot better then 15mbs. According to hdtune.

I'm going to have to find away to address this problem. I don't want to wipe out the raid just to change stripe size. I did buy a 128mb stick of ram for the card, hopefully that will help.

Edit: playing with the block size in hdtune makes a big difference.
At 512k I get about 33mb reads. At 8mb I get about 45mb reads.

you said you have 5 drives in raid 0+1? don't you need an even number for that? Personally, I would just go for a raid 1 stripe. I doubt you need data security on this machine. anything "important" you could just save across the network, like I do.

@feipoa
The card you are referring to is called a zero-channel raid. It is designed to fit into special slots on the motherboard (later just normal pci-x, usually green colored) and it will add the raid-5 engine to the ONBOARD scsi chip. It also adds cache, which is very useful.

So that is what its called: Zero-channel RAID? Neat name. Interesting that its a pin or two different in slot sizing from regular PCI-X. I guess that was intentional. It comes with a stick of 16 MB ECC EDO (168-pin) RAM. Were these upgrade-able?

if it is removeable, then yes. if memory serves, most of the early ones used normal ECC dimms. I'm sure google can provide details of each card.

luckybob wrote:

you said you have 5 drives in raid 0+1? don't you need an even number for that? Personally, I would just go for a raid 1 stripe. I doubt you need data security on this machine. anything "important" you could just save across the network, like I do.

Sorry I thought I said I was useing raid5.
And I don't have a network on my end with storage. Or even another pc.
I went with raid5 so If a disk were to fail all I have to do is put a spare in the system. It's less for data security and more for convenience as I'll never have to set the entire system back up if a drive fails. That and I get all the storage I need.

I thought about a raid 1 setup with two 120gb ssd's I all ready have. But I like the sound of the old scsi drives and don't have a good pci sata raid card. Or even a good sata card to begin with.

OK, your speeds are NORMAL with raid 5. Also, if possible, put the biggest cache dimm you can in that raid card. It will save your sanity, because R5 is SLOW. In a nutshell, the controller gets the data, generates parity, writes to each drive, the reads the written data, making sure it was written correctly, then continues. Raid 6 is even slower as it has to generate two parity stripes. I run 16 drives in my R6 array. Each drive is capable of 120MB/s easy. I barely get that in the whole array. I get great speeds until the cache is full. (i have 2gb on mine, so I can write about 3gb of data before the cache gets full and speeds drop.) When you deal with 30gb of video in one sitting....

But if you want some pointers, look at this link: http://www.overclock.net/t/1468336/intel-raid … what-fixed-mine

I could just ctrl-c & ctrl-v but that doesn't seem fair.

Oh, by the way. If your controller shits the bed (has happened to me). It can take your R5 array with it. Even though you have the parity stripe. R50 & R60 help, but you lose so much drive space...

Shits the bed? In another words "dies"? Wouldn't that become a bigger problem with more ram on the card? Given the card and that I put heat sinks on it I don't see it during out of the blue. But you never know.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?ter … hit%20the%20bed

All things being equal? yes. In practicality? no. We are talking about VERY old hardware here. We all have computers that are DECADES old. That said, the hardware from before the lead-free days are actually very robust. So imho, it all ends up being a wash. The bigger cache card can help with the overall system, saving a few % of read/writes to the physical disk. Thus saving the disks, ever so slightly. However, if the dimm you get is bad...

so, at the end of the day, you might as well make the system as fast as possible, and just keep a regular backup of important things. Don't trust raid to save you. While on the subject, why not add tape backup? The drives are very standard, and look neat. I got my 400gb drive for like $40. Smaller drives should be much cheaper, and as long as you get an LTO style drive, it will have great compatibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open