VOGONS


Reply 40 of 127, by Anonymous Coward

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Yet another Peak/DM board that is limited to 128kb cache despite having settings for 256kb. Do you know the model of your board? BTW, I have seen on TH99 that some of the Peak/DM boards support 256kb using 64kx4 SRAMs rather than the more common 32kx8 SRAMs. It's possible that this chipset only supports 256kb using a single bank configuration. I am going to test out this theory in August when I get back home.
Also, in the BIOS for your board, do you have an option for memory interleaving? The chipset manual claims this mode is supported, but it is hidden in my BIOS. When I attempt to enable it using AMISetup V2.99, it makes the system unstable. Peak/DM on paper seems to be a great chipset, but in practice many of the features seem to not be working correctly. Maybe it was fixed in later chipset steppings, but mine is rev B1, which should be one of the last.

"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 41 of 127, by tpowell.ca

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Phido wrote:

I think I might be able to get Red Alert running on this setup, over the network, in win95 and be playable. Doom LAN?

Red Alert? wow, you are a courageous man. Would you settle for Dune 2? 🤣
IIRC, I had it (Red Alert) running on my DX4-100 with some slowdowns in DOS, but on a tricked out 386, in Windows 95 would be really something (since you want a LAN game).
You may need to disable music to get playable performance.
DOOM though should be no problem, just not sure of the frame rate you'll get.

Does your rig play the Second Reality demo well?

Last edited by tpowell.ca on 2018-07-05, 02:21. Edited 1 time in total.
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Reply 42 of 127, by mbbrutman

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I'm a little curious about your networking performance. I read 150KB/sec on page two of this thread. A 386-40 running with a crappy NE2000 adapter is easily capable of sending ~400 KB/sec and receiving ~560 KB/sec using FTP, and including I/O to a real disk. Without the disk I/O it's capable of close to 700 KB/sec for sending and 1000 KB/sec for receiving.

Do you have an L2 cache on that board?

Reply 43 of 127, by Phido

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

Yet another Peak/DM board that is limited to 128kb cache despite having settings for 256kb. Do you know the model of your board? BTW, I have seen on TH99 that some of the Peak/DM boards support 256kb using 64kx4 SRAMs rather than the more common 32kx8 SRAMs. It's possible that this chipset only supports 256kb using a single bank configuration. I am going to test out this theory in August when I get back home.
Also, in the BIOS for your board, do you have an option for memory interleaving? The chipset manual claims this mode is supported, but it is hidden in my BIOS. When I attempt to enable it using AMISetup V2.99, it makes the system unstable. Peak/DM on paper seems to be a great chipset, but in practice many of the features seem to not be working correctly. Maybe it was fixed in later chipset steppings, but mine is rev B1, which should be one of the last.

My board is a mystery board (as is its providence) and has no other identifiers than Peak DM/33 and the chips on the board. They layout is different from other C355 and CHiPs boards and it has *NO* cache jumpers at all. It appears as if it is only using one bank of cache as I can remove a tag chip and it functions wonderfully at 128kb, and I assume would do so with 4 cache chips + tag. I have read up on your journey with this chipset and I am interested in 64kx4 experiments. On my board even though it reports onboot it has 64kb regardless of how much is installed 128kb is actually working. The AMI bios does not seem well integrated and other settings can make it unstable. There is a Chips and Technology branded bios for this chipset, there are videos on youtube of people using it, and it seems very extensive (!) but not aimed at end users. You can also purchase boards with this BIOS. This may be the holy grail we seek in terms of Bios (ie even more extensive than Mr BIOS or a hacked bios).

The fact my board went from 64kb to 128 kb with no jumper changes makes me believe it might be a specific auto detect problem with what we commonly jam in for 256kb. It might just be the tag ram that it detects. Mine boots to 128kb with just one tag installed just fine.

screen shots here
https://bobsretro.wordpress.com/jcis386sc/

Hmm chipset bios register bit editor in the BIOS by default! Expert indeed. How can that not at least provide us with more options! I would love an bios image of that bios.

I think the actual chipset is quite good, they had talented engineers, but the AMI bios was rushed, and at this time, intel started legal action against C&T so resources were moved to elsewhere. I believe memory and cache issues may be down to AMI bios integration than giant flaws in the chipset. Intel bought them out, intel wanted IP and engineers, engineers wanted to be bought out by intel. I think there is hidden talent and beauty here, buried. The Cache also support writeback and write through modes, there is a lot going on here, different boards implemented different features in jumpers, manufacturer BIOS should unlock most/all. They also had a CPU team and a FPU team, C&T was a talented outfit that got bought out by a giant.

Relook at my performance screen shot. Memory bandwidth of ~111mb/s is pretty fast for a real 386 board. That is at 4/7/8 timing (slowest) with 80ns memory.

I'm a little curious about your networking performance. I read 150KB/sec on page two of this thread. A 386-40 running with a crappy NE2000 adapter is easily capable of sending ~400 KB/sec and receiving ~560 KB/sec using FTP, and including I/O to a real disk. Without the disk I/O it's capable of close to 700 KB/sec for sending and 1000 KB/sec for receiving.

The speed is very slow as reported and conducted by Windows 10 to a windows 95 machine from the desktop (Drag and drop!). Windows copies are notoriously slow. I have no doubt a FTP transfer would be much, much, much faster. Still I would have to fire up a FTP program and look for things. Its a mapped drive, I can save files from chrome directly to it. It works well enough for me and I haven't had loads of time to tweak things.
Windows file copies on my 4790k with SSD are slow too. It's just windows. It also uses a huge amount of the CPU on any machine.
But it is a good point. How fast are FTP with isa network + wifi bridge on a 386. I should test it out.

Disk access is actually smashingly fast for a 386. I can get nearly 3mb a second over ISA, with the SD card there are no seeks either so that is a continuous stream. Booting and application launching is a breeze.

Red Alert? wow, you are a courageous man. Would you settle for Dune 2?

I am looking for games that are 2D but might take advantage of 2D windows acceleration but aren't too heavy. They don't have to be silky smooth, but I think many might be quite playable.

Reply 45 of 127, by looking4awayout

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While I was kind of sceptical in the beginning, the later developments of your build really delighted me, you surely got one nice 386 there. It's mostly because I like to push old computers beyond their limits and see if they can be faster than they were supposed to be, with the help of fast and recent hardware. I did something similar with my Pentium 3 Tualatin build to the point it's fast enough to be still usable for basic home tasks (web browsing, Facebook, watching YouTube videos, retro gaming), and I've been surprised by how usable a nearly 20 years old machine still is.

Wonder what you could do with a more advanced system, say a 486... 😉

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 46 of 127, by tpowell.ca

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Phido wrote:

Red Alert? wow, you are a courageous man. Would you settle for Dune 2?

I am looking for games that are 2D but might take advantage of 2D windows acceleration but aren't too heavy. They don't have to be silky smooth, but I think many might be quite playable.

I'd be curious to know if this applies to games. My understanding is that it works on windows calls (GDI) for basic shapes like drawing a solid window (or shapes), filling colours in shapes adding a border/frame.
2D games on the other hand draw to screen pixel by pixel, mem copy, but not using geometry, or at least, not using GDI system calls. At least, that's what I think from my casual programming background.
I think Solitaire and Minesweeper would definitely get accelerated. 🤣

Let us know! I'd be curious to see how it runs.

Last edited by tpowell.ca on 2018-07-05, 13:36. Edited 1 time in total.
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Reply 48 of 127, by Anonymous Coward

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Phido wrote:

There is a Chips and Technology branded bios for this chipset, there are videos on youtube of people using it, and it seems very extensive (!) but not aimed at end users. You can also purchase boards with this BIOS. This may be the holy grail we seek in terms of Bios (ie even more extensive than Mr BIOS or a hacked bios).

C&T normally made pretty solid stuff. Their 286 and EGA chipsets were excellent. I was kind of surprised that there were so many non-working features, but perhaps you're right about the AMI BIOS. I've been searching for an MR-BIOS replacement for a while, but nothing has turned up. I've also seen boards with the CHiPS branded BIOS that you are talking about, but I didn't know it was so full featured. I have the full manual for the CS82310 chipset, so if there are chipset register settings in the BIOS, I can figure out what everything does. Now it's just a matter of obtaining the C&T BIOS. I'm not really willing to purchase another board to get it, but perhaps the owner will be nice and provide a ROM DUMP.

Are you certain this chipset supports writeback cache? I didn't see any mention of that in the manual.

"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 49 of 127, by Phido

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looking4awayout wrote:

Wonder what you could do with a more advanced system, say a 486... 😉

My first PC i bought myself was a Wang 286, but I sold that and built my own whitebox 386Dx/25, with 387. 386's have a special place for me.
I have a Slot one build I need to do. I still have my original slot 1 machine but the Abit board is dead.
I also have become interested stuff like a older SGI build. But that stuff is expensive as heroine and rarer than gold. At least here.

Phido likes his women like his file systems... FAT and 16.

I can handle Fat32, just make sure shes a size smaller than 32gb.

C&T normally made pretty solid stuff. Their 286 and EGA chipsets were excellent. I was kind of surprised that there were so many non-working features, but perhaps you're right about the AMI BIOS. I've been searching for an MR-BIOS replacement for a while, but nothing has turned up. I've also seen boards with the CHiPS branded BIOS that you are talking about, but I didn't know it was so full featured. I have the full manual for the CS82310 chipset, so if there are chipset register settings in the BIOS, I can figure out what everything does. Now it's just a matter of obtaining the C&T BIOS. I'm not really willing to purchase another board to get it, but perhaps the owner will be nice and provide a ROM DUMP.
Are you certain this chipset supports writeback cache? I didn't see any mention of that in the manual.

I'm thinking about putting a bit of a retrospective piece together on CHips and Tech.

I definitely think it will be easier to find someone with a Chips brand bios than MrBios, I don't move in the same circles as you, it might already be lying around in an obscure part of the retro community. Or maybe one day someone might join with that board and that bios. Currently those C&T bios boards are expensive, but they seem to appear randomly on ebay for reasonable prices from time to time. If your interested in the features of the chipset then that will be the one to hunt down.
They are popular in industrial machines:
http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rec … m/slotcpu_1.JPG
https://gt3i.com/products/electroglas-pcb-mot … d-peak-dm-386dx

As for the writeback mode, I was looking through TH99 or some such at different boards regarding cache, there was one listed there with a 3rd cache tag DIL socket, if fitted, it claimed write back ability. I will have to go back and look for it.
I found it after trying to match this mobo next to the tag sockets there is another socket, there seemed to be some info regarding what must be installed to make writeback work. It might not have been correctly identified or used a non or different c&t chip. That info is not reliable, particularly because I can't find it in my history.

Looks like the bios has explanations or info while you edit the register bits.. Would be interesting to see it. The boards ended up in machinery that probed wafers and semiconductor production, so probably how that bios got out in the first place. It wasn't in consumer machines but industrial ones.

C&T were developing a lot of red hot technologies. Key were the Winglue and Wingine, which were later adopted by intel and microsoft in a new form. But also famously used by Next Step x86 machines.
http://www.bytecellar.com/2007/02/09/chips_technolog/
Which links back to vogons.
Re: Remember the C&T WINGINE?

A such they were pioneering a lot of things, making it work, it was just a matter of time before a big entity would eat them. First with VGA after IBM, Intel clone CPU and FPU, motherboard chipsets, first with high levels of integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAT_chipset.

Compare my board with yours.
20180703_214725.jpg
DSCN2458.JPG

Simular, but mine has a 32bit expansion slot that looks like a precursor to the wingine format. I think there is a memory card for it. Mine has basically no jumpers, there are about 5 on the board, for things like ram parity, cmos reset, cmos power source. there is one near the CPU but it doesn't boot if jumpered.

Reply 50 of 127, by Anonymous Coward

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I think the board at the bottom is actually my board. I believe that's the one the seller used on the auction when I bought it.
It's a Silicon Star/Abit FU340 (or FU325 or FU333). As far as I can tell, on this board the 3rd tag socket is not for writeback support, but just to support tags of different densities.

"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 51 of 127, by feipoa

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Phido, are you able to provide the speedsys screenshot when 64K and 128K of cache are installed? I have the above board, but it died. For some reason the RAM kept getting damn hot for years before the board died. Never figured out why. I use it for parts now. I also have a Biostar version of a C&T 386. It came with 64K and I could never get 128K or 256K to run reliably. The chipset on these boards is quite fast, but the lack of 256K kills the interest for me. Looking forward to someone else's 64kx4 tests. I also would like to play with a C&T branded BIOS.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 52 of 127, by Phido

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feipoa wrote:

Phido, are you able to provide the speedsys screenshot when 64K and 128K of cache are installed? I have the above board, but it died. For some reason the RAM kept getting damn hot for years before the board died. Never figured out why. I use it for parts now. I also have a Biostar version of a C&T 386. It came with 64K and I could never get 128K or 256K to run reliably. The chipset on these boards is quite fast, but the lack of 256K kills the interest for me. Looking forward to someone else's 64kx4 tests. I also would like to play with a C&T branded BIOS.

I can provide a camera screen shot, if you want the PCX it will have to wait until I have the board out next. If there is any configuration or data type you are after let me know. I am still playing around with this setup, the main aim was to make it physically fit into the case. I wasn't even sure that was possible, now it fits I am trying to make it reliable and optimised.

The 128kb seems quite happy, I don't think that will be an issue. But I am finding this board heats up particularly in a small tower configuration, cooling I think will be important particularly in specifications that push it (over 33mhz, dlc cpu's, large memory configurations). As I said, my board has no cache jumpers, so it seems they were pretty confident of auto detection. I too am interested in getting 256kb working.

20180702_175837.jpg

20180703_000217.jpg

I wasn't able to get 4Mb sims working, but they were 3 chip. I will try some 9 chip parity ones. See how that goes. Ideally this board with 32Mb ram, 256kb cache would be quite a thing, but I didn't buy it because it was quick or what not. The 32bit slot intrigues me as does the chipset.

They weren't low end boards, they seem popular with embedded applications like routers or for machine monitoring on very expensive machines, the sort of things that would never be replaced and operate for decades. You can buy new ones for $500. All of them seem designed for specific applications, I don't see many from conventional motherboard manufacturers now.

I really do think the PC Chips BIOS would resolve a lot of issues. It looks like a weird interesting BIOS too. Hopefully with more eyes looking for it, it will turn up.

Reply 53 of 127, by feipoa

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Did you run HIMEM with memory test enabled and are you sure that 128K cache is working reliably? Your speedsys graph shows that it failed memory test at 128K, but passed at 64K.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 54 of 127, by Phido

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Also I don't get much over 140kb/s even with FTP, even if I unplug the wifi and use cat5. Don't know what is the go there.

The two screen shots were just what I was taking while it was being played around with and I was also playing with memory modules and speeds.

I will rerun the test as it is currently configured. It does or should pass.

20180702_215224.jpg

Last edited by Phido on 2018-07-07, 03:11. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 55 of 127, by Anonymous Coward

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I think you got it backwards. It failed 64k but passed 128k.

"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 56 of 127, by feipoa

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

I think you got it backwards. It failed 64k but passed 128k.

Yes, indeed!

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 57 of 127, by Phido

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I am pulling everything down again to try some 9 chip 4Mb simms (16Mb) and install some active cooling and a heatsink for the CPU.
I also want to try out my 486DrX2.
I also want to try out some of my faster crystals.

Are you still after some cache performance data?

What sort of 64kx4 chips should I be looking at for 256Kb? I was surprised this board came with 15ns tag chips given the age of it (and being a 33Mhz only board). I would assume they were expensive back in 1990-1.

No luck trying to contact Bob retro.. sigh..

Last edited by Phido on 2018-07-11, 23:39. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 59 of 127, by Phido

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Some 64kbx4 chips ordered.. I am curious. As I said there are no jumpers on this board. I guess I just pop them in and the chipset does its thing.

I also notice speedsys really doesn't like non-spec ISA bus speeds. It often causes video corruption, even if it is other wise fine in every other application, and is that an EGA resolution it uses? If I fix the isa bus at AT clock it is happy all the time, even when the system is otherwise unstable (timings, bus speed, ram).

If I can get:
16+Mb of Ram
256Kb of Cache
Working I will be pretty happy with it. How much more can you ask of a 386 mobo.

I have decided to go to 2 x 16Gb partitions as I think my giant FAT32 32GB is now growing errors that scandisk dos refuses to fix and windows scandisk will refuse to even load. I think I will go 2 x 16 GB partitions. Then I can back up on one and format the other.

Playing around with 50Mhz bus. Seems stable, but I can't enable the on chip cache, it crashes immediately. 40Mhz with cache is probably better than 50Mhz without. Wouldn't mind trying a 87.5Mhz crystal and splitting the difference and getting the best of all worlds hopefully.