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Should I upgrade my 286's processor?

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Reply 21 of 25, by Old PC Hunter

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Yeah sure, it would be interesting to see if the chipsets are the same.

Set up retro boxes:
DOS:286 10 MHZ/ET4000AX1MB/270 MB HDD/4 MB RAM/Adlib/80287 XL
W98:P2 450/Radeon 7000 64 MB/23 GB HDD/SB 16 clone/384 MB RAM
XP:ATHLON X2 6000+/2 GB RAM/Radeon X1900XTX/2x120 GB SSD/1x160 GB and 1x250 GB 7.2k HDD's/ECS A740 GM-M/SB X-Fi

Reply 22 of 25, by Old PC Hunter

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Just a little update on this as it has been some time since the last post - but I did end up soldering in an oscilliator socket and I put in a new Harris 286 20 MHZ processor. The board and that processor have no trouble running at 10 MHZ. There are some minor issues however. The sound card might be playing some tracks a bit differently, but that might just be me. The music still sounds fine though. Every other card works fine, but I haven't tested the NIC extensively yet. A lot of the games and applications I have recieved a %20 percent preformance boost. I did notice the hard drive access times were faster, so this could mean the IDE controller on board is controlled by the CPU crystal. I tried to clock up the CPU to 12 MHZ, but it wouldnt do it. It did the memory check and was able to go into BIOS, but it gives me a RAM parity error at that speed. Maybe some faster RAM will fix this as I know the board runs at 0 wait states as I have found looking through old PC magazines. Or it could be the RAM controller dosen't like the new speed. Maybe there is a setup utility out there that can set wait states. If so, let me know. I'm gonna see if I can get it to 12 MHZ just for fun, but I kind of doubt it.

Set up retro boxes:
DOS:286 10 MHZ/ET4000AX1MB/270 MB HDD/4 MB RAM/Adlib/80287 XL
W98:P2 450/Radeon 7000 64 MB/23 GB HDD/SB 16 clone/384 MB RAM
XP:ATHLON X2 6000+/2 GB RAM/Radeon X1900XTX/2x120 GB SSD/1x160 GB and 1x250 GB 7.2k HDD's/ECS A740 GM-M/SB X-Fi

Reply 23 of 25, by rmay635703

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With a wait state you should be able to clock to the full 16mhz with stock memory, sound card may not work though .

If you cannot add a wait state you will need faster memory and likely can’t exceed 12.5 MHz.

Reply 24 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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It's doubtful the RAM controller is holding you back. It's part of the G2 chipset, which should be good up to 16MHz. How fast is the memory in your system?

"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 25 of 25, by Old PC Hunter

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Sorry about the late response, I just saw this today - but it is 70 NS 9 chip memory, at 0 wait states.

Set up retro boxes:
DOS:286 10 MHZ/ET4000AX1MB/270 MB HDD/4 MB RAM/Adlib/80287 XL
W98:P2 450/Radeon 7000 64 MB/23 GB HDD/SB 16 clone/384 MB RAM
XP:ATHLON X2 6000+/2 GB RAM/Radeon X1900XTX/2x120 GB SSD/1x160 GB and 1x250 GB 7.2k HDD's/ECS A740 GM-M/SB X-Fi