VOGONS


First post, by kanecvr

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Hi guys. I got a 386 board some time ago and I need some help optimizing bios settings. The board is a SER 386-AD3 and with 128kb of L2 cache running a soldered 40MHz AM386-DX, running AMIBIOS. Here's what I'm unclear about:

Slow Refresh - this is currently set to 60u. Could I set it lower or higher to improve performance?
Polling Clock Select - this is currently at CLK2 /3. I have no ideea what frequency CLK2 is supposed to represent. I can set this to 14.32mhz, CLK/2, CLK2/2, CLK2/4 amd 28.64MHz. What would be the fastest setting?
DMA Clock Select - currently running at ATCLK witch is 7.19Mhz. I can set ATCLK or ATCLK/2. I take it it isn't safe to run this faster then 8MHz?

Here's a link to the board: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SE … 86-386-AD3.html

I don't know if it's relevant, but the machine has a Cirrus Logic 54xx 1MB ISA video card, a AHA-1542C SCSI controller, a generic goldstar serial controller and a Creative SB32 currently installed.

Last edited by kanecvr on 2016-04-05, 02:03. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 3, by weldum

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I'm not sure, but in my 386 machine Polling Clock Select is at CLK2/5 and works very well. Maybe you should test every config with the Phil's VGA Benchmark. Like trial and error.

DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475

Reply 2 of 3, by Matth79

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CLK2 is the double frequency clock of the 386 - internally divided by 2.

So for a 40MHz 386, CLK2 is 80MHz, so the frequencies (for whatever polling clock does) are:
14.32MHz
20MHz (CLK2/4)
26.6MHz (/3)
28.64MHz
40MHz (/2)

For a 33, the divider ones would be 16.6, 22 & 33.
I really cannot tie those frequencies to anything I know.