That bios is for a PII board of the same name.

There are 2 differnt P800 as you can see here
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search? … n&ct=clnk&gl=us
your board is considered PB800/900
https://web.archive.org/web/19991109192959/ht … 00/pb800man.asp

thanks, here is the photo https://photos.app.goo.gl/MBvDcqcievE7GbcbA
I beleive it is PB800/900 revision D because it has extra memory sockets.
I wonder if I should update to 2MB RAM, is there any practical use for that on a 286?

i dont know. suppose it depends on what you are trying to do with it. My honest opinion is that I am not familiar at all with 286 or older stuff so i dont really have too much of an opinion becasue its not mine.

ahtoh wrote:

thanks, here is the photo https://photos.app.goo.gl/MBvDcqcievE7GbcbA
I beleive it is PB800/900 revision D because it has extra memory sockets.
I wonder if I should update to 2MB RAM, is there any practical use for that on a 286?

Yes, 2M of RAM is much more impotant for the 286 than the coprocessor. Especially of your motherboard chipset provides EMS (the BIOS SETUP should give you a hint about this).

I think the same. I had got a 286-12 with 2x 1MiB SIMMs (=4 MiB) in '95 or so.
In combination with a PAS16 and a CD-ROM (Multimedia Kit), about anything non-32Bit just flew.

Windows 3.10 was smooth and I could run large programs just fine.
In DOS, programs could made use of ~3MiB of XMS memory, too.

- My 286 was built in 1988, by the way, so it was no hot-rod machine.
Because of the reasonable upgrades (rather: bottleneck removal) it was quite quick, though.

So yes, if you can, add at least 2MiB of RAM. If it has 60ns or lower, the better.
The biggest bottleneck likely will be your old HDD.

Load Smart Drive or Double Space, if you can. Both will improve performance.
The latter also boosteed performance of my 4,77MHz PC/XT clone, even.

Jo22 wrote:

..If it has 60ns or lower, the better.
The biggest bottleneck likely will be your old HDD.

For a 12 MHz 80286 60nS DRAMS would perform exactly as 80nS 😉 There are plenty of more contemporary IDE drives and CF cards much faster and they won't be a bottleneck at all for this motherboard.

georgel wrote:

Jo22 wrote:

..If it has 60ns or lower, the better.
The biggest bottleneck likely will be your old HDD.

For a 12 MHz 80286 60nS DRAMS would perform exactly as 80nS 😉 There are plenty of more contemporary IDE drives and CF cards much faster and they won't be a bottleneck at all for this motherboard.

Depends. Let's disable wait states. Also, linear write speed of an old Conner drive was higher than that of a random CF card last time I checked. 😉
Remember, old HDDs may look slow in random access cases sometimes, but they do contain quick, "big" RAM as cache (~64KiB), at least.

Cheap CF cards do either not contain any cache or very little one (512 to 2048 Bytes).
Also, using disk compression causes less i/o transfers (less data to be read/written),
so it makes sense on a slow interface (AT-Bus, IDE), even. The CPU overhead is minimal.

Jo22 wrote:

Depends. Let's disable wait states. Also, linear write speed of an old Conner drive was higher than that of a random CF card las […]
Show full quote

Depends. Let's disable wait states. Also, linear write speed of an old Conner drive was higher than that of a random CF card last time I checked. 😉
Remember, old HDDs may look slow in random access cases sometimes, but they do contain quick, "big" RAM as cache (~64KiB), at least.
Cheap CF cards do either not contain any cache or very little one (512 to 2048 Bytes).
Also, using disk compression causes less i/o transfers (less data to be read/written),
so it makes sense on a slow interface (AT-Bus, IDE), even. The CPU overhead is minimal.

1. Let's disable the wait states. What is the period of 12 MHz? I guess you don't know. 83.(3) nS.
2. Have you debugged a compression code of ANY archiver when you claim the CPU overhead is minimal ) . Of course, you haven't. But use compression with CF card if you wish.
3. All synthetic tests are just tests. 64K cache, OK you may add more with smartdrv 😉
4. AT bus is slow you say. 8 MHz. So slow that the expansion RAM is often located on that very ISA bus on PC/AT machines like this one. The CPU bus itself is just 50% faster @ 12MHz. You may use IDE -> SATA convereter with SSD - imaginery bottleneck will be practically nonexistent )

Well, I don't like to argue. 😅
What I wrote was my personal experience (Double Space on XT), no more no less.
You don't need to believe me if you don't want to, of course.
@4 Yes. And on my ancient 286 it was likely 12MHz, even, not 8MHz (not "ISA" based yet).
What's so special on the 286, is that the PC/AT-Bus bases on the 286 front side bus, which all (most) devices must share.
Depending on the chipset (if any), memory is also coupled to that bus. So lowering i/o overhead generally makes sense.

Edit: Small fixes.
Edit: @2 I'm sorry, but I can't help you on that. 🙁
If you have faith in other human kinds, you perhaps may wish to look at the next link(s).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_compressio … formance_impact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel%E2%80%93 … v%E2%80%93Welch

Edit: @1 I agree you may be right with the cycle timing. I'm just a lyman, after all.
I believe why I thought 60ns (or less) would be recommend, is, that I have rarely used any tech that old (80-120ns, 2 micron) before,
When I started with computing 70ns was the worst I saw and 60ns were all around.
I guess this posting at forum.beyond3d.com describes it rather well (link):

"believe this choice of frequency predates even the 386 (the 33MHz variant first appeared in 1988).
60ns DRAM started to appear about 1985-86 along with the 1um process but then, again, I'm not sure if a clock speed of
33MHz (60nS equal 2T) was chosen because of that or the other way around; in fact 60ns is just the guaranteed time needed
to fetch data after the RAS line goes down (60ns RAMs are, in fact, 105-110ns RAMs if we count the RAS precharge time as
part of a 'true' random access and not the page mode)."

I have a Packard Bell PB800 (REVISION C) with Bios 3.10 08a

Looking here: https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/4113
I see 3.10.14 I but they don't have it for download.

I'd like to try a newer BIOS because my board acts really funky with CF drives.

I also see on the Microhouse images that there is a an "S1" memory expansion slot.

Any idea what the part numbers are ?

Or even what would the edge connector look like.
Would they look like this: https://th99.dosreloaded.de/i/C-D/51588.htm ?
Or like this: https://th99.dosreloaded.de/i/C-D/50209.htm ?

Looks like it is called a "BP Ram Express Slot"

http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/800.htm